If you’re reading this, all your holiday shopping problems are solved: just buy everyone you know a packet of pills that allegedly make flatulence smell like chocolate or flowers.
The herbal supplements, “homologated by a French laboratory,” were invented by Christian Poincheval, who could easily be mistaken for some kind of a hippie Santa Claus. He told the Local that he’d been working on the product since a fateful dinner party six years ago:
We had just come back from Switzerland and we were eating a lot with our friends and the smell from the flatulence was really terrible. We couldn’t breathe so me and friend decided something had to be done. When we were vegetarian we noticed that our gas smelt like vegetables, like the odour from a cow pat, but when we started eating meat, the smell of the flatulence became much disagreeable. We needed to invent something that made them smell nicer.
While Poincheval has long sold pills that infuse your natural gases with the aroma of violets or roses, he’s only recently opened up pre-orders for a “stinky dog” product and unveiled a Christmas-themed chocolate scent pill—in case you want those farts to stay naturally brown.
“Every year we wonder if we should do it and this year it is done!” Poincheval’s site declares. “Our renowned fart pill is back with a xmas fragrance based on real cocoa. You can now fart through to the New Year in grand style. The pills have the usual benefits of our recipe like reducing intenstinal [sic] gas and bloating.”
They contain “vegetable coal, fennel, seaweed, plant resin, bilberry, and cacao zest.” Only €9.99 ($12.50) for 60 capsules!
Now can we please do something about garlic breath and red-wine teeth stains?
Photo by Moyan Brenn/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
