Because science is always coming up with delightful studies, it has been found that women like the smell of men who eat more vegetables and fewer carbs.
A recent study found that the body odor of men who ate a lot of fruits and vegetables smelled better to women. Whereas the body odor of men who ate a lot of refined carbohydrates, like bread and pasta, was less appealing.
How did they find this, exactly? So glad you asked.
Ian Stephen of Macquarie University in Australia, an author in the study, explained his process to NPR.
They started by recruiting healthy young men, and testing their skin for deposits left by vegetables using a spectrophotometer. Carotenoids, the plant pigments that are responsible for brightly colored foods, get deposited on skin, and the spectrophotometer “flashes a light onto your skin and measures the color reflected back,” which indicates how many vegetables someone eats. The men in the study also filled out a survey on their eating habits.
They then had the men put on a clean shirt and exercise (i.e., sweat). Afterward, lucky women were brought in to sniff the T-shirts and describe how they smelled — floral, fruity, etc. The study consistently found a plant-heavy diet resulted in better sweat. They also found that, in addition to vegetables, “fat, meat, egg, and tofu intake was associated with more pleasant smelling sweat.”
Completely unrelated (and not backed up by science): Men also look sexier to women while picking out produce at a farmers’ market.