Mihalopoulos didn’t have data he could share regarding the number of people who were taking Devrom to defang garden-variety flatus odor, rather than because of a medical situation. I’m guessing there aren’t very many of them, and I think I know why. I think I know what’s keeping internal deodorant from charging ahead as a mainstream product. I’m going to let Beano inventor Alan Kligerman tell you what it is. “When I talk to people,” he told me, “when I really get them down to the nitty-gritty, I don’t know anybody, really, in their heart of hearts, who has any objection to the smell of their own.” And, unlike bad breath or stinky feet, “smelly flatulence” is everyone’s problem.* And thus really, no one’s.
As with the first bottle of Scope, the first bottle of Devrom, Mihalopoulos confirmed, is often left anonymously by a coworker or purchased by a spouse. “They themselves don’t object to it,” he said, “it” referring to the smell, not the purchase. Levitt said he is constantly approached at cocktail parties by women complaining about their husbands’ gas. He has never once heard a husband complain about a wife, despite this scientifically proven (by Levitt) fact: “the flatus of women has a significantly greater concentration of hydrogen sulfide and was deemed to have a significantly worse odour by both judges.” (However, this is likely balanced out by the male’s “greater volume of gas per passage.”) The Devrom company is to be commended for not aggressively pushing internal deodorant on the public at large. Good for you, Jason Mihalopoulos, for not following in the springtime-fresh footsteps of douche marketers and, most recently, the Fleet enema company.? “Keep your backcountry clean,” says the Fleet Naturals ad copy, over an image of pristine mountain wilderness. “Created specifically for rectal cleansing . . . Mild enough for daily use.” Really? On top of gargling, on top of powdering our feet and perfuming our armpits, now we should worry that our assholes smell?
I later stumbled upon a “Tell Your Patients . . .” press release that Fleet had sent out to physicians. (One of them had posted it on his blog.) It turns out that Fleet Naturals is a product “for before or after anal intimacy.” Well okay then.
The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take the advice of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.) Barring that, a person might try to steer clear of certain foods,* the ones that provide bacteria with the raw materials for making sulfur compounds. The main offender is red meat.? Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower) can also kick up a stink. As can garlic, dried and sulfured fruit (for example, apricots), certain aromatic spices, and, for reasons unclear, beer. In short, so many delightful things that a sane person would, I like to think, rather have the gas.
? ? ?
I TRAVELED TO MINNESOTA with a fantasy that Michael Levitt might be able to whip up a batch of artificial flatus. I’m curious to see how close Science can get to Nature. Levitt smiles one of those placeholder smiles that buy you a moment to phrase your no. He elects to fob me off on his research partner Julie Furne, who has the ingredients downstairs in the lab. I recognize Furne’s name from the pantaloon studies. It turns out she had been one of the odor judges.
Things haven’t changed all that much for Julie Furne. We find her in the lab, syringing gas out of a plastic vial in which a raisin-sized rat turd has been incubating at ninety-nine degrees. (She and Levitt are investigating the relationship between intestinal hydrogen sulfide and colitis. More on this shortly.) Furne recently arrived at her fifth decade, her brown hair beginning to silver at the hairline but a girlish humor still intact. Instead of a lab coat, she wears a muted orange heather cardigan, vintage from the fifties, I’m guessing. There was probably a time when you could have pressed this sweater to your face and smelled traces of hair spray or homemade pot roast. Probably you wouldn’t have that experience now.
“This is Mary,” says Levitt. “She’d like to sniff some gases. But don’t kill her.”