Bath products good enough to eat

Chocolatier Max Brenner owes me a shower curtain. After just one session in the bath with his sinfully decadent products there are a handful of chocolatey smears on my white shower curtain that won’t rinse off.

Now before you ask what I was doing eating chocolate in the bath (which, come to think of it, is not the worst idea I’ve ever had), I should point out that the Max Brenner product I was indulging in was the Brazillian brown sugar cane & cocoa nibs body scrub from his spa collection. Yep, that’s right: Max Brenner of “Chocolate by the Bald Man” fame, also makes bath products. Chocolate-scented, smells-good- enough-to-eat, bath products.

Brenner’s mantra is that “chocolate is not just about taste”, which is fair enough, and he’s not the only foodie to be branching out into beauty products. Jamie Oliver has also launched a home, body and bath collection called Scent & Savour, available through his Jamie at Home party plan. The Jamie at Home website says that "Jamie believes that creative flavour combinations needn’t be confined to the kitchen”, adding that “combinations such as ‘a burst of clementine, red berries & festive spice', or ‘a twist of yuzu lime, green tea & cedar' result in fine fragrances from a fresh perspective.”

Ingredients derived from food have been used in beauty products or as beauty products since a human first worked out how to squeeze oil from olives but do cooking staples such as chocolate and beauty really go together?

The answer probably depends on whether you want to risk having strangers nibbling at your extremities in the coffee queue, but inasmuch as food smells are some of the most evocative, conjuring up treasured memories and making us feel good, then why not use them in products also designed to make people feel good?

Of course, I’d feel even better if I didn’t now need a new shower curtain...