L-Arginine bad odor

I just finished up a bottle of 500mg L-Arginine capsules yesterday and opened a fresh one, just in from the same vendor, this morning. Just taking the cap off emitted a strong odor of… more like sewage than anything else. I sniffed the old (empty) bottle, which might smell a bit musty, but I’d never noticed any odor until I stuck my nose in it.

Looking online I found a bunch of complaints about the smell and taste of L-Arginine powder and a couple about the capsules, but I get the idea most people either don’t notice anything or find it objectionable enough to comment online.

Is the stink normal? If it is, then I don’t understand why it wasn’t apparent with the first bottle, unless it was due to shipping in much hotter weather.

Just Google: Does L-Arginine smell bad. The results are, yes it does. One description was it smells like cat piss.

I have Now brand 1000mg tablets and can’t smell anything. I think the powder form is more likely to have an odor.

I have both 1,000mg hard tablets of L-arginine AAKG from Piping Rock and an off brand powder in capsules and both smell like nothing to me.

But Citrulline is supposed to have no taste but I taste it strongly. There are certain chemicals that some people can and can’t taste and smell. Some people can taste things, others can’t. It might just be that you can smell this stuff and others can’t, its just the way our human genetics differ.

I used to take arginine in powder. The dogshit taste and smell is normal. If it is really bad throw it away for your own health. For me it has similar taste to swimming poll water and chloride.

The vendor didn’t answer my question, just said they were sending another bottle.

Congrats on getting a free bottle of this brand of stinky L-Arginine.

The replacement bottle of L-Arginine showed up today. Smells just as bad as the last one, to me. Oddly, Mrs. Andy didn’t think it smelled all that bad. So, what the heck, I took one. Nothing untoward so far.

This is a quote from Albert Einstein:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

At least you got it for free. 😀

Humans might have a lot in common but our genes say otherwise. My wife and I administer these little paper test strips to our students in college where they put the paper on their tongue and we see if they can taste something or not. Some students are like “its paper, whatevs” and others are like “OMFG WHAT THE F IS THIS SHIT GET IT OUT OF MY MOUTH!!!” It has to do with certain chemicals that some of us taste (and probably smell) and others cannot. We label those students “tasters” if they can taste these weird chemical signatures. Like my wife, she can taste standard preservatives in packaged foods, like sodium benzoate, etc.. No one is supposed to taste those. But, genes!! Some people can and its horrible to them. Rare, yes, but it happens.

Just chalk this Arginine smell to something in your genetics that simply allows you to smell something others cannot. It sucks, yes! But that’s how human genetics goes: variety abounds.

@Pumpedmember
I do agree with you in general about how smell can impact us differently based on genetics.

However I’ve got a container of Best Naturals L-Arginine powder here, the smell is sort of salty and umami.
I had a container of some blue labelled L-Arginine powder, and that smelled like it was old stale dirty water with a bit of soap.

Surely different brands should be just the same material?

The brand I mention above is Star Nutrition. I can post an Amazon link if you want, but you can see in the reviews a few people say the smell and taste was horrible. Had to mix with squash otherwise couldn’t drink it.
I don’t know why that is.

Is it that other brands I’ve tried were actually ineffective, and the horrible smell/taste is how it should really be?
Or is the horrible smell/taste an indicator of a batch of gone-off Arginine?

I know there was a Reddit post about how some other amino acid smells horrible but is how it should be.

I’ve got a batch of Peak Supps L-Arginine powder, will open now.. Slight dishwash powder smell, slight “water” smell, hard to describe. I will make a drink now. Yep! The similar bitter taste and sort of old washing powder taste. And harder to dilute in water.

The usual one I have is Arginine HCL, so easier to dissolve, but tasted better.

Perhaps this is all normal for Arginine?

Maybe Arginine tastes bad anyway? Yes you may be right! The hard pressed large pills I take from Piping Rock taste horrible on my tongue. Citrulline powder sold as “unflavored” tastes like extra strong lemon juice to me. But other people say the same brand tastes like absolutely nothing but the water they mix it in. Amino acids must all taste different to different people. Glutamine doesn’t taste like anything at all to me, but may taste terrible to some people.

This is complicated! Thanks for trying the experiment and reporting on it here.

I can taste most artificial sweeteners, despite claims from the manufacturers. Most taste anywhere from bitter to like licking a 9-volt battery. I had to give up Coke cold turkey when the local bottler started added artificial sweetener to their non-diet products. Apparently A) it’s cheaper than sugar and B) they don’t have to change the Federal nutrition label, which seems to hose the purpose of having such a label in the first place.

Eryithryol(sp?) tastes the same as sugar to me; the give-away is that few companies can resist adding extra so their products taste even sweeter than sugar, to where it overpowers what other non-sweet flavor something is supposed to have. I could put up with that to a degree, except I seem to be in the “vanishingly small” percentage of people that get the turbo squirts from the stuff.

Thought I’d weigh in. I agree that pure arginine powder smells and tastes like feet. And not fresh from the shower feet. I tried various brands and types, including a liquid version that had some sort of sugar free sweetener/flavor to mask smell and taste. But, I have settled on a Life Enhancement product called InnerPower (ingredient label below) that uses sweet Stevia to create an actually pretty good tasting blend of arginine and multiple other vitamins and such. I noticed it also includes Boron that has been the subject of other discussions here. Just my two cents.

i took L arginine for 1.5 years didnt do anything for me

what are you talking it for?