There was a thread on this before, but it mostly focused on the link between red meat and body odor. My question is more about if people from areas who eat a high fat diet, regardless of content, smell unpleasant to people from other countries who eat less fat? Is it that distinct of an odor? I have a friend who eats a diet very high in fat. This person certainly smells stinky to me, though it is not a typical body odor smell. It is more of a “fatty” smell. It got me wondering if this is how I have heard Westerners smell to Easterners.
I thought I would post this INMHO instead of in General Questions due to the fact that it would be interesting to hear of real people’s experiences and not “Yes, I have heard this too.”
I don’t know the answer to your question, but it presumes:
- Westerners do indeed smell bad to Easteners.
- A high fat diet makes people smell bad.
- Many Westeners eat a high fat diet.
Regarding these points:
- Many people, throughout history, have belittled others different from them. This may involve racism, the fact most people place high value on their own language, customs, food, culture and sexual ethos. My view is it is probably (and regrettably) human nature to do the “superior dance”. I remember working for the military one summer as an engineer – one of the techs was remarkably lazy and close to useless, but damn, could he sauter a wire. He did it extremely well. And it was all he talked about. ANYTHING is enough to make some people feel better than others.
My point here is if you are inclined to put down others, it is easy tor ationalize it on the basis of things like smell. I remember reading about a psychology study that tested how people smelled, and then compared this to how they smelled after they were told something good or bad about the person. No surprises for guessing the outcome, although I have no idea if the study was methodologically sound.
I have met a number of white people who dislike the smell of curry, for example. Some of these people made further generalizations which I find distasteful, along the lines of the OP.
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Smell is complex. Washing habits play a role – I went to Paris during the heat wave last summer (and most French consider themselves Western). I remember fondly a Dilbert comic ending with the line “and those are just SOME of the benefits of an all cheese diet”. Many Easteners eat a vegetarian diet that is still very high in fat. I suspect a high fat diet does not make one smell like lavender and essence of ambergis, but the conclusion remains unproven AFAIK.
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Westeners do seem to eat a high fat diet. So do some Easteners – more and more. I can buy this part without much difficulty.
Dr_Paprika, I think you’re making a pretty big leap to assume the OP is trying to make a case for Western cultural superiority.
She’s not presuming that at all: the OP asked,
Looks like an honest and straightforward question to me.
I can add a few anecdotes to the discussion:
When I lived in Japan, an American friend of mine who was fluent in Japanese was in an elevator with two Japanese women. The women evidently assumed my friend didn’t speak Japanese, and one said to the other, “You’re right, they DO smell funny!”
Also, Trevanian mentioned Westerners’ high-fat diets giving them an unpleasant smell to Easterners in the novel Shibumi.
Thank you, Jakelope. I was indeed asking about this from a scientific standpoint, as opposed to a racial standpoint. I thought about just asking if people who ate high fat diets smell odd to people who eat low fat diets…but since I have long heard it as “Westerners” and “Easterners” as an example, that seemed the way to go.
I never said that the OP was trying to make a case for cultural superiority. I have no doubt Never To Be Queen was asking an honest and straightforward question from a scientific standpoint. The OP emphasizes the role of fat in smell, but I don’t think it unreasonable to break the question down as I did given the thread title and questions asked, which includes how Westeners smell to Easteners. It has been shown (I don’t know how well) that if you don’t like someone, they smell worse. To say this question has no cultural overtones is silly – For the record, I do NOT think the question as asked is in any way racist.
I mean, the thread could have been titled “Does a high fat diet make you smell bad”. It wasn’t, and there’s nothing wrong with that.