Aphrodisiacs: Foods That Mean Love

When people in love say, “there just was this chemistry”, they are talking about mysterious emotional attraction to a person. But they could be talking about the food in their kitchen. In just about every culture, alchemists and chemists experimented with foods hoping to devise seductive potions and hormone formulas to provoke carnal desire, stimulate attraction, promote fertility, and perhaps most importantly cure impotence. Thanks either to those scientific efforts, or perhaps to poetic association with passion in myth and literature, particular foods eventually became known as aphrodisiacs. Sometimes this just happened because personal memories of eating that food evoked feelings warm enough to put someone in the mood. Here are a few of the most traditionally popular aphrodisiacs.

Sandra Garson is the author of Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking and How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers’ Market. As a longtime student of Tibetan Buddhism and well-known cook for Dharma centers from Maine to Mongolia, she became the first food historian to explore the Buddha’s influence on how the world now eats. This led to exploration of more religious beliefs about food.

Chocolate

Scientists discovered chocolate contains tiny traces of tryptophan, a chemical that helps the brain produce serotonin, a feel-good hormone. It has traces of an amphetamine-like chemical called phenylethylamine, the one the brain pumps when we fall in love. Chocolate contains theobromine, a mild caffeine-like chemical that dilates capillaries, increases energy and stimulates the heart—all euphoria enhancing. Plus it satisfies a sweet tooth. Mayans believed the tree its bean pods grow on so divine, they named it cacao, “God’s Food.” The Aztecs may have launched a connection between chocolate and sexual desire, for their divine emperor Montezuma supposedly consumed as many as fifty golden goblets of chocolate a day to enhance his sexual prowess. Discovering chocolate in the New World, Cortez’ conquistadors brought “cocoa” back to Europe in the name of love.

Wine, or the Grape

Vino from the Latin vinum comes from Venus, the Goddess of Love. Grapes, the source of wine hanging in ripe and juicy clusters, were an ancient symbol of fertility in many of the world’s major religions, and followers understood the benefits of fertility depended on a touch of Venus, a stroke of love. So when grapes were squeezed and fermented into wine, they naturally represented the offspring of Venus, Eros, god of sexual attraction. That made wine the ultimate love potion. Wine’s alcohol content releases inhibitions. Thanks to grape skins left in the fermenting vat, red wines are full of the chemical resveratrol, an antioxidant that seems to increase blood flow and improve circulation, activity that sets the body up for excitement.

Vanilla

The vanilla bean is the fruit of an exotic orchid vine whose rarity and scent make it a natural aphrodisiac. Many believe just the smell of vanilla increases lust. The Totonacs of Veracruz, Mexico are said to be its original cultivators. According to their legend, when Princess Xa'nat’s father forbid her from marrying a mortal, she fled to the forest with her lover, but they were eventually captured and beheaded. Where their blood smeared the ground, the vine of the vanilla orchid sprang up. The plant thus became associated with undying love. After the Aztecs conquered the Totonacs, their beloved vanilla begin its journey to becoming the food flavoring we love today. The Aztecs, who thought of the exotic bean as a “little sheath”, a “vanilla”, joyfully added it into their own beloved food, chocolate.

Apples

Apples are ancient symbols of temptation: remember Garden of Eden and Snow White. In Greece, they were the symbol of love because the mythical goddess Atalanta, renown for athletic prowess, vowed to marry whoever beat her in a foot race. The god Hippomenes beseeched the Goddess of Love for help and sympathetic Aphrodite gave him three golden apples to throw on the track. Indeed the sight of these shimmering orbs so distracted Atalanta, she lost the race, meaning love won. Round like life, bright red like the heart and blood, sweet, nourishing like true love, and harboring the seeds of rebirth like the human body, apples in the Mediterranean mind became so tightly associated with love that upon seeing their first tomato from the New World, Italians immediately dubbed it, pomodoro, golden apple.