《Men Smell of Cheese Women of Onions》



Little girls may be made of sugar all things nice, but their armpits smell of onions. ______ (1) That’s the conclusion of research in Switzerl that involved taking armpit sweat samples from 24 men 25 women after he had spent time in a sauna ridden an exercise bike f 15 minute.

　　______ (2) “Men smell of cheese, women of grapefruit onion,” says Christian Starkenmann of Firmenich, a company in Geneva that researches flavours perfumes f food cosmetics companies.

　　The team found that the women's armpit sweat constrained relatively high levels of an odourless sulphur-containning compound – 5 milligrams per milliliter of sweat versus 0.5 milligrams in men.

　　When the researchers mixed this compound in the lab with bacteria commonly found in the armpit, the bugs turned it into a thiol - a previously discovered odour from armpits that is akin to onion.

　　“The me sulphur precurs we added, the me intense was the malodour,” says Starkenmann, whose team’s results appear in Chemical Senses. ______ (3)

　　The men, meanwhile, had relatively high levels of an odourless fatty acid which turned into a cheesy odour when exposed to the same types of bacteria. The balance of oniony to cheesy precurss in women’s sweat made it smell wse than men’s as rated by independent smell assesss.

　　______ (4) “We could make inhibits that neutralise the precurss, block the bacterial enzymes that do the conversion,” says Starkenmann.

　　Some researchers are sceptical that gender is the main deciding fact, arguing that the patterns found in Swiss volunteers might not apply to other populations with different diets genetic background. ______ (5)

　　词汇：

　　armpit n. 腋(部)

　　malodour n.难闻的气味，恶臭

　　grapefruit n.葡萄柚

　　neutralize v.中和，抵消

　　sulphur n.硫

　　enzyme n.酶

　　thiol n.硫醇

　　注释：

　　1. smell of onions：.....闻起来像洋葱

　　2. ... is akin to onion：......近似于洋葱

　　练习：

　　A　Bacterial enzymes turn the otherwise odourless precurs into the malodour.

　　B　And while free of slug snail odours, men’s armpits pack a powerful cheesy whiff.

　　C　Most cases of skin od is associated with break down of the compounds found in sweat by bacteria that live on the skin.

　　D　Nest; the team hope to develop new ingredients f deodants that fight the smells.

　　E　The researchers found marked differences in the sweat from men women.

　　F　“Other facts include what you eat. what you wash with, what you weat what genes you inherit,” says Tim Jacob of Cardiff University in the UK.