2024-03-27 13:32:00
Teenagers don’t smell the same as the rest of the population, and that’s not really to their advantage. Unlike young children, they tend to give off scents of “strong cheese, mold and goat’s cheese” according to a recent study relayed by the New York Times and spotted by Courrier International. For researchers from the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Technical University of Dresden, in Germany, younger children give off a more flowery smell.
Academics, who have published their work in the journal Communications Chemistry, collected the body odors of 18 children and 18 adolescents who had reached puberty. They thus analyzed squares of cotton that they had sewn under the armpits of the t-shirts and that the subjects wore overnight. First lesson, “the samples from young children contained for the most part the same chemical components as the samples from adolescents,” indicates the American daily.
More sebum in teenagers
Body odor is a complex mixture of volatile products. Many are produced when sweat and sebum “are broken down by skin microbes or react with other compounds in the air,” details the New York Times. From puberty, sebum production is more abundant. This contains carboxylic acids, including “substances with musty, cheese and goat’s scents, as well as others with less aggressive aromas.”
Chemists also pointed to steroids present in the secretions of adolescents and not in those of children. One smells like “musk and a touch of sandalwood”, and the other smells like musk, but also… sweat and urine.
1711557282
#Teenagers #smell #cheese #goats #cheese #scientifically #proven