We Compared the 5 Fixes Every Household Tries for Smelly Feet. Only One Works Where the Smell Is Made.

First, why the smell keeps coming back: the 10-hour sweat trap

A pair of feet carries around 250,000 sweat glands and makes roughly half a pint of sweat a day. Most of it ends up somewhere it can't escape: the narrow, warm gaps between the toes, sealed inside a shoe for ten hours.

Sweat on its own barely smells. But the bacteria that live on everyone's skin feed on it, and as they do they turn part of it into isovaleric acid, the compound researchers have traced that sharp, cheesy smell back to. The longer the sweat sits in the gaps, the more smell they make.

We call it the 10-hour sweat trap. Every working day he loads the trap in the morning, and every evening it opens in the hallway.

Think of a damp gym towel zipped in a bag all day

Leave a damp towel zipped in a gym bag from morning till evening and you know what you'll find when you open it. Spraying the outside of the bag doesn't help. Putting a new bag around it doesn't help either. The only thing that works is taking the damp out.

That's the whole story of foot smell. The shoe is the bag, the gaps between the toes are the towel, and almost every product sold for it works on the bag.

Most foot smell products work on the bag. Almost none take the damp out.

How we compared them

We didn't score them on how nice they smell or how pretty the tin is. Each fix had to answer three plain questions, the same three you'd ask if you were standing in the chemist's aisle.

1. 1Does it reach the gaps between the toes? That's where the smell is made.
2. 2Does it remove the sweat, or cover it? Perfume on top of the trap just makes a different smell.
3. 3What does it cost to keep doing? A fix you buy every month isn't a fix.

5. New socks

It's the first thing almost everyone tries, and it's the easiest to understand. Fresh socks feel like a fresh start. The trouble is that the sock was never the source. Clean socks go on over the same gaps that were damp yesterday, and by the afternoon they've soaked up the same sweat.

Our verdict: good hygiene, not a solution. Keep the fresh pair every morning, but don't expect it to change the hallway.

• No: Doesn't reach the gaps between the toes
• No: Doesn't remove anything from the foot
• Cheap, and worth doing alongside a real fix

4. Foot powder

Powder soaks up some of the moisture, which sounds like the right idea. In practice most of it ends up in the sock, the shoe and the carpet, and almost none of it gets worked into the gaps where the sweat collects. It dries the surface for an hour or two, then the trap fills up again.

Our verdict: a short-term patch on a long day.

• No: Barely reaches between the toes
• No: Absorbs a little, removes nothing
• No: Another tub every few weeks, and the mess

3. Shoe and foot sprays

A can of shoe spray costs around £4.39 at Boots and smells lovely for about as long as it takes to put the shoes on. Some sprays freshen the shoe, some go on the foot, and almost all of them work the same way: a pleasant smell layered over the one you're trying to get rid of.

Our verdict: handy in a gym bag, but it's perfume on the bag, not the towel.

• No: Covers the smell instead of removing it
• No: Mostly treats the shoe, not the gaps
• No: A new can every few weeks

2. Odour-control insoles

Insoles are the cleverest of the shoe fixes. The good ones contain activated charcoal that soaks up odour inside the shoe, and a pair costs around £3.99, guaranteed for about four months. If the shoe itself has started to smell, they genuinely help.

But look at where they sit: under the sole, not between the toes. The sweat is still being trapped and broken down in the gaps all day; the insole just catches some of what comes off it.

• Helps a shoe that already smells
• No: Sits under the foot, not between the toes
• No: Replace every few months, in every pair of shoes

1. A foot bar that washes the gaps (our pick, and yes, we make it)

This is the only one of the five that works on the foot itself. It's a soap bar made for one job: a thick lather you work between each toe, over the sole and round the heel for 60 seconds in the shower he already takes. It washes the trapped sweat out of the gaps, so the bacteria have nothing left to turn into smell.

Persimmon, the ingredient deodorising soaps are built around, sits with green tea and zinc on a gentle coconut, olive and shea base. It's low fragrance on purpose: it takes the damp out of the towel instead of spraying the bag.

• Reaches every gap between the toes
• Washes the sweat off instead of covering it
• One bar lasts about 30 days
• No: It only works if it's used, so it sits where the shower gel used to

And it kills 99.9% of the bacteria that make the smell.

The smell is made by bacteria breaking down trapped sweat, and this antibacterial foot soap kills 99.9% of them, right in the gaps between the toes where none of the other four fixes ever reach.

Made with Japanese persimmon, green tea and zinc, and dermatologically tested, so it's gentle enough for every day. Use it morning and evening and never smell again.

The maths nobody does

Say you buy one can of spray a month and a new pair of insoles every four months. That's £52.68 a year on spray and £11.97 on insoles: £64.65 a year spent on the shoe, before a single pack of socks.

Next year you'll spend it again, and the year after. Because none of it changes the foot, the bill never ends. The 2 + 1 costs less than one year of that: three bars, about three months of washing, a drying pouch and a 60-day guarantee.

What the first two weeks look like

There's no new routine to learn. Here's what the switch looks like, day by day.

1. 1Night 1: the orange bar goes where the shower gel was. 60 seconds between the toes, rinse, dry the gaps properly.
2. 2Day 3: it's just the soap now. The bar goes back in its pouch to dry between washes.
3. 3Day 7: the first evening you notice you haven't noticed. Shoes off, and nobody reaches for a window.
4. 4Day 14: the spray by the door hasn't been touched in a week.
5. 5Day 60: still sending the shoes out on the step? Email us and get every penny back.

And it isn't only his feet

Teenagers in trainers all day. Kids in school shoes. You in boots or work shoes. Everyone in closed shoes loads the same sweat trap, and even feet that don't smell yet are better for being washed and dried properly between the toes.

That's why there's a 3 + 2: five bars, so everyone in the house has their own and nobody shares.

You can keep treating the shoe. Or you can fix where it starts.

Every fix you've bought so far has worked on the bag. This is the first one that takes the damp out of the towel. Leave it by the shower tonight and give it 60 days. If the shoes are still going out on the step, you get every penny back, and all you've risked is a bar of soap.

P.S. If you've read this far, you've probably spent more on sprays, powder and insoles this year than the 2 + 1 costs. Every one of them was built for the shoe. This one is built for the foot, and if it doesn't work for your family in 60 days, it's free.