Is it true that vegetarians can smell a foul odor on meat-eaters after being vegetarian for a long time?

When I was little, there was a Buddhist neighbor who had been vegetarian for about thirty years. She was a kind old lady, and sometimes I would go to her house to watch TV. She always said I had a milky scent on me.

Later, when I grew up and had no appetite, I would often go to her place for some vegetarian meals. She would make glutinous rice balls with things like plums.

The most amazing thing was that she could smell what kind of meat I had eaten in my last meal. But what she smelled wasn’t a foul odor—when I was little, it was a very distinct milky scent. As I grew older, the scent changed slightly depending on what I ate.

She said:

If I had pork for dinner, it smelled a bit sour.
If it was beef, it had a hint of sesame.
If it was chicken, it smelled like dried radish mixed with grass.
If it was duck, it smelled like mushrooms mixed with bamboo shoots.
The most incredible was when I ate the fish porridge my grandpa made for me—it had a very strong floral scent, like some kind of flower.

Back then, I thought this trick was amazing, and I begged her for a long time to teach me. If I could do this at school, I’d be like a fortune-teller! But she told me that to learn this, I had to be vegetarian—meat-eaters couldn’t smell these scents. It was considered a Buddhist supernatural ability.

Honestly, I didn’t mind going vegetarian, but as a mischievous kid, I insisted that if I couldn’t eat meat, my family couldn’t either. Luckily, my family indulged me—if I didn’t eat meat, then fine, we’d all go vegetarian.

After about four or five days of vegetarianism, I got cravings. When I came home, I wanted to find some snacks to munch on. But when I searched the house, I found several meat dishes—turns out, while I was at school, my family would have a second meal with meat! I was so mad—what was the point of being vegetarian?!

Later, in middle school, the old lady fell seriously ill and didn’t have long to live. I couldn’t bear to lose her, so I went to see her. Crying by her bedside, I said, "Please don’t go! I still haven’t learned your supernatural ability!"

She paused for a moment, then burst out laughing. She told me that the whole "smelling what meat I ate" thing was just a joke—she had been teasing me all along. In reality, our kitchen was right next to her yard, and whenever we cooked, she could smell the aroma from her home. Sometimes, she’d even call out politely to ask my grandma what she was making, and of course, my grandma would tell her.

No wonder there was one time when I came back from a banquet and asked her what I had eaten—she said her nose was stuffed and she couldn’t smell anything. Turns out, she had been lying all along.

Later, after she passed away, I came home from school one day, and my grandma told me she had made rice balls for me to try. I took a bite—they were glutinous rice balls with plums. One bite, and tears welled up in my eyes.

My grandma said that before the old lady passed, she had insisted on teaching her how to make them. She was afraid that after she was gone, I wouldn’t be able to eat her rice balls anymore, so she wanted my grandma to make them for me—so I wouldn’t miss her too much.

But how could I not miss her? I still miss her so much.