Skinny Pods: Helping Chocolate Lovers Stick to Their Diets
If you have a sweet tooth, sticking to your diet just got a lot easier! That's if you believe the Skinny Pods company, which makes two bold claims:
1. "Skinny Pods will let you snack guilt-free on your favorite desserts without breaking your diet." - from the Skinny Pods website.
2. "Used as directed, Skinny Pods will greatly reduce your sugar cravings."
- from the Skinny Pods website.
Skinny Pods: Miracle or Scam?
Neither. The product actually does what it says, but there is a catch. Read on, to see if it's one you can live with.
How can you diet and still eat your favorite desserts? Turn them into lollipops!
No, Skinny Pods doesn’t really turn cookies into lollipops, but it does require you to eat them in a similar way. And if you can live with that you don’t have to give up your cookies. Or chocolate. Or even cupcakes.
How does it work? Well, take that chocolate chip cookie and break it in half, or cut a small piece of cake or part of a chocolate bar, and place it in the Skinny “pod.”
And just exactly what is a pod?
The company says the pods are “empty controlled-release food chambers, ultrasonically fabricated from our exclusive, nearly weightless micro-pore matrix.”
So what does that mean in English?
Okay, here’s my best translation: The pod is a nearly weightless extremely fine mesh food holder. The material looks like a lighter version of those new-fangled high-end pyramid teabags.
Instructions on using it?
You seal the cookie in the pod, and snap it into place atop the Skinny Pods holder, which looks like a purple ice cream cone. The process takes about 20 seconds or so.
Here comes the lollipop part…
The cookie-pod then goes in your mouth, and you eat it like it’s a lollipop – sucking, swirling with your tongue. The company says it’s like eating an ice cream cone, but it feels more like a cookie lollipop to me.
What Skinny Pods really does is slow-release what you put in your mouth, allowing you to enjoy the taste and smell of your favorite dessert, while only ingesting a few calories. For instance, it took me over ten minutes to down two chocolate kisses in this way (22 calories each). I don’t know about you, but eating normally I down a chocolate kiss in about 15 seconds (I timed it!), so there is a big difference.
And here’s the really weird part…
Somehow, because the chocolate kiss is sitting in your mouth for so much longer than it normally would, it causes “biochemical signals to be passed from gustatory and olfactory nerves to the hypothalamus… ending any further desire for that taste or anything similar.” - from the Skinny Pods website. Translation? Your tastebuds get tired of the taste of chocolate (or any other sweet flavor) because you’ve overflooded them with that taste. It’s a phenomenon known as “Taste Specific Satiety.”
The company claims that Skinny Pods users can stick with their diet plans longer because they feel less deprived while using the product. That’s because even a Snickers bar isn’t taboo, if eaten with the product.
Does it work?
Yes, it definitely does curb sugar cravings. Using this product for 15 to 20 minutes each day for three or four weeks actually gets you to the point where you just don’t desire sugary treats much at all, though in the first week hardcore chocoholics will probably need to use it two or three times per day.
What the company doesn’t mention is…
They fail to mention that it isn’t as much fun to eat a Snickers bar with the product as it would be to shovel it into your mouth with five fingers and chomp away. When confronted with that opinion, a Skinny Pods spokesman admitted as much replying, “Maybe it isn’t as much fun as eating the cookie out of your hand but it’s a lot more fun than not being able to eat the cookie at all.”
True enough. But then someone should have said that on their website, so people would know what to expect.
Bottom line? Buy it if…
If you want to use Skinny Pods to curb your sugar cravings, buy it. It does that effectively, both in the short and long run. I noticed the effect after a couple of days, and after three or four weeks, it got so that I rarely needed to use the product because I just wasn’t getting any sugar cravings.
Also, it does help you stay on most diets because if you like cookies, cake or chocolate, you will definitely feel less deprived with Skinny Pods waiting dutifully in the sin city portion of your cupboard next to that bag of chocolate kisses.
BUT don’t buy if…
If you think that you’ll have a guilt-free blast of fun downing Snickers all day with your Skinny Pods, think again. Eating with Skinny Pods is nowhere near as much fun as eating your favorite desserts with your fork or your fingers. In fact, I think this is one of the reasons that using Skinny Pods gradually conditions you to want to eat less of these foods.
Which celebrity would you love to see gain 50 pounds?