Scientists don't yet know why people have a greater ability to smell foods when they are full, but Dr Stafford says it could be the body's way of detecting and rejecting foods you no longer need in order to maintain the right energy balance. In the first study ever to examine the relationship between Body Mass Index and our sense of smell when hungry and full, research by Dr Lorenzo Stafford, of the University of Portsmouth's Department of Psychology published in Chemical Senses shows that people who have a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) have a greater sense of smell when it comes to food.
Dr Stafford set out to study if being hungry or full had an impact on people's ability to distinguish smells. He found that people have a heightened sense of smell to non-food odours when they are hungry but, paradoxically, participants were better at smelling food odours after eating. When the results were analysed further, he found that compared to those with a low BMI, people with higher BMI had a poorer sense of smell for non-food odours and greater sensitivity to the smell of food.
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