"It's an old saying that true beauty comes from inside .... Why not from a candy?" Ventsislav Peychev, owner of Bulgaria's small Alpi candy factory owner, told AFP.
He claims his Deo Perfume Candy can neutralise body odour and replace it with a lingering sweet scent for up to six hours, depending on a person's size and how many sweets they have gobbled up.
The sweets -- which look like typical bonbons and are available in hard, chewy and even sugar-free versions -- are based on research by Japanese scientists who found that a major component of rose oil, geraniol, was not broken down by the body but excreted through the skin.
Bulgaria, the European Union's poorest country, is a major producer of rose oil.
"Geraniol is an antipode of garlic.... It also comes out through the pores but instead of leaving a bad smell, it perfumes the body," said Peychev.
Awarded a bronze medal at the Geneva Exhibition of Inventions in 2011, and a technical innovation award at the SIAL food exhibition in Paris in October, the deodorant candy, selling for $US5.98 ($A6.50) a pack on amazon.com, is already on sale in the United States, Asia and several European countries.
Although the concept is not new, Peychev's product is the only one on the market now after a Japanese manufacturer stopped making its Otoko Kaoru chewing gum based on the same idea.
Each piece of Peychev's candy contains three milligrams of geraniol-rich rose or lavender essential oil, which apparently men prefer.
"This quantity is enough for the smell to last for six hours depending on the body mass of the consumer, an average of 65 kilos. Heavier people should eat more candies -- two, three, four," said Dimitar Hadzhikinov, a professor at the Plovdiv University of Food Technology who helped Alpi develop the candy.
Peychev, a 55-year-old former engineer, has previously developed an energy candy with caffeine and guarana, a cooling sweet with vitamins and calcium, and a slimming one with a soluble dietary fibre called inulin.
