Have you ever wondered that eliminating particular foods from diet have an impact on body odour? Well, it is true that some foods, especially plant-based, bring ultimate benefits to your overall well-being and also improve your body smell. Thus, if you’re a pure vegetarian your diet seriously improves your life. But, what if you take an exclusively vegetarian diet? Now you also mull over, do vegans have body odor?
Don’t fret. We are here to help you explore the health-benefits of plant-based diet and how they influence your body smell.
Veganism and Body Odor: Do Vegans Have Body Odor?
In simple words, veganism is a diet that allows only plant-based meals. Also, it is a healthy way of life and saying no to animal cruelty. Vegans don’t take meat and any animal by-products. According to a famous study in 2006 on chemical senses, vegetarians smell better compared with meat-eaters.
Therefore, it is obvious that vegans have body odor which is quiet attractive and pleasant as compared to meat-eaters. However, specific vegan foods like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and garlic can cause body odor, too. Sulfur compounds are the biggest reason, but many biochemical components in food affects your sweat production.
On the other hand, depending on the body chemistry the consumption of meat can make the body odor worse or be minimal. The smell can linger for a few hours or stay as long as two weeks.
Another study in 2017 suggested that the sweat produced by men who eat vegetables, fruits and more plant-based meals has floral, fruity and sweet smell. Moreover, the body odor of vegans has medicinal qualities. Women found these men more attractive as they smell pleasant and appealing.
Why Vegans Smell Better? The Science
In the human body, carotenoids are beneficial antioxidants. Regularly eating fruits and vegetables increases the carotenoids levels which further protects the body from diseases, provides good health and produces yellowish skin tones. These are found in perspiration including armpit sweat.
Therefore, women find those men’s personalities more captivating and striking who eat a lot of vegetables and are attracted to the odor of males with yellowish skin.
The researchers reasoned that carotenoid-influenced body smell and yellow skin tones are a health-signaling component of mate choice. That’s the reason why vegans smell much better than the meat-eaters.
Furthermore, they did an experiment to check whether the vegans smell worse or better. They had a group of 17 men that they split into meat consumers and non meat eaters for 2 weeks. On the last day, they had all the men wear pads in their armpits to collect their body odor. Then, they had 30 females to smell the pads.
The group of females judged the odor based on “masculinity,” “pleasantness,” “attractiveness,” and “intensity.” Then, just to make sure the results weren’t a coincidence, they opted for another two week trial. The men ate the opposite diet as before. Then they repeated the whole process of using armpit pads and judgement through smell.
Both times, the women observed the men eating “non meat” meals to have a more masculine, more enchanting and more pleasant smell. The men who consumed meat had a more intense, and less pleasant body odor.
Why Meat Lovers Have Body Odor?
You have heard that you look at what you eat. But, have you ever thought about you smell of what you eat? Well, foods have a potential link with your body odor.
There are several explanations for meat causing body odor. First, meat contains sulfur compounds—and sulfur has a bad smell just like a rotten egg. Therefore, eating meat can potentially increase symptoms of bad breath and smelly farts.
And body with a foul odor may just be another manifestation of the same thing. However, it’s also said that fatty acids from meat may also find their way into your sweat. Thus, that could play a major role, as well!
The same is the case when people take seafood in their diet. As a result, they get fishy body odor. These people, who have a condition called trimethylaminuria (fish odor syndrome), are unable to break down the trimethylamines in fish. And it comes out in their sweat within a few hours.
On the other hand, vegans actually have less bad breath than meat eaters on average. As with smelly sweat and farts, you also face bad breath which is the result of consuming sulfur-containing foods. Again, these foods include meat and cheese, but also onions, garlic, and cruciferous veggies.
How Being Vegan Provide Benefits to Your Body?
There are some astonishing and unexpected advantages of eating plant-based meals you may have not known. Without a further ado, let’s explore them!
1. Less Chances of Migraine
Along with lowering the risk of cancer, heart disease, and type-2 diabetes the health benefits of a plant-based diet extend to minimize the risks of migraine attacks. Yeah, you heard it right!
We often associate migraines with what we eat, and a vegan diet excludes several common migraine triggers and affects the body hormones estrogen. Alterations in this hormone also influence head aches and migraines.
2. Say Bye to Period Pain
As we know that vegan diet has a strong impact on estrogen levels. Thus, when women opt for plant-based foods they experience less period cramps, lighter flow, fewer mood swings, and reduced bloating.
3. Better Body Smell
Body odor has a powerful relation with what’s coming out through your sweat glands. So, do vegans have body odor? As mentioned earlier people with vegetables in their diet have better body odor than meat lovers.
The toxic substances from decomposing meat get secreted along with your sweat. And while those toxins may smell foul themselves, they invite bacteria that feed on them and emerge further stinking smells.
4. Reduces the Risk of UTIs
In women, a urinary tract infection is the most common bacterial infection.
The bacteria E coli is the common culprit, easily finding its way through the intestine into the female urinary tract. But you also find E coli strains in farm animals such as chickens and pigs, which means eating contaminated meat can lead to urinary infection. A study confirmed that switching to veganism or meatless diets reduce the risk of UTIs.
5. Improved Digestion
If you’re on a plant-based diet, then you will experience better poop. Because bowel movements from vegetarian diets lead to a more consistent stool that is easier to excrete from the body.
Moreover, by eating plant-based foods, you consume more fiber which means less straining and better-formed poops. More importantly, vegans have reduced chances of enticing food poisoning.
Final Thoughts- Do Vegans Have Body Odor?
There is no doubt that being vegan is super great for your health. But, do vegans have body odor? This is the concern of many vegetarians. Vegans have better body smell and the armpits smell significantly less intense as compared to your carnivorous dudes.
We have given an in-depth explanation about veganism and body odor so that you have cleared concepts.
Furthermore, if you’re a vegetarian, meat lover, omnivore, or somewhere in-between, regular showers and a daily application of deodorant and nice scents can go a long way toward positive relations with those around you.
