If You Can’t Smell, You Don’t Know Beans

As Whiff-afficianados know by now, the taste buds of human beings can identify only 5 basic sensations: sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory. All more subtle shades of taste are actually flavors, a co-mingling of those 5 recognizable tastes with the over-10,000 smells recognizable to humans.

In fact, as we learned in Olfactory Fact #21, an experiment by The Food Network’s popular Food Detectives blindfolded and nose-clipped a four-man panel of tasters, and discovered that the subjects were unable to distinguish between the flavors of peach and mango, coconut and cherry jelly beans, or apple and raw potato.

Here’s a nifty little experiment you can perform for yourself. Just pinch your nose closed while eating a jelly bean. The flavor of the jelly bean is reduced to a simple slightly sweet sensation in the mouth. As soon as you release your nose while still chewing on the jelly bean, you’ll get a sudden rush of flavor, demonstrating how flavorless life would be if we actually depended on taste alone to appreciate the food we enjoy.

Scent Marketing Seminars & Certifications

Did you know that he Scent Marketing Institute offers 1 to 3 day seminars and, in the near future, will add certification programs for professionals who want to deepen their understanding and expertise in the use of scent?
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The Greatest Gift to Loved Ones might be the Shirt Off Your Back

There was an almost terrible beauty to that most memorable scene in the film Brokeback Mountain, that single moment when the gruff cowboy veneer of the Heath Ledger character cracked beneath the weight of his grief as he buried his face in the plaid shirt of his dead lover, desperate to catch his scent. (I’m by no means alone in thinking so–that shirt, worn by Jake Gyllenhaal, sold on eBay in February of 2006 for $101,100.00.)
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Olfactory Fact #9: He Patented Little Bottles of…Love Potion #7108872

Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder and neurological director for Chicago’s Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, is named on U.S. Patent #7108872, for “use of odorants to alter blood flow to the vagina, and article of manufacture thereof,” including “a mixture of licorice-based and banana nut bread odorants, a mixture of licorice-based and cucumber odorants, and a mixture of baby powder and chocolate odorants.”

This Teddy Bear is a Breath of Fresh Air!

What could be more soothing to a cranky-fatigued baby than a plush cuddly teddy bear? An aromatherapeutic plush cuddly teddy bear!

Lulabie®, a new brand emphasizing the importance of family rituals in daily routines for their children’s emotional balance and well-being, has just launched its first collection, the Lulabie® Aromatherapy Teddy Bears. The fuzzy little critters come in a variety of colors and are scented with a special “sleep well” formula including lavender oil, orange, thyme, and cardamon. A patent-pending scent technology creates a slow and constant release of the fragrance, allowing your little tyke to enjoy months of sweet dreams, and refills are then available so you can refresh the scent without replacing the bear your baby will no doubt have bonded with.

Lulabie®, winner of the prestigious 2009 Jury’s Award for Toy of the Year in Europe, is part of the Scent A Brand group, which develops high quality applications of long-lasting scented products. The Lulabie® bear gift sets retail for $29.95 and are available online at www.walmart.com and www.target.com.