by Mia Dias Laia Spragg
Lately it seems as if makeup and skincare products are infused, flavoured, and made to smell like any food you can think of. Cosmetics brand Tatcha has come out with ‘The Matcha Cleanse’, a gel cleanser made with Japanese kyo-matcha for its ‘pore-purifying’ abilities. Cult Beauty have an entire category of skincare on their website dedicated solely to ‘Matcha Beauty’ and brands Laneige, The Body Shop, and Youth To The People have all hopped on the bandwagon of incorporating green tea into their skincare products. Matcha is now not only for drinking or for flavouring food, but to be put on our faces for supposed anti-aging and brightening qualities.
Other ‘superfoods’ like spinach and kale feature in many skincare products with these vegetal, earthy foods commonly associated with boosting hydration and levels of vitamin C, as well as having an inoffensive scent that calms and relaxes. ‘Green’ foods being used in skincare doesn’t seem too odd – they seem to go hand in hand. But food scents and flavourings, often sickly sweet, in makeup is a whole other world of cosmetics. And it is not a new phenomenon.
In the 1970s the first ever flavoured lip balm was invented by Bonne Bell named Lip Smackers – a name many are familiar with from childhood. I remember using Lip Smackers flavoured as carbonated drinks Coca Cola, Fanta, and Sprite without a second thought as a child. It’s a clever marketing strategy that targets a key demographic of children and teens because of its sugary and addictive scent and flavour. Since the 70s, countless brands have come out with food-scented lip balms, one of the most popular being Glossier. Launched in 2014 and available in the UK since 2017, Glossier’s ‘Balm Dotcom’ lip balms quickly became one of the most sought after for their appetising sounding scents. With simplistically chic packaging and mouth-watering flavours of Black Cherry, Birthday Cake, Banana Pudding and more, it seems hard to resist. Put up against its ‘original’ counterpart, it’s a no-brainer which one you would choose.
Not only in the world of lip products but in eye makeup too, food-scents have featured in various products. In 2015, makeup brand Too Faced came out with their eyeshadow palette ‘Better Than Chocolate’ consisting of eighteen shades with names ‘Sugar Rush’, ‘Buttercream’, and ‘I’m the dessert’ to name a few. As well as having candy-related names, and the palette resembling the look of a chocolate bar, the eyeshadows themselves are infused with cocoa powder. According to their website, the palette smells like ‘a molten chocolate cake’ and paired with its name ‘Better Than Chocolate’, simply wearing the food is made to seem more appealing than consuming the food itself. It is even branded as ‘indulgent’ and ‘decadent’, words often used when describing chocolate and not an inedible cosmetic powder. Marketing plays a very important role in product sales and when it comes to makeup, sweet foods seem to do the trick in both language and sensory experience.
Though it just seems like harmless marketing on the surface, there is a darker side to it. With consumables becoming increasingly present in the world of cosmetics and beauty, there is a risk of these lines becoming blurred. Instead of consuming, for example, a birthday cake or a bar of chocolate, these makeup products mimic the experience of consuming said food. Realistic scents and sometimes even flavours play into our senses and therefore leave us wanting to apply even more, more often. This thus increases sales and over-consumption, all the while capitalising on our senses.
US designer and writer Elizabeth Goodspeed provides a great analysis of this food-infused makeup phenomenon, one that is only on the rise. Goodspeed, in her essay on food in advertising and fashion, claims that ‘we’re desiring food instead of eating it’ which I feel perfectly sums it all up. With Gen Z’s intense obsession with thinness, gym and diet culture influenced by weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and body shaming being rife on social media, it can’t be a coincidence that food is becoming increasingly intertwined with cosmetics. Food absorbed through the skin is calorie-less but with the simulation of the smell and sometimes, taste. When looking into the marketing of products like those of Too Faced, why name your product ‘Better Than Chocolate’? What is this name trying to convey to the customer?
As well as having negative connotations with weight-loss and guilt-free consumption through makeup, the marketing itself profits off of a very fundamental need. Psychologist Maslow’s hierarchy of needs depicts food at the very foundation, coming under our physiological needs. For makeup marketing to target such a universal necessity, the demographic is thus widened and appeals to children and adults alike, feeding on our subconscious desires of particularly sweet foods. The psychology behind using food in makeup marketing is one that has been utilised for decades–because it works.
Goodspeed states in her aforementioned essay: “as societal values move away from convenience and towards health and sustainability, the symbols of luxury and status in our diets shift accordingly”. This begs the question: if food insecurity wasn’t such a prevalent issue, and everyone has equal access to nutritious food, would food in cosmetics be such a commercial success? Historically, certain foods have shifted from being associated as ‘poor man’s’ food, to becoming reserved for the rich. Oysters and caviar, for example, were easily accessible to the lower classes who lived by the sea and such foods therefore gained a reputation as being part of the ‘poor man’s’ diet. However, as a result of water pollution, the supply of oysters diminished and the price rose, thus transforming into a luxury. They became unaffordable to those who initially relied on such foods for survival and nutrition. Food has long been more than just a necessity for survival; it has been weaponised to widen class divide and used to act as a cultural signifier for the wealthy.
In 2025 we can see this in full swing. Food has well moved past being merely a convenience as marketing suggests – food has become a commodity. Food prices are continually increasing as a result of inflation and I can’t help but feel that using food in makeup, and in its marketing, is slightly dystopian in the current global political climate. Food, or rather the imitation of food, is being re-packaged and sold as the new, viral trend. This creates an illusion of there being an accessibility to food, an illusion that suggests because food is so heavily-saturated in makeup products, it isn’t becoming a luxury.
The commodification and aestheticisation of food is reflecting somewhat of an inequality within society; while some can’t afford to do a basic food shop, others are buying food-infused cosmetics for often way over half the price of the food itself. This goes way deeper than what seems to be a harmless marketing tactic. The physical and sensorial mimicking of food in makeup products and the way they are marketed is an indicator that food has become wholly capitalised on.
Surround Sound 