Editorial
Front Page - Friday, April 2, 2010
What'll they dream up next?
Le Whif
Misty S. Brown
I am a bona fide chocoholic. I could eat chocolate with every meal and snack and never grow tired of it. It is my constant desire for chocolate that prompted me to challenge myself to give it up for Lent (except in Slim-Fast drink or bar form) along with carbonated beverages, deep fried foods and red meat on Fridays. I thought it was the least I could do to commemorate the deeper meanings of Easter.
I am proud to say that over the last several weeks, I have overcome the desires of my taste buds and have stuck to my guns. It was not an easy experience, though. We have a room full of chips, chocolate and all kinds of goodies here at work, not to mention the days when coworkers drop off homemade cookies, cupcakes and pies for us to enjoy.
With the exception of a wedding I attended where the only beverage options were caffeinated coffee (I only drink decaf beverages) or a deceiving sparkling punch concoction, I have been going strong. But Easter is finally here and you can bet I have been looking forward to celebrating this arduous accomplishment by finally indulging.
With this lesson behind me, I can return to eating these items with the knowledge that I can resist the cravings if I just put my mind to it. However, I have heard plenty of people say that sampling a little bit of what you are craving will keep you from over-indulging later when your cravings have gone out of control. (I guess I should have done a little more sampling during Lent.)
To combat my chocoholic ways, there is a new product called Le Whif that I can buy to satisfy the cravings with no regrets.
How it works
Leave it to those Harvard-ians and the French to come up with a breathable food concept through their ArtScience Lab. The Le Whif is a lipstick-tube-shaped biodegradable plastic device that delivers small organic food particles into your mouth when you inhale through the end of the tube. The particles are small enough to become airborne, but too large to enter the lungs and one inhalation is less than one calorie. The tube can be snapped closed to avoid spilling the particles when not in use.
Pros and cons
Since the Le Whif is a fairly new product, its availability in the United States is not widespread. Back orders are forming, possibly causing slow delivery.
Each tube of Le Whif
contains approximately eight whiffs, so a chocoholic like myself will need to buy an entire truckload.
There is a good chance that replacing all those cupcakes and Snickers bars with a whiff from Le Whif will help me lose weight since I would not be eating all of those calories, but then again I wonder if it would be enough of a portion to stave off those intense cravings I get.
There are videos on the www.lewhif.com Web site showing people trying it, and it sure looks silly to use. I do not know many men who would test it.
With a purse that expands like my vocabulary when I was first learning to form coherent phrases as a toddler, this would only add to the junk inside my purse and the subsequent weight on my shoulders.
For those who can handle the caffeine, there is a coffee version that launched in early March with an amount of caffeine equivalent to an espresso. What is next in Le Whif’s lineup – breathable steak or dream-able food so you can eat, sleep and breathe whatever it is you are craving? As far as pure satiation goes, nothing can ever truly replace le real thing.
Where to buy
Le Whif comes in four flavors: pure chocolate, raspberry chocolate, mint chocolate and coffee. The Le Whif tubes can be bought from France online at www.lewhif.com for 1.80 Euros or approximately $2.50 each. A three-pack is also available in the United States at Dylan’s Coffee Bar in New York City, which can be accessed online at www.dylanscandybar.com for $8 plus shipping.
Submissions
Have a gadget you would
like to put to the test? E-mail
me at misty@dailydata.com with details.
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