Savoring Desire: Exploring Food and Sex
We don't only arouse cultural palates around here.
Welcome to To Live and To Luxe Weekend Edition. I figure it’s summer, so why not send out a little controversy direct to your inbox, and prep you for what the weekend has in store. Between your burrata, bellinis, and overly Instagrammed European vacations (that I am 100% committed to supplying you with), I figured with all the go-go-go, you might need a moment to savor the most important things in life. As far as I’m concerned, there are at least two pleasurable necessities in life: food & sex. If you’re going without one, you’re as good as dead.
"Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want." - Gael Greene
A Little Controversy to Start
Have you ever finished a meal that was so good that you said it was better than sex and wholeheartedly meant it? I can count the few times I’ve said it, only to witness the horror and chagrin of my date vis à vis my comment. If you haven’t had a moment like this, I don’t want to accuse you of eating abysmal food or having lousy sex, but both are probably true. (remember, this is a moment of self-reflection, don’t ruin it!). In my most recent replay of this scenario, I decided to investigate the real link between food and sex.
Social and Scientific Backing
“It is quite true that man lives by bread alone—when there is no bread. But what happens to man's desires when there is plenty of bread and when his belly is chronically filled?”-A.H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation (1943)
There seems to have always been a sort of connection between food and sex, most likely due to their fundamental roles in sustaining human life. The Bible talks about the forbidden fruit often interpreted as a metaphor for sex. The sexually suggestive term “aphrodisiac” has its own origins in Greek mythology and stands as an edible approach to improving carnal pleasures by consuming chocolate, oysters, and strawberries. Never mind that there are countless examples of sexual food-related imagery within the cinema and art worlds. Mentions of sexual appetites and popping cherries are abundant, there’s even a restaurant in London called Sexy Fish if you aren’t convinced of the association between food and sex. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a psychology theory ranking human needs, states that air, water, food, sleep, shelter, and sex are some of the basic physiological needs.1 The longer you go without either of these basic needs, the more you are motivated to satisfy them. After all, if food and sex are some of our most basic needs, then Maslow’s theory can help to explain our widespread fascination with them.
Why do we relate food & sex?
“Good food does lead to sex. As it should.” - Anthony Bourdain
Outside of their indispensable uses in sustaining human life, we tend to associate food and sex together because they are both pleasurable and they employ similar parts of the prefrontal cortex. According to “Pleasure Systems in the Brain”, a research article published in the science journal Neuron, recent studies show that participating in pleasurable activities activates shared brain “systems” within the prefrontal cortex like the orbitofrontal, insula, and anterior cingulate cortices as well as parts of the amygdala.2Participation in these events can also create “similar patterns of brain activity”, but what does this actually mean? When you do something pleasurable like eating or having sex, it stimulates some of the same parts of the brain which could explain the pleasurable feelings associated with each. Contrary to popular belief, there is new evidence in the aforementioned research article that suggests dopamine levels might not actually “cause” feelings of pleasure. Rather, pleasure is produced by mobilizing “shared brain systems” in the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine increases desire levels or “want” for pleasure but it does not necessarily cause pleasure; the amount of pleasure felt is not necessarily related to the amount of dopamine present in your brain. Pleasure begets pleasure. An amazing meal can put you in the mood and vice versa.
As humans, our relationship to food and sex as a subject is simultaneously complex and scintillating. The connection between food and sex itself is clearly biological, albeit social. The next time that you think you’ve had an orgasmic meal, you’ll know why.
Mcleod, S. (2023, June 30). Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Berridge, K. C., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2015). Pleasure systems in the brain. Neuron, 86(3), 646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.02.018