A smell that can save you. Science is clear: these scents lose weight for you

Do you think the smell of food makes you want to eat more? Maybe it’s just the opposite. Certain smells can help regulate appetite, affect metabolism and thus promote weight loss. People often think that if something smells appealing, they will eat more of it. But that’s not necessarily true. Recent scientific studies suggest that the sense of smell is not just an accompanying sense, but plays an active role in energy balance and weight management.

Some foods are delicious even though they don’t smell very good. Whether we’re talking about durian or various cheeses. If dinner is served for the whole family, a pleasant aroma usually wafts through the house and makes one salivate. However, this does not mean that the more pleasant the food smells, the more we consume it.

Smell, metabolism and energy balance

Scientists have long studied how the sense of smell can influence the energy our bodies use or store. A study published in 2017 showed that mice with impaired sense of smell were resistant to weight gain even on a diet rich in fat, while their siblings on the same diet gained up to twice as much.

Most importantly, however, the mice without a sense of smell ate just as well as the others. Yet they burned more fat than they stored. This suggests that sensory input (specifically smell) can influence the body’s energy expenditure, i.e. whether excess calories are burned or stored.

The smell of food does not necessarily promote overeating

Many people assume that if something smells good, we will eat a lot of it. But it’s more complicated than that. Not every food smell has to promote cravings. According to the latest USF Health study from November 2025, prolonged exposure to strong food odors leads to reduced food intake, which simply means people eat less.

Researchers have observed that olfactory cues often serve as so-called appetite suppressants. This is despite identifiable neural circuits in the brain that connect the nose, olfactory area, hippocampus and hypothalamus (a key area that regulates hunger and satiety). This effect is both time- and dose-dependent, according to the authors. The right intensity and duration of exposure to a scent are essential for the scent to act as a natural taste-limiter.

The complexity of the human sense of smell

Although mice and laboratory conditions show some results, the situation is considerably more complex in humans. Olfactory sensitivity is often reduced in obese individuals, which can affect their appetite and food choices. Specifically, hormonal changes associated with obesity can dampen the sense of smell and thus interfere with the regulation of both taste and satiety. This often leads to increased consumption of high-calorie foods.

In addition, there is evidence that people perceive different smells each slightly differently. Genetic variations in olfactory receptors can influence how strongly we react to certain odours and how these signals affect our behaviour. So while the sense of smell may play an important role in regulating metabolism and appetite, it cannot yet be said with certainty that smell alone will guarantee weight loss. The effect is very individual. But it is certainly not true that the more food smells, the more we consume.