Gene may lead some to dislike smell of meat

OUR GENES get blamed for a range of things, from height and weight to hair loss and longevity. Now genes are getting fingered for why some of us shun meat.

It could account for why some people become vegetarians. It could also explain how meat inspectors respond to given cuts of meat, according to researchers from the US and Norway.

They found that your gene mix can dictate how your nose responds to a substance called androstenone in pig meat.

The team set up a trial involving 23 people and asked them to smell meat with varying levels of androstenone. Some could not smell it at all, but others thought that the pork smelled off, according to the findings published this morning in an online open-access journal PLoS ONE.

Up to 70 per cent of people have two working copies of a gene responsible for an odour receptor called OR7D4, and they react strongly to androstenone, but those with one or no working OR7D4 genes don’t smell it.

It could indicate that vegetarians as a group may have a genetic predisposition against the smell of meat, say the authors.

It means those seeking to market new food might want to revise the way that consumers are recruited for product evaluation.