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It is unlikely that Mistress Splosh will become a viral Internet sensation, even though she has more than 40 videos on YouTube and a small but dedicated fan base who order her home-made DVDs.
The slightly round middle-aged woman can be seen online engaging in sploshing, a particular brand of sexual fetish that involves being covered (or covering someone) in wet and messy substances such as baked beans, icing or custard.
From aphrodisiacs and flavoured condoms to dousing a date in whipped cream, sex and food have long been intimately connected, and two new books focus on the erotic collision of our two most insatiable appetites.
The Fruit Hunters, by Montreal food writer Adam Leith Gollner and due out later this month, includes a chapter on humankind's X-rated interaction with the fleshy snacks. You may never look at a fruit basket the same way.
In the medieval era, he explains, "it was considered a turn-on for a woman to peel an apple and coddle it in her armpit until infused with her body odour, at which point she'd present the love apple to her lover."
If that doesn't do it for you, check out the Kama Sutra, which Mr. Gollner points out employs a mango to demonstrate a technique for fellatio.
"Fruit, inherently erotic, have a storied heritage as sexual accessories," he writes.
In Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That Are Very, Very Bad for Me, author Sarah Katherine Lewis also extols the erotic virtues of food, but keeps her groceries out of the bedroom.
"I'm so prissy about that 9½ Weeks stuff," she said from Seattle, Wash. "I've always been experimental, so I tried incorporating food and sex once and it just freaked me out and made me want to get up and clean my kitchen floor."
Ms. Lewis hopes readers will not be disappointed to discover that none of the essays contained in her book actually involve sex with bacon.
"I haven't had anyone look into my eyes and say, 'What I really want to do is stick a carrot up your butt,' " she said.
But she does have an intense relationship with eating, which, while platonic, is still quite spicy.
Consuming is a sexual experience, she said, something that gives her intense pleasure and satisfaction. Like many people, she uses food to "cook people into bed," and says it's an inherent aspect of her seduction technique.
Ms. Lewis believes the current renaissance of food fetishes, demonstrated by the proliferation of "wet and messy" fan sites online, is linked to society's dysfunctional relationship with eating.
The cultural focus on obesity, dieting and health foods has made eating for pleasure somewhat naughty, she said, and she hopes her book will remind people of the joy that comes from satisfying their taste buds.
"It's a little bit in reaction to the idea that we have to deny ourselves," she said of her book. "The current narrative about food is that the answer is pretty much always no. You're not even supposed to want it. And I think it's really very similar to the way that women are meant to not want sex."
Indeed, much of the discussion around food fetishes seems to touch on the idea
of rebellion: letting go and indulging in a rich, calorie-laden mess.
Bill Shipton, the British man who coined the term sploshing, has said that for many people the act of getting dirty is more important than the food itself.
"We're a nation of reserved people, and this is such an affront to that," he said in an interview with online sex magazine Nerve.com.
But it is not just the tactile feeling of smearing them-selves with food that turns people on.
A study performed by Alan Hirsch, founder of Chicago's Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, found a connection between the smell of food and sexual arousal.
The research found that 40 per cent of men in the study were sexually aroused by the smell of pumpkin pie, 31 per cent by the scent of doughnuts or black licorice, and 9 per cent by the aroma of buttered popcorn.
The scent of food had less of an erotic effect on women, but 13 per cent were aroused by the smell of Good & Plenty candy or cucumber, 11 per cent by pumpkin pie or lavender, and 4 per cent by chocolate.
Cory Silverberg, a certified sexuality educator and co-owner of Toronto sex shop Come As You Are, said that no one really knows why people develop sexual fetishes, but that some believe it is an association forged in childhood.
"If you're masturbating at night when somebody is making dinner, it's conceivable that would result in a connection between the sensory experience of smelling food cooking and an erotic experience," he said.
Mr. Silverberg said that as far as fetishes go, food seems to be equally popular in men and women, and that adherents tend to exhibit positive attitudes toward both food and sex.
"Most pornography has kind of a dark, negative element to it, and people don't seem to be having too much fun," he said. "Sploshing is unbelievably fun and it's a fetish that I've never seen become problematic for people."
Mr. Silverberg cautions against using any food that has a high sugar content, which could cause a yeast infection, and warns against a line of German dildos made from Gummi Bear material.
He also says people should be conscious of food allergies, and they should avoid putting anything inside them that will be difficult to get out.
"But," he added, "most people want to know how to do it without staining their sheets."
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