Is Chocolate Better Than Sex?
The answer may be a resounding 'no.' But the two together- now that's the perfect recipe for a sweet night in.
Anne Sexton, 24 Nov 2008
It started with Morrissey. His poster hung in pride of place at the end of my bed – bare-chested, armpits shaved, quiff impeccable. Roland and I would spend hours lying on my bed admiring it. Some days we’d lament that we’d been too young (and stupid) to have discovered The Smiths before they broke up; other times we’d debate what the best food would be to lick off Moz’s curiously hairless form.
I have a sweet tooth and my choices reflected this – ice-cream, toffee sauce, Smarties or raspberries placed at strategic intervals across the body like sushi nyotaimori. Pretty conventional, boring even, compared to Roland who thought that clam chowder or spaghetti bolognese would be just delicious. A bit of an oddball was Roland. Either way, as far as combinations go, sex and food is one of the better ones – as good as beer and cigarettes, but far healthier.
Food and sex are intrinsically linked. Perhaps it’s a throwback to our hunter-gatherer days, or simply because unless you live on a diet of curry chips, you’ve got to admit there’s something undeniably sensual about good food.
We all know sex sells, and it sure sells a lot of grub. For the last sixty years or so, American advertisers have encouraged people to associate food with sex and with gender. The person responsible for this was Ernest Dichter, a psychologist and marketing expert who in 1946 founded the Institute of Motivational Research. Dichter’s work focused on the importance of image in advertising and found that when a food was associated with sex or with masculine or feminine qualities, advertisers could persuade us more effectively to buy their products. This might go some way to explaining why Americans (and increasingly Irish people) have such a problem with obesity – because the one thing most of us want is more sex. And why not?
Chocolate is particularly prone to this kind of advertising, possibly because it does have some proven feelgood qualities. Chocolate causes the release of serotonin, which is linked to sexual pleasure and happiness and it’s a source of phenylalanine, which raises endorphins, our natural antidepressants.
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