Sickly sweet: Are our beauty and wellness habits substitutional pseudo-snacks?
If we can’t eat it (thanks to Ozempic, clean-eating culture, and body-checking), then we are marketed it through expensive and unachievable wellness habits. So why can’t we consume our sugar, but we have to wear it?
Perusing the shelves of any shop that sells beauty and wellness products, you would be fooled into thinking you were in the sweet aisle of Tesco. Glow Recipe has watermelon-based skincare, Hailey Bieber’s makeup brand Rhode has collaborated with Krispy Kreme, Too Faced with Pop-Tarts and their Chocolate Bar palette, E.L.F. and Chipotle teamed up, and Beauty Bakerie have created their entire brand on the premise. It seems to be mainly desserts that brands are utilising, following the food-based trend phenomenon of Strawberry Girl, Latte Makeup, Tomato Girl, and Guava Girl Summer – all thanks to TikTok.
But why are we wearing our sugar? Enter the new era of reinvented diet culture permeating our pixelated existences, and it is much more than skin deep. Innova Market Insights named ‘Beauty Food’ as one of the defining trends of 2025. The connection to plant-based, vegan, clean-label and gut health trends in our beauty products means we are shifting to seeing these once superficial products as the ultimate consumable items. Health-washing has been taking over the luxury sector, but as it trickles down to the masses, it has formed into a digestible little package of ‘we wear what we can’t eat’.
User @AmyNoseScent put it pithily: her TikTok video explains how gourmand perfumes are a new wave of diet cultures’ incessant need for appetite control. But why are these in our beauty products I hear you ask? Well, she explains it as a shift in the culture of beauty. She notices that perfumes get sweeter the thinner the body standard gets. Clean-eating, GLP-1 medications, and body-checking can be cited as the roots of this, resulting in hyper-literal products as a result.
The demand for sweeter and more indulgent products rises everytime “society’s appetite crumbles”, says Amy in her video. We had it in the early 00s with Lip Smackers, ultra-sweet dessert perfumes, and products good enough to eat – and it is being relived in real time this 2025. Edible-smelling products are sold as guilt-free pleasure under an illusion of indulgence without breaking any ‘rules’.
Dr. Alan Hirsch tested whether scent can be used as an appetite suppressant. With over 3000 food smells, participants lost up to 13kg in 6 months. This is because scent alone can trigger satiety. Our nose is the first step of digestion, sending signals to your brain that then kickstart salivation, insulin release and hunger expectations. If you keep smelling and never eat, then your body is tricked into feeling full. These sweet treat scents and products activate the same reward circuits at a neurological level as sugar.
So are our beauty products now a pseudo-snack? With the rise of GLP-1 medications, your appetite vanishes and sweet food is unappealing, but your cravings don’t disappear – they simply reroute themselves. When your body doesn’t get its dopamine rush from food, then it finds another way to chase it altogether. Our chocolate dessert-scented products are the substitute. You are still reaching for the sugar, but in a way that your body can now actually consume.
And it will continue to evolve, perhaps with the intersection of indulgent food and beauty becoming more nuanced. There is an emotional layering to this new trend, one which plays with our subconscious emotions. As Dubai chocolate perfumes, pistachio cream moisturisers, and mochi skincare rise, so does the insatiable demand for a shift in our standards altogether. There is nothing wrong with hopping on the dessert-inspired trend, but just know, you can eat your sugar and wear it at the same time, too – neither has to be exclusive.