You can teach an old dog new tricks: olfaction and responses to novel foods by the elderly.

It can be difficult to document effects of age-related olfactory loss on eating behavior. However, we have reported that elders, especially those with poor olfaction, were more willing to accept novel foods than were younger adults. It was also found that elderly subjects were more willing to accept foods with unpleasant odors than were young subjects. Because there is often confounding between a food's odor pleasantness and its familiarity, the purpose of this study was to separate the effects of familiarity and odor pleasantness on food acceptance by the elderly. There was no evidence for effects of age or olfactory sensitivity on food neophobia. However, elderly subjects with poor olfaction showed less reluctance to try the unpleasantly smelling foods than did other subjects. These results suggest that increased willingness to try novel foods among elderly subjects with poor olfaction in earlier work was due to decreased rejection of foods with unpleasant odors and not due to decreased food neophobia per se. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.