Do People Over 40 Smell?

waterlife / CC

Ever noticed that some old people smell funky? Notice that I said “some.” A New Scientist article released last week reports that the "funky old person" smell is a myth unless the over-40-something eats a fair amount of "seafood"—because of the long time accumulation of the unsaturated fatty acids contained in fish. Seems you are what you eat, so to speak, and consuming little fleshy fishy bits might make you smell a bit more like a not-so-fresh catch than a bed of roses.

This all came into question when a team of researchers in Japan (where almost everything but drinking water is prepared with fish) found a volatile chemical from perspiration on clothes worn by older participants in a sleep study. When U.S. researchers did a separate exercise study that didn’t use chronic fish-eaters, they did not come across this same compound. Analyzing both sets of data, researchers found that older study participants' sweat had more "stinky smell"—from metabolizing excess unsaturated fatty acids from the fish—than younger participants' sweat did.

To put it succinctly: Please don't eat fish, lest you grow up to be a smelly old person. (And if you do become such a person, please refrain from working out on the elliptical next to mine—you know who you are!)

So if you can't be motivated out of compassion for the sea animals who suffer immensely as they are hauled up from their aquatic homes to decompress or "drown" in the open air, please give up fish for the sake of the assisted living staff who will have to scrub your body some years from now.

Please, the fish—and the sponge-bathers—are counting on you!

Posted by Sean Conner