It’s official: Garlic makes men sexy

Tell your man to ditch the aftershave and grab a pizza because according to actual science, they smell better when they eat garlic.

In a really weird experiment consisting of women smelling men and then rating them, men were given either two or four cloves of garlic to eat a week. After smelling their bodies, the girls in the study rated what they smelt based on attractiveness, pleasantness, intensity and masculinity.

And the results? Men who eat four cloves of garlic a week are sexier than men who don’t, so maybe there’s a reason Italian food is considered so romantic. It makes no mention, however, of what was going down with these dudes’ breath, so take that into consideration.

Mmmmmm

The researchers, led by professor Craig Roberts at the University of Stirling, explain these puzzling results thusly: “Our results indicate that garlic consumption may have positive effects on the pleasure derived from perceived body odor perhaps due to its health effects.

“From an evolutionary perspective, formation of preferences for diet-associated body odors was possibly shaped by means of sexual selection.”

Basically, our cave woman brains think that garlic makes men smell healthier, and that makes us think they’re sexy. Related: pizza really is the gift that just keeps on giving.