• Question: why does food smell?

    Asked by gamergirl0220 to Lea, Emma, Christopher, Ashley, Ananthi, Aaron on 8 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Emma Stevenson

      Emma Stevenson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      It smells because of how the chemicals that make up the food interact. However, when food goes off it’s because bacteria are breaking down the proteins and chemicals and producing their own chemicals which often don’t smell that nice.

    • Photo: Ananthi Ramachandran

      Ananthi Ramachandran answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      I’m not entirely sure but I’m so glad it does! The smell of freshly baked bread cannot be beaten!

    • Photo: Ashley Otter

      Ashley Otter answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      It is usually the chemicals within the food themselves that have the smells, with a collection of the chemicals all forming the lovely/horrible smells we know of food 🙂

    • Photo: Christopher Richardson

      Christopher Richardson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      Food smells because of the mixtures of chemicals, sugars and fats reacting with each other! Whichever smells make Chinese food taste good I don’t know but I wish I did!
      In terms of what makes food smell bad when it goes off, that’s to do with the growth of bacteria, yeasts and fungi that grow and start to digest the food and they leak out horrible smelling chemicals and spores! Nasty stuff!

    • Photo: Aaron Brown

      Aaron Brown answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      All to do with the chemicals within food 🙂

    • Photo: Lea Carlesso

      Lea Carlesso answered on 9 Nov 2017:

      Food smell because it releases certain type of molecules that are odorant (those molecules are called for that smelly reason “aromatic compounds”).
      There are very light molecules, so when you heating them up (by cooking for example), they go in the air very easily and then all your room is smelling food.

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