The human nose can have wildly different sensitivities to odour molecules, but there is one chemical that made people vomit and go unconscious December 15, 2025 What's the smelliest thing in the world? As the human nose can have wildly different sensitivities to odour molecules, smells are difficult to measure objectively. Judges have ranked the French cheese Vieux-Boulogne as the smelliest, but you can’t directly compare this to other strong-smelling foods, such as durian fruit (pictured above)