Is effective.

A bear can smell food even if properly packed. But let’s say the smell of the at food is 10 times less, that’s the difference between drawing any bear to you in a radius of 1 km or 10 km.

The math may not be exact but I hope you get e point. If the smell is kept small, you basically alert the bears that are close enough to be encountered anyway.

As most topics, prevention does not guarantee success, but meeting one bear that happens to be close enough every 30 hike you do is way better than meeting a bear every hike.

Most importantly, never feed animals. You teach them human=restaurant. Imagine next time you get invited to a restaurant everyone gets food except you… you get angry, do you? Imagine how angry a bear gets being fooled that way.