Question: what food can smell the worst?

Paul O'Nion answered on 5 Mar 2021:

Hello there

It really depends on the person everyone has a different tolerance to bad smells. For example, I have one colleague who feels physically sick if she smells butanoic acid, which is like cheese or sweaty feet. Another of my colleagues cannot detect coconut smells!

I used to work on pesticides in foods & three day old cauliflower smells very bad indeed. In terms of taints the most powerful ones we detect are usually compounds called chlorinated phenols, they smell like TCP and ar eoften described as medicinal. These can be picked up at parts per billion levels by your nose.