Question:
Do you think eating well can improve your sex life?
— Dying to Eat
Dear Dying:
Yes, I do but not in the sense that if you eat, say, blueberries, that somehow you’re going to put an extra “o” in “ooohhh.”
If you want diet to affect your sex life then concentrate on eating food that helps your heart. Why? Because getting firmer erections and being more sensitive to stimulation requires good blood flow to the genitals. That’s why guys with clogged arteries have such a hard time getting it up.
That means any diet helping the heart pump blood is a diet that’s good for sex. So what does a sex diet look like? Low-fat foods, lots of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, getting 10% of calories from fat, 5% from saturated fat, and 75% from carbohydrates. Blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard all this shit before. I ain’t writing a diet column (though I often tell people, “Eat Me!”)
Again, anything friendly to the heart is going to be friendly to the hard. The thing you’re asking for is the thing I can’t give you—what specific foods can help you become Le Stud. I’ve seen magazines single out foods like eggs, vanilla ice cream, celery, grapes, blueberries, and oysters as helpful aids, but they’re talking out of their asses (which, really, is a remarkable skill).
These articles are based on the idea that particular vitamins and nutrients in some foods can boost an aspect of sex. For example, the vitamins in eggs supposedly reduce performance anxiety and premature ejaculation. Puh-leeeez.
Scientists laugh at the idea that a particular food can have a particular effect on sex. It’s true that some vitamins and nutrients have particular sexual benefits, but the amount you’d have to eat would give you some sorry-ass side effects. Blueberries, for instance, improve blood flow to the genitals. But to have an effect you’d have to eat so much you’d get diarrhea. Great. Now your partner can blow your hardest hard-on while you’re choking the toilet.
There are some interesting, valid studies done by legitimate scientists on food’s effect on sex, but they have more to do with what you smell than what you chew. For example, the neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago conducted two studies that measured men’s reaction to different smells (by measuring blood flow to the penis).
Men appeared to be turned on most by a combination of smelling lavender and pumpkin pie. So if you’re on a coffee date, order the pumpkin-spice latte and wear a lavender-based after-shave.
Research has shown time and again that smells have an effect on the sexual desire of a partner but we don’t know exactly how. We do know, however, that how you smell is correlated to what you eat. Beyond that, there are no specific foods that’ll improve your sex life.