Ah, Oui! Zee Spring flowers! Zee sidewalk cafés-espressos! Zee fresh-baked baguettes! Et – Mon dieu! – zee post-prandial poots… But a French inventor claims to have created what folks have craved for millennia: a pill that makes poots smell like chocolate!
Poincheval and a Pilule Pets capsule…
It’s true – and perhaps painfully logical – that only a discriminating, food-fixated Frenchman would have the determination and savoir-toot to successfully tackle the (almost) unspeakable eternal em-barrassment of after-dinner emissions.
Christian Poincheval, is an eccentric 75-year-old from France, created Pilule Pets (which trans-lates loosely to ‘poot pills’). He’s a man of many – shall we say, exotic? – talents. He’s also a specialist in homeopathic remedies. And he dedicated 3 months of his life, at an age after most folks have retired, to that questionable quest.
100 percent ‘natural’
Working with a conventional chemistry lab, 75-year-old Poincheval came up with a formula based on 100 percent ‘natural’ ingredients that he claims neutralizes even the most pervasive flatulence. Then, he added a cocoa-based component to make the inevitable emissions smell like chocolate. He’s also since released an array variants featuring other cover-scents including ginger and roses.
The real scientific advances emanating from his research, however, involve poot suppression.
Although the formula responsible for his success in that area remains secret, he did hint, in a 2015 interview with The Verge, some of the ingredients include ‘vegetable carbon’ and fennel.
Why such a low profile?
If Poincheval’s pills work as well as he claims they do, why hasn’t he and his product achieved a higher cultural and commercial profile? The product been around, in one form or another, for 18 years. There seems there’s little if any controversy surrounding the safety of his pills. They long ago received approval for human consumption from the USFDA and France’s Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF).
Alas, user reviews have remained mixed since he first announced his ‘breakthrough’.
On the other hand, it appears Poincheval is (still) making a good living selling his pills. His website claims he ships to 45 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. Furthermore, ‘Total discretion is assured’.
My take
I don’t know what ‘vegetable carbon’ is. But it’s been common knowledge for decades that activated charcoal – ‘purified carbon’ – can filter unwanted organic aromas from foods and beverages.
Charcoal has, in fact, long been the key ingredient in counter-top tap water and wilderness-camping water purification systems. So there may be some (or even a lot of) truth to his claims.
But on balance, I’m not confident enough in Poincheval’s boasts to lay out (US)$20.84 for a single bottle of Pillule Pets, just to try it. A little voice somewhere in the back of my cerebral cortex is saying they won’t do the trick for me. I’m never that lucky..
~ Maggie J.