Myth Busting: Coffee Beans as a Method for Fighting Nose Fatigue?

We all know the drill, as perpetuated on the perfume counter: After a series of enthusiastic spritzing of every conceivable fragrance on the shelf our nose registers .....nothing. (This can also be an effect of too much of a specific class of aromachemicals in fine fragrance, for which you can refer to the linked article). So what have the shops come up with to counteract that nasal tiredness? They devised a technique of fighting boredom of the nasal passages with an aroma so strong and different that the jolting sensation would recalibrate our ability to smell: coffee beans. Freshly roasted, dark and aromatically pungent. Does the trick work? Usually not so well, in our experience. But now scientific research backs this claim up.

Do without the perfume-counter coffee beans, say Beloit College researchers

Beloit, Wis. – In an effort to offer shoppers a nasal palate cleanser (and presumably, to sell more fragrances), department store perfume counters have long been topped with small jars of coffee beans. As it turns out, they shouldn’t be. New research published by a Beloit College* professor and two of her students suggests that the beans are no more useful than sniffing the air when it comes to clearing the nose.

In a recently published report titled “An Exploratory Investigation of Coffee and Lemon Scents and Odor Identification,” psychology professor Alexis Grosofsky and two Beloit students, Margaret L. Haupert (class of 2011) and Schyler W. Versteeg (’12), put this common practice to the test using four widely available fragrances (Babe, Confess, Prettiest and Tempt Me). After several months of work they found that, “Coffee beans and lemon seem to have no special refreshing properties.”  

“Fragrance sellers,” they suggest, “may wish to reconsider the practice of providing coffee beans to their customers.”

The research is outlined in the latest edition of Perceptual and Motor Skills, a peer-reviewed bimonthly research journal. Read the full article online.

*Beloit College, founded in 1846, is Wisconsin’s oldest college. Hailed as one of a handful of “Colleges That Change Lives” by former New York Times education editor Loren Pope, Beloit draws students from 48 U.S. states and 40 countries to its residential campus along the Rock River in downtown Beloit, Wis. Learn more at www.beloit.edu.