Just a Spoonful of (Lemon) Sugar - Beauty Addict

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Just a Spoonful of (Lemon) Sugar

Friends, please indulge me an Andy Rooney moment. There's something I just don't understand; maybe you can enlighten me, or at least nod your head in agreement.

Why is the smell of sugar associated with lemons?

I like the clean, crisp scent of Fresh's Sugar line, but it seems completely incongruous with the name. I understand the use of the Sugar name as far as ingredients go; a few of the original Sugar products, like the scrub, actually incorporated real sugar. The lemon scent, though, completely baffles me.

It's funny, because sugar cane actually does have a scent, and it isn't lemon. In the perfume world, pick up a bottle of Creed Virgin Island Water (lime, coconut and sugarcane) or even Victoria's Secret Island Escape (coconut and sugarcane) to get an idea of how it can be captured in scent.

Thinking that perhaps refined sugar had a different smell, I even stuck my nose into a bowl of sugar to see if I could detect any lemony aroma. Nada.

Even more mysterious, if the original Sugar already smells like lemons, why the need for an offshoot called Sugar Lemon? Is this not redundant? And how about Brown Sugar - real brown sugar definitely has a distinct scent of its own, but the Fresh products smell, you guessed it, like lemons.

Philosophy is in on this too; their Sugar Cookie body wash smells inexplicably of lemons. And last time I checked, there was no lemon in the basic sugar cookie recipe.

OK. End of rant. But before I sign off, I'll ask you: is it me, or is the sugar = lemons thing just a little bit bizarre?


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