Got Garlic Breath?

Whether you’re scent marketing a product, an experience, or yourself - it’s not just about using what works, but also about eliminating what doesn’t. Garlic, for example. Anybody who loves anybody who loves garlic will tell you that it’s a decidedly unlovely signature scent, and a nearly-possible one to mask. The persistence of garlic-stink, not just on the breath but through the pores, is due to a compound called allyl methyl sulphide (AMS) which cannot be broken down during digestion, and is so released from the body through breath and sweat. Even brushing your teeth and scrubbing with deodorant soap are no cure.

Fortunately, food scientists at Ohio State University have found an antidote that’s spectacular in its simplicity. In short - Got Milk?

In tests with raw and cooked cloves, milk was shown to significantly reduce concentrations of AMS. Full-fat milk provided better results than skimmed, according to breath samples taken from a volunteer given chopped cloves to eat during the experiments. It is thought that milk fat suppresses the sulphurous properties of garlic.

“The best results would be obtained if diners drank milk with their meal, rather than afterwards,” says Professor Sheryl Barringer, who carried out the study. “This will enhance the deodorizing effect and mask the odor of garlic flavour during eating.”

There are other foods which are thought to limit garlic breath. They include prunes, basil, aubergine and some varieties of mushroom - but milk was better at masking the volatile compounds responsible for the smell.

However, the researchers warn that it might be wise not to go overboard on the dairy products. There are many anecdotal reports from Japanese and Chinese visitors to the UK that Britons smell of ’sour milk’ due to their calcium-rich diets.

“If you can smell it, we can sell it!”

Electricity, vehicles and functioning technology are virtually non-existent in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Mad Max - non-existent, that is, outside the seedy community of Bartertown, where Tina Turner’s minions have stumbled upon a seemingly-oxymoronic “clean” renewable energy source in the methane from pig feces.

The harvesting of methane from waste is not just cinematic fantasy, as it turns out. A landfill in Fargo, North Dakota is turning trash into cash in a way that would’ve made Auntie Entity stand up and take notice. When complaints from nearby residents prompted city officials to design a system for burning off the stinky methane generated by decomposing garbage at the city’s landfill site, officials at a nearby Cargill oilseed processing plant had other ideas - Why waste the potent gas by burning it off when it can instead be harnessed?

Last year alone, the methane gas that was formerly escaping into the atmosphere and noses of nearby residents generated almost $2 million for the city. Enough, says Fargo city commissioner Mike Williams, that the city did not have to raise property taxes on its residents. “If you can smell it we can sell it,” says Williams. “That which used to just be right under our nose turned into cash and new energies.”

Colbert’s Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Bible

Noting the Pope’s non-traditional new baseball cap headgear, Stephen Colbert reported last week that “the church is building on the momentum of the new Pope-Cap with additional youth outreach strategies,” such as the launch of CatholicTV.com - a Boston-based 3-D internet site designed to “change the church’s stuffy image.”

“You might want to expand your arsenal of youth-oriented gimmicks,” suggests Colbert, who is always thinking one step ahead (it was Colbert who echoed Whiff-Guy C. Russell Brumfield’s notion of Scented Money, allowing the blind to differentiate between denominations). “Might I recommend a Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Bible?”

Okay, he’s joking…but if any savvy Bible-binders pick up on the idea, we hope they’ll consult the Whiff-Guys for the particulars. We’ve got fragrance suggestions for every scene from the Garden of Eden (fresh!) to Noah’s Ark (not-so-fresh!) and…yes, Stephen…we concur that Lazarus probably would smell “a little ripe.”

Sharing Olfactory Moments

“How significant are the moments in your life? Do you take the time to live in your moments? Do you just go about aimlessly, taking your senses for granted?”

This is just one of those cool quirky ideas that deserves a whiff and a nod. Observing the definition of olfactory (”…of, relating to, or contributing to the sense of smell”) and the definition of moment (”…a particular period of importance, influence, or significance…”), the Smells Good Spa encourages readers to click over to The Olfactory Moment and share an aroma they experienced over the weekend along with the memories it recreated (a phenomenon known to Whiff-readers as Endorphin Branding™).

Whether checking out the Olfactory Moments of others (such as Harlem_Minded, who correctly identifies Compost as a memorable scent) or telling your own smell tale, it’s a fun and clever way to get in touch with that most over-emotional yet under-rated of senses.

Honorary Whiff-Guy

Men’s scented body wash: It’s not just for metrosexuals anymore, thanks to the debonair Isaiah Mustafa, whose cheesy commercials as the looks-so-hot-smells-so-cool Old Spice-Guy have done for marketing scent what the Whiff-Guys have done for scent marketing.

“Hello ladies. Look at your man, now back to me. Now back to your man, now back to me,” says a towel-clad Mustafa in a voice dripping testosterone ala Barry White. “Sadly he isn’t me, but if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me.”

Mustafa debuted as The Man Your Man Could Smell Like during the Super Bowl touting the slogan, “Smell like a man, man,” after Procter & Gamble discovered that women purchase approximately 70% of the shower gel for men in their households. More recently, he went viral with an equally hilarious series of personal videos to everyone from Demi Moore and Rose McGowan to President Obama and the Huffington Post. But if you’re not one of the 180+ “fans” who have so-far received a one-to-one message, you probably shouldn’t hold your breath.

“I am just one ridiculously handsome man,” announced the Old Spice-Guy last week. “I can’t write to everyone.”

The Yellow Rose of Texas…Not.

