While you are at a perfume shop smelling different scents, you may offer to sniff a bowl full of coffee beans in between perfumes. Have you wondered why that is so? What relation do coffee beans have with our smelling receptors?
Coffee Beans are used in perfume stores to be a smell neutralizer for other smells permeating your nasal cavity.
This question has been floated around for so long that you will hardly see any perfume store without these coffee beans. Do they serve any purpose biologically, or is it a psychological trick to distract you? Or does it adds any value to businesses? Let’s find out these unanswered queries.
Coffee helps to differentiate between fragrances.
The concept that too much sniffing of scents can baffle your nose is, in fact, a reality. For example, inhaling Coffee beans helps ward off olfactory fatigue and recharge your nasal receptors.
When you test different samples of fragrances one after another, your olfactory system becomes fatigued to detect the actual aromas of other perfumes.
This way, you miss out on a complete smelling experience.
By sniffing coffee beans, the strong, rich aroma of coffee helps restore the sensitivity of nasal passages, thus helping to experience the distinguished smell of the perfumes.
Coffee beans help to wake up those receptors and reset your smelling ability.
What is olfactory fatigue/ olfactory habituation?
Olfactory fatigue is temporary nose blindness, where your nose becomes incapable of recognizing the distinct scent of perfumes after exposing to them for a more extended time.
When you visit a perfume store and spend some time testing different fragrances, the olfactory glands in your nose become sensitive by overloading multiple scents. This causes your nervous system to become unable to respond to new notes of the perfume; thus, you fail to judge something “out of the ordinary.”
Do coffee beans clear out the nasal palate?
There have been claims that coffee beans do wonders to kick-start your smelling sense. However, it is valid to the extent that coffee beans continue to provide your nose a break from repetitive testing of fragrances.
“Coffee beans clear out your nose” has no reality so far.
Coffee beans are not a nasal cleanser; they potentially remove all other odorants from the nerve cells within the nose that are functioning to detect smells.
Dr. Alexis Grosofsky conducted a study from Beloit College, Department of Psychology, where he tested lemon slices, coffee beans, and plain air as a protective measure against olfactory fatigue.
Surprisingly, the study results show no scientific reasoning to the claim that coffee aroma acts as an effective cleanser for nasal passages. Coffee beans perform no better than a lemon slice or plain air. They all work similarly as a means to prevent olfactory fatigue.
Smelling the beans
Next time, when a salesperson offers to sniff coffee beans in between perfumes, you can know that there is nothing unique about coffee aromas other than an odor neutralizer.
Other things can do the same trick—for example, smelling your skin, inhaling fresh air, escaping the scents, or walking down the aisle.
