Some women turn to baggy clothes to disguise their extra flab, but a new study found that they might want to spray on some perfume instead.
A decade-long study found that men perceived women to be 12 pounds lighter when wearing a pleasant, floral-spicy perfume.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.
"We didn't actually reduce the weight of women who wore the aroma, but rather, caused men to believe she weighed less," said Dr. Alan Hirsch, the study's lead researcher.
But not just any perfume works, he said. After testing over 100 different odor combinations -- including butterscotch, cigarette smoke, grapefruit, and pepperoni pizza -- the floral-spice combination was the only odor found to work.
"It acts as the olfactory equivalent to vertical lines," said Hirsch, noting the visual illusion of reduced girth while wearing a blouse designed with up and down stripes. "In earlier studies, we found that sniffing the odors of green apple, banana, and peppermint caused a 30-pound weight loss over 6 months, but people wanted something that worked even faster."
The implications of these findings are more than just what to wear before going out on a date. Hirsch is now looking at whether this same odor can be used to help self-perception of body size in teenagers with anorexia nervosa. But while this aroma reduced men's view of a woman's weight, researchers could not find any odor that influenced a woman's ability to estimate weight.
"Either women are too adroit at guessing other people's weight or men are just easily influenced by how a woman smells," Hirsch said.
This study will be presented at a meeting of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences on April 9 to 13 in Sarasota, Fla.
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