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Those of us who felt the pure existential dread of not being able to smell (or taste) anything when COVID-19 curtailed our olfactory functions will know how critical the sense is to a quality life.

Smelling is very much necessary for our survival – something I realised after chugging vrot milk that I couldn’t smell because I was sick, which probably made me sicker.

Certain odours are indeed historically linked to an increased chance of survival, with awful smells likely associated with things that are toxic.

Enjoyable smells are likely the source of edible, safe things.

Dr Artin Arshamian from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm pointed out that this biological wiring is probably the reason why people across geographic locations, cultures, and lifestyles, can agree on one smell being the most pleasant of them all.

The Telegraph reported:

It is a scent sometimes maligned for being a safe and boring choice. But vanilla has now been crowned the world’s favourite smell by a team of international experts:

Image: iStock

Dr Arshamian and other scientists from the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institute presented 10 world scents to 235 people around the world.

The group of participants spanned nine cultures, which included people from “urban areas in America, Mexico and Thailand, as well as secluded farmers living in the South American mountains, hunter-gatherers in the south-east Asian rainforest, and fishing communities on Central America’s Pacific coast.”

The scientists had to capture “many different types of ‘odour experiences’” in vials to take to these people in remote locations.

The aim was to examine “if people around the world have the same smell perception and like the same types of odour, or whether this is something that is culturally learned”:

They discovered that cultural connotations or affiliations had little impact on how much someone liked a smell, with the fragrance’s chemical structure eliciting a widely liked or disliked response, irrespective of where in the world they live, what language they speak and what they eat.

Here are the 10 scents used in the study, ranked from best to worst:

1. Vanilla
2. Peaches
3. Lavender
4. Cloves
5. Rose
6. Mushrooms
7. Sweaty goats
8. Green peppers
9. Pungent garlic/decaying fish
10. Sweaty feet

I have no idea how the smell of ‘sweaty goats’ made it in front of the scent of ‘green peppers’.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology. How vanilla.

[source:telegraph]