Who Invented The Sunless Spray Tan?

The only safe tan comes out of a bottle, so many people will eschew the solarium in favour of a luxurious and pampering spray-tan session to ensure they get that beautiful sunkissed look that is particularly popular as the skies get darker and greyer.

However, the discovery of the spray tan was actually the result of an accident caused during an experiment to help children with a rare blood sugar disease.

The rare disorder glycogen storage disease affects the metabolism of children which causes their ability to break down a certain type of sugar stored in the liver that is converted to glucose, usually leading to fatigue and a lack of energy.

It has multiple causes, but in this case, the issue was a lack of the enzyme dihydroxyacetone (DHA), which could be synthesised and provided in liquid medicine form.

The researcher Eva Wittgenstein wanted to see if giving children at the University of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital affected with the disease a big enough dose of DHA would help improve their energy, and so fed them large amounts of a brown liquid medicine.

It did not taste bad, but it did not always go down neatly, with several kids spitting it up or spilling it on their faces.

However, Ms Wittgenstein noticed that wherever the DHA had stayed in contact, a brown patch had developed. Fascinated by the prospect, she tried spraying her own skin and found out that it developed a tan-like tone, caused by the Maillard reaction when proteins and sugars touch.

There are proteins that make up our skin and when combined with the simple sugar DHA it forms melanoidins, which is a compound that creates pigment in the skin.

This simple ingredient was thus added to many types of sunless tan products, including aerosols, creams and lotions. The same general principle is still used in such products today.