Deriving Food-Related Pleasure Isn't Always Defined By What You Put Into Your Mouth

The most honey I have had in the last six months hasn’t gone into my tea and hasn’t been in a delectable pastry or some other treat; it has been in my lotion and hair products. The Black Seed and Honey lotion is an organic mix of shea butter, black seed oil, Arabian honey, apricot oil, Vitamin E among other natural ingredients; and the hair product contains pure wildflower honey as one of the main ingredient. The lotion, which smells like heaven, is perhaps one of the most indulgent experiences I’ve had with honey! Honey does not only have many beneficial skin health qualities, but its invigorating smell makes it a priced ingredient to have in beauty products.

But when we think about food, we usually think of what we put into our mouths, not what we put on our skin or hair. But isn’t aroma the most critical aspect of tasting and enjoying food in the first place? When we have the flu and our nasal passage is blocked, we cannot enjoy foods the same way. Our sense of smell and sense of taste are intimately connected. So, besides the appearance of the food itself, one can argue that aroma has the most impact on how tasty and enjoyable a food is to us.

Therefore, to a large extent, aroma of food= pleasure derived from food. With that said, can a fragrant body lotion or body Spray called ‘Coconut Lime’ ,‘Cucumber Lemon’, ‘Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin’, ‘Fresh Pineapple', or ‘Irresistible Apple’ stimulate a similar pleasure as would the real thing? Perhaps you might find smelling like these food fragrances, which by the way are all from the Bath and Body Works Beauty collection, to be a bit much. Perhaps with a fragrance like ‘Mango Mandarin’ on your skin, you might imagine being a walking fruit basket.

But I look at it differently. In an earlier post entitled ‘11 Qualities Towards Building A Non-Dieter Mindset’ I spoke of one such quality to be adapting one or more alternative forms of pleasure outside of food in order to curb emotional and unhealthy eating. I think the whole food related fragrances and components in non-food products gives one such viable 'alternative form of pleasure'. By reflex, we respond to the tantalizing smell of a good meal and scented lotion the same way-with delight.

However a food mimicking fragrance is relatively innocent. It gives us the luxury of giving all our attention to the pleasure it brings with no room to either justify or explain that pleasure afterwards and bring negative emotions into the picture. Nothing can replace actual, real food, but any excuse to find food related joy is a good one. When you think of it that way, a mist of ‘Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin’ body spray or 'Irresistible Apple' lotion doesn’t seem a bad idea at all.