Since ancient times, the human desire for sex has been coupled with an equally deep anxiety about our abilities to satiate this need satisfactorily. In any kind of partnership, the greatest danger lies in an inequality of passions or capabilities, and sex is no exception. To quench our droughts of sexual desire, we have long sought strange and sometimes dubious solutions, perhaps most whimsically in the sensual and succulent foods that we eat for love: aphrodisiacs.
These erotic, often exotic, foods have a storied history. The ancient Indian Sanskrit text Kama Sutra, one of the earliest documents referencing aphrodisiacs, suggests milk, saffron, and racemosus asparagus as methods for increasing one’s libido. The ancient world saw procreation as a deeply spiritual and moral concern; when insufficiently nutritious food caused rampant vitamin deficiencies that diminished fertility, aphrodisiacs became crucial to living a religiously upright life.
What, then, makes a food stimulatingly sexy? For many traditional aphrodisiacs, it is enough to simply look or feel seductive. Suggestive innuendos abound, as any food bearing even a vague resemblance to genitalia is fair game. Figs, celery, ginseng, bananas, and artichokes all fall into this category, while delectably bulbous foods like fennel and cherries are also apparently imbued with mystical sexual power. The silky flesh of a raw oyster slips down our throats in a way that recalls the sinfulness of a late-night sexual tryst. Better yet, why eat foods that look like dicks when you can just have the real deal? Perhaps this was the logic of the Asian cultures that lauded the tiger’s penis as an effective remedy for erectile dysfunction, carefully stewing the feline appendage to make a virile tiger penis soup. Yum!
Yet, though we might forgive pre-modern cultures for wholeheartedly believing in these dry-spell cure-alls, the efficacy of these aphrodisiacs is far more dubious in our contemporary context, veering dangerously towards the realm of pseudoscience. Can the scientific method save any of these sought-after aphrodisiacs from condemnation?
As it appears, some of these sultry snacks do have some grounding in modern-day science. Oysters, for example, are high in zinc, a nutrient essential for testosterone metabolism that nearly 17% of the world lacks in sufficient quantities. Other aphrodisiacs work by enhancing the body’s natural processes. The bark of the Yohimbe tree (an evergreen native to the African subcontinent) stimulates nerve centers in the spine to increase blood flow and nerve impulses to the penis or vagina, and has been embraced by love gurus and swindling pharmacists alike as a popular supplement sold in drugstores.
Even Spanish fly, the colloquial name for cantharidin, a chemical stimulant extracted from blister beetles, has been proven to inhibit certain enzyme activities in our cells, inducing vascular inflammation and blood flow to the genitalia. Indeed, artificial aphrodisiacs like Viagra work in a similar way, relaxing the muscles and arteries inside the penis to promote increased blood flow. At the same time, these potent panaceas for sexual pleasure can lead to less-than-sexy side effects. Spanish fly can irritate your urogenital tract too much, causing urinary infections and urethral scarring, while synthesized drugs like Viagra risk side effects like nausea and vomiting. Seen this way, eating for love appears less desirable than we initially perceive.
Still, aphrodisiacs retain an undeniable, mystical allure that our current social world cannot shake off. The relationship between sex and the sensuality of delectably suggestive foods persists. The fruity eroticism of Timothée Chalamet jerking off in a peach in Call Me by Your Name arguably belongs to the same tradition that prompted Sappho, in her Fragment 105A, to liken an aroused female labia to a “sweetapple redden[ing] on a high branch.” The next time you and a partner think about getting it on in a seductive midnight jaunt, perhaps some of these enduring aphrodisiacs—grounded in science or not—will help you have a good time.
