Swallowable Perfume: A Perfume Pill that Makes You Smell Sweet?

A team is working on edible perfume – a digestible pill that will emit a scent through the skin during perspiration. Men and women will no longer have to bring out the perfume or the body spray in order to prepare for a date; a pill with all the right ingredients will help make them smell attractive and confident instead (and making that nervous sweat smell of golden nectar)! Part of the Beauty from Within concept, it's set to hit the market at a future date.

“Body architect” Lucy McRae and synthetic biologist Sheref Mansy of Harvard University are in the research phase of exactly that. "Swallowable Parfum consists of scented lipid molecules that copy the structure of fat molecules found in the body. Because our bodies have enzymes that metabolise fat, this perfume works on the basis that the enzymes will also metabolise the perfumed molecules, excreting them through the skin. The proposed digestible capsule will emit an odour unique to the individual the more they perspire, as the perfume emerges as droplets on the skin’s surface.
Harvard biologist Mansy and Amsterdam- based Australian artist McRae have created a video at swallowableparfum.com to illustrate the process." (quote via Irish Times) The clip is tagged with "Go beyond accessory", "express uniqueness" and "a new cycle of evolution". Making a perfume uniquelly your own has always been the Holy Grail in the quest for the perfect scent.

According to the makers: “Once absorbed, the capsule enables the skin to become a platform, an atomizer, a biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body,” explains the website. “Fragrance molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface during perspiration, leaving tiny golden droplets on the skin that emanate a unique odor. A biologically enhanced second skin synthesized directly from the natural processes of the body,
redefining the role of skin.”
The strength of the scent is determined by varying factors including an individual’s ability to acclimatization to temperatures, reactions to stress, exercise, and sexual arousal. [pic source]

Of course the idea that eating fragrant foodstuff would help aromatize an individual's personal odour is not new: As explained in our article Musk & Civet in Food: Challenging our Perceptions, Chinese concubines were regularly fed on natural deer musk, so that they would benefit of sexy body emissions. Their body would excrete pure musk at every caress...
And who can forget that infamous movie scene in James Ivory's Le Divorce, with Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson, the latter being the paramour of a French politician who mentions that a tisane of rosewater, orange blossoms and mint is to be drunk before lovemaking to perfume "the juices"? (offered as a course of intimate French lessons for the American young girl)

Spraying, dabbing or even dousing will soon be entirely optional....