Food and sex... a special Valentine's Edition for you all

How a little of both of these can help you live to a ripe old age + a sexy recipe

Kalimera one and all,

As we gear up to Valentines, I wanted to bring you a sexy addition of the newsletter this week. “What does sex have to do with food and the life wisdom of matriarchs?” you might ponder. I’ll leave it to Yiayia Marietta who I met on the island of Ikaria to touch on this first…

One doctor I saw in Athens didn’t believe my age when I told him. He had the cheek to ask me if I still have sex and I thought, “What a question?” but really, it’s true. It does keep you feeling young if you’re still active in that department. Psychologically, sex helps and what helps psychologically, also helps physiologically.

People come to Ikaria and ask what the secret is to the island residents’ eternal youth but there isn’t one answer we can give. Maybe it’s good genes, maybe it’s our lifestyle. I’m not a doctor but I can say that life here is different because we have our own produce, we grow without pesticides and all those chemical sprays. Maybe having your own garden with your own vegetables helps but mainly, I’d say sex and a nice glass of wine will keep you going.

Marietta, born 1943

You can scroll down for Marietta’s ‘Sufiko’ recipe - a silky Greek vegetable caponata recipe to indulge in with a nice glass of red this Valentine’s. First up though, I wanted to share some of my funny findings and subsequent musings on the eternal links between food and sex from Ancient Greece to now…

Appetite, hunger, satiated, starved; all can be applied to both our relationship with food and with sex. In fact, humans have forever whipped up the two to form one great gateaux of food-related sexual innuendos, rituals and fetishist foreplay. “Nutrition and reproduction are two basic needs or drives of all organisms,” says American Zoologist Marston Bates in his essay Man, Food and Sex. It seems only logical then, that we would mix the two. 

You only need look at popular culture throughout the ages to find the constant intermingling of both elements that drive our most basic of instincts. From Shakespeare’s foodie metaphors for the sexual act (when comparing sexual escapades, pals Mercutio and Romeo refer to semen as ‘sharp sauce’ and the vagina it’s ‘served into’ as a ‘sweet goose’) to our modern peach, aubergine and melon emojis – what feeds us nutritionally speaking has long been mixed up with what feeds us sexually. 

The mix-ups are played out in cinema, too. My eyes will never un-see actor Jason Biggs’ famous fingering (then a lot more) of the now infamous ‘American Pie’, after his friends helpfully describe the vagina as ‘warm apple pie.’ More recently (and quite possibly more sensual to watch) was actor Timothee Chalamet’s character Elio’s foray with a juicy peach in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. 

In literature, DH. Lawrence compares ‘the wonderful moist conductivity’ of a fig to a vagina. While less poetic, advertising execs had supermodels and famous actresses posing with creamy, white milk moustaches in ‘90s ‘Got Milk?’ ads (guesses as to what the innuendo was here…) A precursor to Terry Richardson’s fashion photography of meat gorging, pasta dribbling plus-size model Crystal Renn. 

“All earthly cultures use food to provoke, kindle, stoke, enhance or prolong the ardour between the sexes,” says Lana Citron, author of Edible Pleasures, a textbook of aphrodisiacs. It would seem then, that food (if not the aesthetics of it, but the feel, taste and scientific effect of it on our systems) has been getting us going for time immemorial. The term ‘aphrodisiac’ itself means to arouse sexual desire but the word has become synonymous with food.  

The ‘aphrodisiac’ shares its roots with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, meaning ‘born of the (sea) foam’. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite (or Venus, if you were Roman) was born of a scallop or oyster shell. This may well be why since the time of the Ancient Greeks, seafood has been linked with lovemaking in this part of the world. 

Aesthetically speaking, the oyster resembles female genitalia, which in itself could be considered arousing. In Denmark, oysters are aptly named ‘vulva fish’ while in Italy, the famed lothario Casanova was said to gollop down fifty just at breakfast. On the matter of taste and texture, the salty, mellifluent composition of an oyster might well be compared to semen…

Does it actually work? Author Citrion, the aphrodisiac expert concludes there might well be scientific reasoning behind Europeans’ love of oysters and their rumoured libidinous effects. “The oyster is high in iron and zinc, which raises sperm and testosterone production and increases the libido,” she says.  

Another popular Greek (and Middle Eastern) aphrodisiac is honey, which was linked to ‘ambrosia’, the nectar that in Greek mythology bestowed those consuming it with eternal life. According to Citron, the Arabs actually believed that eating honey would prolong the sexual act while in Eastern Europe, newly married couples lick honey from each other’s palms as a wedding custom to ensure soft caresses and only sweet words.  Modern Greeks serve up their honey drizzled on walnuts and Greek yogurt, combining testosterone and oestrogen inducing boron (found in honey) with amino acids (in the walnuts) that increase blood flow to the sexual organs.

Speaking of sexual organs, the Chinese look to the phallic sea cucumber as a cure for poor libido. Apparently, food can be a ‘psycho-physiological aphrodisiac’, which would give the Chinese ample reason to chow down. Is there any scientific foundation to the love-cucumber from the east though?  “I have held one and squeezed hard but have not yet brought it to my lips,” says Citron. “They’re very popular in China, Malaysia, Korea and Indonesia, rich in vitamin C, containing zinc magnesium and niacin, which help reduce muscle tension and increase blood flow, which is good for sex hormones and  a healthy sperm count,” she concludes.

Meanwhile the Serbians host an annual World Testicle Cooking Championship, bringing together a bunch of ball-munching enthusiasts for a cook-off that promises a dish that’s ‘better for the libido than any viagra’. Chefs are judged on both the taste and the aphrodisiacal quality of their boiled, fried or baked bollocks. 

Before you say ‘balls to that’, the Serbians may well actually be on to something. According to Citron, the dried testicles of deer, tiger, seal and beaver have long been used in Chinese sex tonics. “I have not personally tried bulls’ testicles, or tigers’, or goats’, “ she says, “but some swear by them believing you can imbibe vigour and vitality from eating them.”

Onto the Americas and to something sweeter, where the cacao bean has been a sensual prelude and accompaniment to sex since the time of the Mayans and Aztecs. According to legend, ruler Montezuma would indulge in a hot chocolate (known as chocolatl and made from roasted cocoa beans, water and spices) or six before checking in on his harem. 

The stimulating effects of chocolate are nodded to in the film Chocolat, in which Juliet Binoche’s character wins over a puritanical French town after opening the aptly named ‘La Chocolaterie Maya’. She prescribes one love-starved couple Guatemalan cacao nibs to great success, while her chocolate seashells help out another couple. In her book, Citron cites the theobromine in chocolate as a potential for its stimulating effects as it produces serotonin – widely known as the ‘love hormone’. “Perhaps it’s just a placebo,” she tells me, “but who cares? Chocolate is a restorative and feel good food.”

Of all the aphrodisiacs, the one perhaps best not tried at home is that of a tribe in New Guinea, who, after swapping bodily fluids in a sexual orgy of virgins, then kill the last boy and girl to embrace, roast them and eat them. It’s probably best to resign food to foreplay…

In the spirit of this, here’s a sexy Mediterranean vegetable caponata recipe you can cook up for your beloved next week. Safer than some of the aphrodisiacs mentioned above and probably more delicious…

Happy cooking / eating / love making one and all.

Yiayia Marietta’s Ikarian Sufiko (Mediterranean vegetable caponata)