When Eliza Barclay first heard that women have a better sense of smell and taste than men, she was sceptical. How influential could your gender be when it comes to eating?

The NPR writer overheard the idea at a beer-and-food pairing event and immediately knew she had to get to the bottom of it.

While it’s not strictly true that women are unequivocally better at tasting than men, Barclay found that women of a certain age are.

A 2002 study at Rutgers University backed the idea – their female subjects who were around reproductive age were five times as sensitive to smell as everyone else in the study. A second study in 2005, published in Chemical Sense, found that women in that age bracket could (with a little training) identify scents at concentrations of up to 11 orders of magnitude lower than men of the same age. What this means? These women could detect incredibly subtle smells with a little help.

The scientists suggested that these women were better able to sniff out particular scents because, as potential mothers, they’d be tasked with protecting their kids from contaminated foods and other poisons.

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