Amanda Pendolino
May 23, 2013

More People Are Eating Food-Based Body Lotion


Our showers have turned into cafes: with coconut shampoo, grapefruit body scrub, mushroom anti-aging cream, pomegranate-pigmented lipstick and cucumber eye-makeup remover, it’s understandable that you might get a little hungry while you’re beautifying yourself.

And according to The New York Times, more and more people are ACTUALLY EATING these food-based beauty products.

“Just as you eat food to nourish your body on the inside, we use the same food to nourish the skin on the outside,” says Susie Wang, founder of 100% Pure, a company that sells Cocoa Kona Coffee Body Scrub made of organic Kona coffee beans and chocolate extract.

Wang says her co-workers dip pretzels in the scrub and eat it; one employee even sprinkles the exfoliator on ice cream.

WTF?

“Our sugar and salt scrubs are literally edible,” she said. “We don’t recommend it, but they are.”

These people realize you can actually buy coffee and chocolate products that are meant to be eaten, right?

One psychologist suggests people are using these products as a substitute for sweets or other food vices.

“Substituting scents for actual food can be a good alternative to bingeing on those foods that we are most tempted by,” says Amanda Baten, a psychologist and certified nutritionist who founded the Center for Integrative Practices, a holistic wellness clinic in Manhattan. “Chocolate-flavored scents can induce some of the same responses in the brain which can result in feeling pleasure, in a similar way that eating can.”

If a beauty product is 100% natural and made of food, perhaps it’s not so crazy to snack on it … wait. Yes, it’s crazy. It is definitely crazy.

(Maybe I’m insane too, since one of the first things that popped into my head was, “but there are no nutrition facts! How do you know how many calories you’re eating?”)

I know it’s tough to stick to a healthy diet, ladies, but eating your shower gel just doesn’t seem like the best solution.

Then again, perhaps it’s healthier than squirting lotion at people when you get road rage.