By staff writer Robin L. Flanigan

Claire Tanoue used to smell bad. She’ll tell you that herself. But with every confession comes an endorsement for a little pill she and two others invented to reduce breath, underarm, feminine and foot odors.

“My partners don’t have a problem with it, but I admit that I have some, and BodyMint works wonderfully for me,” she says.

Created in hot and humid Honolulu for a culture that bans wearing shoes inside people’s home, BodyMint from Hawaiian Organics is a “natural total-body deodorant” to be taken twice a day for results in two to four days. Its main ingredient is 100 milligrams of chlorophyllin—a derivative of chlorophyll, the green pigment in plants. Other ingredients are dical phosphate, cellulose and stearic acid.

While selling for now in the United States only at Tony Henri Bendel in New York City and Fred Segal Essentials in California, BodyMint attracted the attention of Eckerd Drug Co. in February after the pill was featured on a CNN report. It will debut in select East Coast Eckerd stores later this spring. No word yet on whether the test market includes Rochester.

“Most herbal remedies like this are safe to try, but my guess is that there’s been no double-blind clinical study on this,” says

Scott Stratton Smith, a family physician at Chili Center Family Medicine in Chili. “And that’s the standard we use to determine if things are safe and effective.”

Tanoue says her company’s studies were informal, but adds that a clinical trial started recently and that she has “published medical studies regarding the active ingredient that backs up our claims.”

An Internet search using keywords “chlorophyllin” and “odor” turned up the Wisconsin-based International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders (www.iffgd.org/index.html), a nonprofit group that recognize chlorophyllin as effective in controlling odor for people with bowel or bladder-control problems.

Hawaii Organics suggests taking one tablet with liquid in the morning and again in the evening, although a third tablet can be taken mid- afternoon “for difficult situations.”

“If people feel that it’s benefiting them, I think that’s fine,” says Stratton-Smith. “But it basically sounds no different than a lot of the general plant products that are out there. I would continue with general soap and water and basic deodorants.