What's the name of the current lipstick you're using? Is it Sex Machine or Fresh Carnal. or maybe Very Berry, Mocha Minx or Crème de la Femme?

According to a recent study, women prefer lipstick shades named after food or sex.

Conducted by Professor Debra Merskin, the study analysed 1722 lipsticks from 52 US brands and categorised them into 14 divisions, including food, sex and romance, emotions and colours.

Shades named after food were deemed most popular, taking 24 percent of the pie, those using words associated with colour ranked second at 20 percent, and those in the sex and romance category came in third with 10 percent.

Here are the top six categories:

Food – 24 percent

Colour – 20 percent

Sex and Romance – 10 percent

Elements and Minerals – nine percent

Emotions and Characteristics – eight percent

Other – eight percent

Entitled Truly Toffee and Raisin Hell: A Textual Analysis of Lipstick Names, the paper was published in the journal Sex Roles. Merskin wanted to assess how lipstick names played a role as branding tools, influencing the buying choices of the target market.

"When women 'put on a face', or 'put on war paint', they are not only acting in line with social prescriptions of feminine beauty, but are also involved in a system of meaning that helps them to navigate the sea of changing conditions that are a part of postmodern social experience," Merskin writes in her report.