Good Health: Putting 'Baby Foot' to the test

DETROIT – Sandal season is in full swing, but are your feet silky smooth or a major mess?

A product called Baby Foot promises to soften your soles and take your feet back to their baby smooth beginnings

We were intrigued, especially when the product got a celebrity "shout out" from Kathie Lee Gifford on the Today Show.

"My friend came visiting last week and she brought me an unbelievable product," said Gifford in a segment about her favorite finds. "It's called Baby Foot."

We ordered Baby Foot online for $25 and asked Idamarie Tedesco of Birmingham to put it to the test.

Tedesco's feet looked pretty good to us, but she saw room for improvement.

"Right now they're probably about a six," Tedesco said. "So I'm working to get them to a ten. We'll see how it goes."

She had never used Baby Foot before, but she had heard of it.

"One of my sisters swears by it. She loves it," Tedesco said.

She followed the directions, putting the Baby Foot gel in plastic booties and leaving them on for an hour. The product contains 17 natural extracts, mainly fruit acids that target dead skin cells.

Tedesco says the gel didn't hurt, and at first, nothing happened.

"The next two or three days after using Baby Foot, I noticed my feet felt a little dry, they felt almost a little rubbery," Tedesco said.

On day three, the peeling process began. By day seven, large patches were peeling, and by day nine, the peeling was intense. After two weeks, the peeling was complete, and Tedesco's feet were silky smooth. You can see the day-to-day pictures below.

Day 5:

Day 7:

Day 9:

Day 14:

"It definitely worked," Tedesco said. "It really peeled off a tremendous amount of skin, a lot more skin that I anticipated was going to come off."

We showed the results to Wyandotte dermatologist Steven Grekin.

"I think the results looked great," Grekin said.

We wondered if it's safe to remove so much skin at once.

"The skin of the palms and the soles is the thickest skin on the body," Grekin said. "So even if you think your feet look pretty good, there's a lot of dead skin that we can slough off. It is totally safe to remove this excess skin. We have more than what we need."

Grekin says a process like this is actually less risky than scraping off dry skin.

"This gentle exfoliation that's performed by these topical fruit acids is far safer. In other words, you have less chance of a complication," Grekin said.

His only concern would be for people who have certain medical conditions.

"I would caution diabetic patients to be very careful with products like this," Grekin said. "They don't feel as much as the normal population does, so therefore they may be over-burning or over-exfoliating their skin and not be aware."

That echoes the warning by the maker of Baby Foot, who says the product is not recommended for women who are pregnant or nursing, or anyone with open sores or other foot injuries.

Tedesco said she liked the end result.

"My feet look completely different. They're a lot smoother, I definitely feel more confident wearing open toe shoes."

But she warned summer is probably not the best time to use Baby Foot.

"Your feet are constantly peeling," she said. "Even around my home, I had my feet in socks, I had them covered up. I would definitely use Baby Foot again, I would probably just wait to use it until the winter or the end of spring when my feet are already going to be covered up."

To visit the Baby Foot website, click here.