Remember the Amorphophallus Titanum? You would if you’d ever gotten a whiff of one. The plant, whose name literally translates to “Giant Misshapen Penis,” is as infamous as its close cousin, the stinking corpse lily (Rafflesia Arnoldii), for its distinctive floral bouquet reminiscent of decomposing flesh.

A rare specimen of the exotic plant is currently raising quite a stink at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Because the titanum blooms briefly only once every few years, the museum decided yesterday to stay open 24 hours a day until Lois (that’s the flower, named after a former employee’s mother) bursts into odiferous bloom, an occurrence which will last only about 8-10 hours and has kept throngs of museum visitors waiting anxiously for days.

“I’m really excited and anxious to see it and smell it, but it’s nature and we can’t rush that,” says staff horticulturalist Zac Stayton, who brought his sleeping bag with him to work and said he does not plan on going home until the the 5-foot-tall bud opens, which is expected no later than tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. “This is the price you have to pay for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

A Perfumer’s Dream Exhibit: Whale Vomit?

An exhibition at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo is featuring a rare chunk of one of the most coveted (and priciest, with a market value of about $20 per gram) ingredients known to perfumers - ambergris. Also called “grey amber” or “floating gold,” ambergris is actually bile secreted by sperm whales. Fresh ambergris smells absolutely horrible, but, after a few years’ exposure to the elements, the substance develops a sweet, musky and alluring smell that leading fragrance makers say adds a distinct and highly appealing character. While synthetic versions have been developed for the fragrance industry, genuine ambergris has become the stuff of legend.

Upon discovering that a small amount of natural ambergris had been carefully stored at the Tokyo museum for years, Kanebo Cosmetics struck a bargain to excise and process a tiny sample. Dissolved in alcohol and matured over a period of several months, the final distinctively sweet smelling product is now part of the “Great Mammals Exhibition: Inhabitants of the Seas” which opened on July 10 and will be available to curious whiffers through September 26.

Steve Martin’s Snooty Contract Demands

Lear jets and bendy straws are for wimps. According to Steve Martin’s massive rider for his tour with the Steep Canyon Rangers (hilariously “leaked” at the comedian’s own website), this guy takes prima donna-ism to a whole new level with three pages of demands including that “at least six (6) but no more than sixty-five thousand (65,000) holistic aromatherapy candles shall be placed in dressing rooms and lit no later than 1 hour prior to Artists’ arrival, enough to resemble Susan Sarandon’s bathroom in ‘Bull Durham.’ Approved scents include Sandalwood, Clover and Flop Sweat.”

A Fresh New Signature Scent for the Bronx

Summertime in the South Bronx could be a lot sweeter this year if Majora Carter has anything to say about it. The green guru and MacArthur Genius Award winner wants to pump the essence of “grain, rain and citrus” into a Hunts Point apartment building to replace the structure’s current signature scent of sewage and exhaust.

The celebrated founder of Sustainable South Bronx partnered with Parisian perfumers Pascal Gaurin and Bruno Jovanovic to create L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud - or Green Water of the South Bronx - which Carter hopes will infuse the occupants of the Sister Thomas Apartments with a sense of optimism and happiness. “The part of your brain that senses scent can allow you to feel really bad about what you see in front of you—or really good—depending on what it is,” explains Carter. The nonprofit South East Bronx Community Organization (SEBCO) hopes to release the perfume into a rooftop air unit at the building where it will waft into the hallways and common areas - but not into the 103 apartment units - as soon as the complex’s 200 residents give them the nod.

Most residents of the low-income building in Longwood, which is well within range of both a noxious sewage treatment plant and a trash transfer station, are more than willing to give the idea a shot. “Anything to make the Bronx smell better,” says Yolanda Rivera, who can smell sewage from her seventh-floor apartment.

Building manager Sal Gigante concurs believes tenants will definitely prefer the “nice outdoorsy aroma” of L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud to the more traditional borough bouquet of “decaying rat carcass.”

Wanted: Noses - No Experience Necessary

“You know that metaphor when people say something ‘doesn’t pass the smell test’?” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked her viewers last Friday evening. “Well now, in the BP oil disaster era, it’s no longer a metaphor. Smell tests - for real. Trained smell-testers monitoring America’s seafood supply.”

In a admittedly bizarre effort to detect oil-tainted seafood before it hits the open market, about sixty “sniffers” have been trained so far in “seafood sensory testing” by the International Food Protection Training Institute and NOAA Fishery Service at the National Seafood Inspection Lab in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Gerald Wojtala, director of the IFPTI, acknowledged that the method may sound silly, but said it’s nonetheless a time-proven technique. “The human nose has been used on a lot of spill response. There are a lot of sophisticated tests, but when you think about it, do you want to run a test that takes seven days and costs thousands of dollars?”

Although Wojtala verified that his agency is not seeking out people with supernatural smelling abilities to put on the case, but is rather training regular folks to be able to detect contamination, he does acknowledge that they occasionally run across what Maddow called “star noses,” people with a much more natural affinity for the work. The first level of training produces only “screeners,” but some move on through the ranks to become “assessors or even experts,” says Wojtala. “It all depends on how good their God-given talents are.”

It may not be the failsafe 21st century technology Americans might expect to see at work, but as a first response, says Wojtala, “it puts more eyes and noses at different points in the system.”

Joe Jenkins, owner of the Crystal Seas Seafood Company, agrees. “Here, we don’t have inspectors on any level so we have to inspect our ownseafood products to make sure they’re safe and oil-free and good to eat.”

Others, like Mississippian Mike Triana, have their doubts. “No way. How they gonna know? I ain’t eating any of it. I don’t trust the nose.”

(Maddow’s full interview with Gerald Wojtala can be found HERE.)

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