Reddit Is Baffled By The Smell Of Aldi's Instant Rice
The human sense of smell is a remarkable and often underestimated thing. In fact, according to The Harvard Gazette, smell is actually your sense of taste as well. "All of what you consider flavor is smell. When you are eating all the beautiful, complicated flavors ... they are all smell," said Venkatesh Murthy, a Life Sciences Professor at Harvard. He also pointed out that smell is very heavily tied to memory and emotion. "The olfactory signals very quickly get to the limbic system," Murthy explained. According to the University of Queensland Australia, that system is tied into emotions and behavior in our brains.
That's why having a bad smell can do more than just make you wrinkle your nose — it can affect how you feel and what you do. Scientific American explained that everything from work performance to your feelings about another person can be influenced by scent. In the same vein, when a company makes a product, they want it to smell appealing, lest it negatively impact the mood and buying habits of the consumer. Which is why Aldi might need to rethink the smell of its instant rice, which one Reddit user called "terrible."
Aldi's instant rice 'smelled like the zoo,' says Redditor
Even among the best rice brands, instant rice tends to be treated with about as much respect as instant coffee. It's used when required, but purists may eschew it in favor of something that takes longer to cook. On top of that, a recent Reddit thread outed Aldi's instant rice as also having a disgusting stench.
The poster said they bought "2 packs of 90-second instance microwave rice, one jasmine and one basmati and they both smelled terrible." The commenters took up the banner and agreed. Most said that even though there was nothing wrong with the rice, no mold, rot, or other obvious contamination, the rice had a particularly bad odor. "Couldn't get over the smell and had to toss it!" one person offered. Another managed to choke the rice down and said, "I thought it tasted just fine." Others said the taste was normal, but that the initial smell was overwhelming and barely allowed them to eat the rice.