When diet pill Alli swooped onto pharmacy shelves Ireland late last month, it was hailed as the next big thing in slimming.

Costing from €38.08 for 42 tablets, it has broken ground as the first clinically proven, over-the-counter weight loss aid. Alli took the US by storm in 2007 when it received FDA approval, and it is basically a lower-strength version of Xenical, a GlaxoSmithKline prescription-only dieting medication.

Available to those with a BMI of 28 or over, Alli promises to help shift 50pc more pounds than mere abstinence alone. On the surface of it, taking the pills sounds like a no-brainer: where you'd normally lose 10 pounds through hard graft and personal self-sacrifice, you'd lose 15 with Alli's pill-tastic help.

The truth is always a bit stranger than fiction though, isn't it? Yup, there's a bit of fine-print going on here: while the capsules can inhibit the absorption of up to a quarter of the fat you eat, you can't just down them with a Big Mac and fries to go and expect to wake up svelte and cellulite-free.

No indeed, they have to be used in conjunction with a calorie- and fat-controlled diet, and if you exceed the recommended upper limit of 15g of fat with any meal, you're likely to experience some leakage. And I'm not talking about tears, people.

Leaks

Brightly referred to as a 'diet-related treatment effects', some users on Alli's official web forums at community.myalli.com are reporting incidents where undigested fat has quite literally come right out the other end -- often without them realising until it was too late. Others, however, are adamant that if you stick to the supplied diet-related guidelines, you'll be fine.

In fairness to Alli, no attempt is made to hide the fact that leakage can happen, and it's important to remember that it shouldn't occur unless you cheat and scoff a great big pile of cream buns.

But it's not an ideal solution -- after all, there's no quick and easy substitute for old-fashioned eat-less move-more. The fear of social embarrassment might be enough to keep users honest, though -- the consequences of cheating just aren't worth it.

While Alli might be a spearheading a new dawn in dieting pills with surprises, there's a bigger supplement-driven beauty trend on the rise, and no surprise here, it comes from the land of the rising sun. In Japan, where antioxidant-packed green tea even makes it into KitKats, edible cosmetics are all the rage. Known as nutraceuticals or nutricosmetics, the Japanese market is booming with edible beauty buys like co-enzyme Q10-enriched soup, collagen marshmallows and vitamin-packed drinks.

Like most things, the trend has trickled westwards. Our Swiss and French neighbours are fully on-board with nutricosmetics and beauty retail giant Sephora is planning health and beauty pill bars in its French stores in the near future, too.

But, eh, are they any cop, or is this just another way to part a fool from his (or her) cash? In an ideal world, we should be getting all the nutrients necessary for healthy skin, hair and nails from the foods we eat and drink. Our lives should have a minimum of stress; we should all bag those eight hours of shut-eye, and environmental aggressors such as pollution would be non-existent. Given that this is pretty much a fairy tale these days, and getting your five a day can lead to jaw ache from all that fiborous chewing, I'd argue that a little help would go a long way.

It makes sense to treat your body well from the inside, anyway. What your mammy told you is true: you are what you eat, and we've been coming round to this more holistic idea of beauty for a while now, with superfood buzzwords such as pomegranates, goji berries and green tea tripping off our tongues, not to mention cluttering up our shopping baskets. So why not up the ante a little, with a few pills to help improve the condition of hair and nails, fight the signs of ageing or give a powerful anti-oxidant boost? I'm all for it -- and it seems the old maxim is true: beauty really does come from within.

- Kirstie McDermott