Chocolate is one of the most alluring and desirable foods ever created. Chocolate, especially the dark variety, contains antioxidants that have heart-healthy benefits.
It’s also a powerful mood booster that appears to work like some mood-enhancing drugs. Perhaps most importantly for readers of this blog, chocolate has consistently been identified as an aphrodisiac linked to increased sexual desire and pleasure, particularly in women.
Some people who fall victim to chocolate’s attraction refer to themselves as “chocoholics” – there is almost nothing they enjoy more than chocolate. Although the mood and heart benefits are backed up by research, the same hasn’t been true for chocolate’s powers as an aphrodisiac.
In an effort to try to scientifically evaluate chocolate’s aphrodisiac powers, researchers from the University of Milan in Italy surveyed 163 Italian women, assessing their chocolate consumption and their levels of sexual functioning. The results were reported in the May 2006 issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
These researchers found that the women who consumed chocolate every day reported significantly higher sexual desire on a standardized measure than those who did not report eating chocolate regularly. On further analysis, the group that ate chocolate daily was significantly younger (with an average age of 34 years) than the non-regular chocolate eating group (with an average age of 40 years).
But when age was taken into account, the differences in sexual functioning between the two groups were only marginally statistically significant.
Although far from definitive, these results are intriguing enough to warrant a larger, more comprehensive study that may resolve once and for all what we’ve all been wondering. Whatever the final result, it seems that chocolate and love will always be connected.
