Breathe easy, this chocolate won’t pile on the pounds

The perfect snack for chocolate-lovers watching their weight has been released in shops — if they can get their hands on it.

Le Whif is a calorie-free chocolate that, instead of eating, is inhaled. But it has already sold out after its launch this week and the team behind it is warning it will take months to meet demand.

Costing £9 for six, Le Whif "inhalers" are selling for more than double their value on eBay. Each unit has four inhales and several flavours are available. Customers place the gadget in their mouth and press. A fine chocolate powder is sprayed, giving the illusion of eating chocolate.

Harvard professor David Edwards created Le Whif with experimental chef Thierry Marx, who runs a double Michelin- starred restaurant in the Bordeaux region. He claims it is the next step of the fashion to eat little and often.

"Over the centuries we've been eating smaller and smaller quantities at shorter and shorter intervals," he said. "It seemed to us that eating was tending towards breathing, so, with a mix of culinary art and aerosol science, we've helped move eating habits to their logical conclusion."

Professor Charles Spence of Oxford University, who is one of Heston Blumenthal's scientific advisers, said the chocolate inhaler may well be able to fool the brain.

"You are effectively giving the brain two of its senses, taste and smell. For something like chocolate, which has strong reactions in people, that may well be enough to fool the brain into thinking you are eating. As a weight loss aid, it might actually work, in the short term at least," he said. "However, the key is how long it takes the brain to realise what is going on, and that seems to differ from person to person."

Professor Spence also suggested that scientists could create a wide inhalable range of popular "foods" in the future. "Some will work better than others," he said. "Chocolate does work, because we associate it with taste and smell. An inhalable salad, however, might be less successful as it is all about the crunch of food."