美国国家公共电台 NPR Men, Listen Up: Women Like The Smell Of Guys Who Eat A Certain Diet

 

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

What we can eat can influence more than our waistlines. It turns out, our diets also help determine what we smell like. Evolutionary¹ scientists wondered whether this might play a role in attracting a mate. And as NPR's Allison Aubrey reports, a recent study finds that women prefer the body odor of men who eat a certain diet.

ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE²: Sometimes a study finding makes for good cocktail-party banter³. So a few evenings ago, I ducked out of the newsroom, wandered down to a happy hour just a few blocks from the NPR building here. I was in search of guys who were willing to talk to me about their diets, their sweat and their dating status.

So you guys are willing to talk to me for my story?

STEFAN RUFFINI: Sure.

JACK⁴ NEWMAN: Sure.

AUBREY: OK. I met up with Stefan Ruffini and Jack Newman. They're friends. They work together. But when it comes to food, they have very different habits. Newman says he goes heavy on the greens.

NEWMAN: Always a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, extra lettuce⁵, romaine, kale, all the mixtures.

AUBREY: His buddy⁶ Stefan Ruffini tends to go heavy on the carbs. Tonight, it's a beer, a burger on a bun and...

RUFFINI: Definitely some fries with it. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

AUBREY: Now, according to the new study, one of these guys diets creates a body odor that women find more attractive.

Have you ever thought about how your diet might influence how you smell?

NEWMAN: No, never. Never, no, it's all about how I feel, not how I smell.

AUBREY: But all those leafy greens that Newman eats could also be making him smell good to the opposite sex.

NEWMAN: That's surprising.

RUFFINI: (Laughter).

AUBREY: So how did researchers nail this down?

IAN STEPHEN: We've known for a while that odor is an important components⁷ of attractiveness, especially for women.

AUBREY: That's researcher Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He recruited a bunch of healthy, young men and tracked their diets. He also gave them clean T-shirts and instructed them to exercise. Afterwards, a group of women were asked to sniff⁸ the sweat on the T-shirts.

STEPHEN: We asked them to rate how much they liked it, how attractive they thought it smelt⁹, how floral, how fruity.

AUBREY: Neither the researchers nor the women knew beforehand who had eaten what. But the results were very consistent.

STEPHEN: Women basically found that men who ate more vegetables smelled nicer.

AUBREY: But men who ate a lot of carbs produced an odor that women did not like. Back at the happy hour, carb-lover Stefan Ruffini wasn't too upset.

RUFFINI: I'm definitely pretty OK with my smell right now I think, you know. I have a girlfriend. So I don't generally worry about these type of things.

AUBREY: There was another surprise from the study, too. Some researchers thought that meat might make men's sweat more appealing. From an evolutionary perspective, men who hunted were perceived to be good providers. But in this study, a meaty diet didn't make men smell any more or any less attractive. Turns out that the way food influences the way we smell is very indirect.

GEORGE PRETI: A lot of people walk around thinking that because I ate a lot of onions and garlic, my sweat smells like onions and garlic. And that's not really what happens.

AUBREY: That's scientist George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. He says our body odor is created when the bacteria on our skin metabolize the compounds that come out of our sweat glands¹⁰.

PRETI: The sweat doesn't come out smelly already. It has to be metabolized by the bacteria.

AUBREY: So it's pretty complex. But given what we eat may make us smell more or less attractive, maybe that's another reason to think more carefully about our diets. Allison Aubrey, NPR News.

1 evolutionary   

adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的

参考例句：

• Life has its own evolutionary process.生命有其自身的进化过程。
• These are fascinating questions to be resolved by the evolutionary studies of plants.这些十分吸引人的问题将在研究植物进化过程中得以解决。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 banter   

n.嘲弄，戏谑；v.取笑，逗弄，开玩笑

参考例句：

• The actress exchanged banter with reporters.女演员与记者相互开玩笑。
• She engages in friendly banter with her customers.她常和顾客逗乐。

4 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

5 lettuce   

n.莴苣；生菜

参考例句：

• Get some lettuce and tomatoes so I can make a salad.买些莴苣和西红柿，我好做色拉。
• The lettuce is crisp and cold.莴苣松脆爽口。

6 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

7 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

8 sniff   

vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视

参考例句：

• The police used dogs to sniff out the criminals in their hiding - place.警察使用警犬查出了罪犯的藏身地点。
• When Munchie meets a dog on the beach, they sniff each other for a while.当麦奇在海滩上碰到另一条狗的时候，他们会彼此嗅一会儿。

9 smelt   

v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼

参考例句：

• Tin is a comparatively easy metal to smelt.锡是比较容易熔化的金属。
• Darby was looking for a way to improve iron when he hit upon the idea of smelting it with coke instead of charcoal.达比一直在寻找改善铁质的方法，他猛然想到可以不用木炭熔炼，而改用焦炭。

10 glands   

n.腺( gland的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a snake's poison glands 蛇的毒腺
• the sebaceous glands in the skin 皮脂腺