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Smelling food can make you fat, new study shows

Your nose might be sabotaging your weight loss efforts. New research has revealed that simply smelling food can make you pack on the pounds. Yikes! The study, conducted by UC Berkeley researchers and published in Cell Metabolism, used three groups of mice — a set of “super-smellers,” a group whose smell was temporarily disabled, and a control group. The mice ate the same amount of a “Burger King diet.” When the mice weighed in at the end of the study, those with the impaired sense of smell gained the least weight — a mere 10 percent of their body weight, while the “super smellers” gained the most weight — nearly doubling in size. The findings show that your olfactory system affects your appetite as well as your metabolism. The normal mice, of course, ballooned in size too. “In the context of food and appetite, this is really novel,” lead study author Celine Riera told SF Gate. However,…