Don't indulge - inhale!(Reprint)

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It sounds more Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than the brainchild of a Harvard professor, but in years to come, weightwatchers could be swapping the Slimfast for a puff of smoke.

Even worse than slimline cuppa soups and 'low fat' crisps, where the 'low' just means you get half the amount of a normal bag, here is a dietary device that really is nothing more than a lot of hot air.

David Edwards, a Harvard University professor and aerosol scientist has created 'Le Whaf'. A machine which resembles a goldfish bowl with clouds of smoke billowing from it, its aim is to allow you to 'eat by breathing liquid droplets'.

You can use it for any kind of food - Edwards' team do a liquidised version of tomato soup, which contains a secret mix of its essences, or can even make alcohol 'whaf'.

But while we may mock the idea, Professor Edwards says he has high hopes for his crazy machine, particularly as a way to kill those cravings that ruin many a diet.

He imagines restaurants opening where, instead of sitting at tables, you walk around.

Instead of eating food, you breathe it in from the gadgets - celery in one, steak in the other.

But Dubai-based legal secretary and self- confessed foodie Natasha Chapel, sums up what most of us will likely make of the invention: "It's mental!"

"Whatever next? Will we all walk around attached to dehydration drips so we don't need to drink fluids?" she asks.

"I have never smoked in my life so I don't intend for that to ever be the way I 'eat'.

Nothing will compare to eating a meal, tasting each piece properly, the texture and everything. Then there's the whole social aspect of it. The world has gone mad!"

When it comes to healthy ways to stay in shape, Dubai's Doctor Ryan Penny - who runs website www.thewellnessbrothers.com and was speaking this weekend at The Weightloss Show - describes the idea as 'laughable', and explains: "I think it will fuel a dieter's problems.

If a person is going to continually incite that sort of thing it will actually reinforce unhealthy pathways in the brain.

"When they actually go and smell that scent, if they are hungry they are actually going to want to satisfy it instantly.

"I think it will rebound big time. In a lab setting where they can control things, this might have an effect passifying an appetite by giving the satisfaction without the food, but in real life? It portrays a very simplistic understanding of what regulates appetite and what satisfies people through the eating process.

"It's so much more than a smell or a taste, it's everything about what it feels like, everything about how that food interacts in the gut - the pressure it exerts on the gut lining, it's so much more complex than just the smell.

"If you understand the neurology, what's happening in the brain and how those pathways function, all you need is a person to be walking through a shopping mall who is vaguely hungry and smells something.

"If they are used to satisfying that craving instantly, guess how they'll satisfy it at that moment without a whaf? It's going to be a waffle in all probability!"

Seeing the lighter side, Dubai resident and mum-of-two Laura Whitmore can imagine Le Whaf becoming quite useful if used infrequently.

She says: "If they could give me a whaf of milk chocolate Hobnobs that I could inhale while drinking my cup of tea, making me feel as if I had eaten a biscuit (or a whole pack of them), but without any of the calories, then I am all for it.

"After all, it's the chocolate, oat taste sensation I am after rather than anything else," she says.

"However, when I'm feeling a bit anaemic and woozy, and fancy a good old fashioned slab of meat, a whaf will never take the place of sinking my teeth in to a juicy, fat steak."

This article was originally published by www.7days.ae.

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