The Joy Of Chocolate Sex

Chocolate and sex go together. But how many people have actually tried Chocolate Sex, where the delicious stuff becomes an integral part of the experience?

Anne Sexton, 16 Feb 2012

Ugh, February – the worst time of the year. It’s cold, Christmas has been and gone and it stretches out in a series of bleak, grey weeks with nothing to look forward to except Paddy’s Day, which seems a long way off. Plus, to make things worse, there is Valentine’s Day.

Does anyone actually like Valentine’s Day? I doubt it. Is it any wonder that the abbreviation of both Valentine’s Day and venereal disease is VD? No. Like herpes, Valentine’s Day is sexually transmitted, unpleasant and outbreaks occur at regular intervals.

Despite this, every year, like suckers, millions of us spend money we don’t have, often on people we don’t love, in order to mark this supposed celebration of romance and sex. The only thing that makes it vaguely tolerable is chocolate. Well, sex and chocolate, but mostly chocolate – after all, you can have sex on any of the 365 days of the year, but only a few of these occasions demand a chocolate offering beforehand.

Until the 20th century, chocolate was both rare and expensive, which is one of the reasons it was considered romantic. The other is that eating it gives you a pleasurable, almost sexual buzz – your blood pressure increases, your heart flutters and sensation is heightened, similar to what you experience during an orgasm.

There is a good scientific reason for this – phenylethylamine. Chocolate is a source of this very unsexy sounding chemical, but phenylethylamine is linked to feelings of sexual pleasure and happiness. The idea of giving someone chocolate is: they connect those gratifying feelings with the giver.

It’s possible that there is a second link between chocolate and sex. An Italian study found that women who eat chocolate regularly had more sex. In all honesty, the results were far from conclusive – chocolate fans tend to be younger, which means they have higher sex drives naturally. Nor did the study actually suggest that eating chocolate will lead to a greater number of sexual experiences, but if I choose to interpret it that way as I tuck into yet another vanilla ganache, that’s my business. There is no point in taking unnecessary risks, after all.

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