One of the most interesting studies Gary Beauchamp ever saw, he says, was done a few decades ago among the Inuit, who live in Arctic and sub-Arctic Greenland, Canada and Alaska. “Their traditional food back then was dead fish and dead caribou,” he reports, “which they put into the permafrost and allowed to rot. The smell of it … it was just abominable. Awful. You couldn’t eat it.” But the study showed that Inuit adults who’d been fed the carrion as infants liked the taste; otherwise, they found it offensive. That accords with other studies by Beauchamp showing that early exposure to foods through amniotic fluid and breast milk induces lifelong preferences.

— Read more in How One Philly Institute Is Demystifying the Serious Science of Smells at Philadelphia magazine.

“In the Japanese study, when researchers did not tell participants what the odor was, they rated it as ‘inoffensive,’” Dr. [Johan] Lundstrom says. “But when they said it was from an old person, it was rated as ‘nasty.’”

— Dr. Lundstrom is with the Monell Chemical Research Center. Read more at Do Older People Have a Different Smell? at The New York Times.

The receptors that dot our noses and help us to smell also populate our tongues, according to a new study. Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center have discovered working olfactory (smell) receptors in the taste-sensing cells on the papillae of the tongue. The findings were published in the journal Chemical Senses. [...] As such, the study calls into question whether the mixing of smell and taste first happens in the brain. Instead, it provides evidence suggesting the process that creates flavor may first happen in the tongue.

— Read more at Humans Smell With Their Tongues, Scientists Discover at Newsweek.