Odor!

August 8th, 2026| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

You can, apparently, odorize your way into resistance training.

Or so say scientists from the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur in “Chocolate Odor Enhances Resistance Exercise Performance Through Appetite Suppression in the Fasted State,” published recently in Frontiers in Physiology.

Smelling chocolate between sets at the gym pushed men to complete far more repetitions than they managed with no scent at all, they found.

Olfactory (pertaining to smell) stimuli may alter appetite, affective responses, and exercise performance. Would these changes translate into measurable improvements in resistance exercise performance was what they wanted to find out. They did. It would!

Twenty-three participants (all men, in their early-to-mid 20s in moderately good shape) completed a randomized, double-blind trial with three smells presented as freshly prepared liquid stimuli: 90% dark chocolate, or 60% milk chocolate, or a water-based control. Each person came back for three separate visits, one per odor. Ratings were obtained at baseline and after scent exposure. They sat down at leg-extension machines, a staple of resistance training, and lifted until they could not finish another set (with odors presented before each set, followed by assessments of appetite, pleasantness, and ratings of perceived exertion during the trial).

Chocolate odor exposure acutely enhanced resistance exercise volume without increasing perceived exertion.”

The difference between the scents was huge. With the dark chocolate odor, the men completed about 18 more leg extensions than they did with water, and with milk chocolate, about nine more. The weight never changed, so their muscles faced the same load every time. And even as their rep counts climbed, the subjects did not feel like they were working any harder. Amazing! Just by smelling dark chocolate!

[What I want to know is: How did the scientists even suspect a connection between odor and exercise?]

Said lead author, Dr. Mohamed bin Naharudin:

Seeing a substantial increase in repetitions without the athletes feeling like they were exerting themselves any harder is a fascinating psychobiological outcome.”

Naharudin’s team suspects it is all about mental expectation:

The dark chocolate scent serves as a learned cue for a rich, bitter, and highly satiating food, which essentially tricks the system into an anticipatory state of fullness.”

And all that before food even reached the stomach—the cephalic phase of eating, i.e., body’s headstart on eating.

Naharudin:

We don’t think chocolate is entirely unique, though it is a food cue with incredibly strong, universally recognized reward associations.”

Smell is important. Even the Bible says so, discussing idols:

[The world’s] idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have a mouth, but they cannot speak;
they have eyes, but they cannot see;
they have ears, but they cannot hear;
they have a nose, but they cannot smell;
[they have] their hands, but they cannot feel;
their feet, but they cannot walk;
they cannot make a sound with their throat.
Psalm 115:4–7

Notice the symmetry of the “they have …” sections: mouth, eyes (paired), ears (paired) // nose // hands (paired), feet (paired), throat: ABC//D//C’B’A’. “Nose” is at the center (D)—yup, smell is important!

And what is worse …

They will become like them—those who make them,
all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:8

The makers of these idols become like them—dumb, blind, deaf, immovable, silent, … and non-smelling!

But unlike idolaters (and their idols), …

The ones who fear Yahweh, trust in Yahweh;
their help and their shield is He.
Psalm 115:11

Enough smelling. Let’s do some fearing. (With a bit of chocolate!)

SOURCES (of ideas, numbers, and words): Earth.com; Frontiers in Physiology