Chocolate Or Sex?

According to a survey conducted in 1995 by a popular women’s magazine, 70% of the women who responded said they would rather have chocolate than sex.

These figures were confirmed more recently in a poll by Cadbury – chocolate is apparently more essential for a happy life than sex. (Women also prefer chocolate to wine and designer cosmetics.)

And 20% of women (i.e. one in five) would go without sex before going without their chocolate.

(It’s probably these results that were the inspiration for Joan Sewell’s book, “I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido“.)

So, why do women prefer chocolate to sex?

Well, for starters, chocolate can’t get you pregnant, of course (although it can cause weight gain).

On the other hand, it can leave just as big a mess, and it’s equally hard to clean up.

On the plus side, I’m assured by those who know (don’t ask!) that the taste is considerably better (unless you enjoy eating salty chocolate).

Then, there’s the fact that you can more or less get pleasure from eating chocolate anywhere – without a risk of being arrested.

Maybe it’s easier to find a good chocolate bar than it is to find a satisfying man?

There again, a bar of chocolate won’t phone you the next day – but then most men don’t either, apparently.

With chocolate, there’s no need to spit it out because swallowing it is actually pleasurable.

And of course, we’d never had heard of Monica Lewinsky if she and Bill had only shared a bar of chocolate.

It’s a lot less gross to lick nuts if they’re in a bar of chocolate – and a lot less hairy too.

If you hold a bar of chocolate, it won’t go hard on you.

You can eat chocolate at your pace, and you can do it with your clothes on (or off).

Seriously though, what does this tell us about women (or about men and sex)?

And if this question seems a bit sexist, then research has shown that there are more female chocoholics than male ones.

One theory has it that chocolate raises serotonin levels, which are low in premenstrual women. (And it seems that women’s desire for chocolate does coincide with their monthly cycles.)

Is it, perhaps, the case that for most women, sex is not always their choice, but they agree to it for their men (either voluntarily or because they feel pressured)? Chocolate, on the other hand, is always their choice.

Or is it because it is a more complete experience? There’s the taste, the feel in the mouth, the smell, and for whatever reason, a sense of decadent luxury.

Is sex sometimes just too much like hard work?

Maybe eating chocolate is a more personal experience, a way to indulge yourself without having to worry about anybody else for a few minutes?

But whatever you might think about all of this, there is a kicker to this story.

According to Italian research (which was funded from a university research budget, and not by the chocolate industry), women who eat chocolate regularly have a better sex life than those who deny themselves this sensual treat.

So, there’s hope for us men yet! Just buy your lady some chocolates first, and then wait for her increased libido to kick in!

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Would You Eat That?

As I think about the food that we humans eat, I often wonder who was the first person to try that particular item, and what on earth did they think it was?

For example, who first decided that they’d try opening up an oyster shell and slurping down the contents?

And how many people were violently ill or died while working out which mushrooms were safe to eat, and which weren’t? (They all look like “bad food” to me, but there again, I don’t like their taste or texture anyway.)

And what about shark? What was that first person thinking? Maybe they were after a bit of revenge, some “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” when a great white ate their brother?

Then there are the South American tribes that think tarantulas are a delicacy?

But let’s get back to less weird foods.

How did people first decide that killing some large animal would make a good food source?

Did they used to eat the meat raw, and how did this coincide with the discovery of fire?

Were humans once capable of eating raw meat anyway, or had the shape and structure of our teeth already changed from pure carnivore to omnivore?

How did early man equate fire with cooking, and who first thought, “I know, I’ll toss this bit of buffalo on the fire and see what happens?”

How did they even know which bits of the animal to eat?

And why are the so-called delicacies that are so expensive today so weird?

I mean, caviar? It’s fish eggs, and quite frankly, they look revolting and taste of salty water, above all else, in my experience.

We’ve already covered oysters, but what about lobsters and crabs?

What kind of dogged persistence and curiosity led us to get past the hard shells and the vicious-looking claws and decide to try eating these creatures?

The list of crazy foods just goes on and on, such as haggis, black pudding, fugu, octopus legs, snails, tripe, sweetmeats, brawn, sheep’s eyes, chicken feet, pig’s trotters, jellied eels, Kopi Luwak coffee, escamoles, and if you really want to be disgusted, do a search and find out what the Asian dish called Balut and the Sardinian cheese called casu marzu are.

And if you want something to wash these “delicacies” down with, how about some baby mouse wine?

Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up, honest!

Compared to some people, I probably have a very boring and restricted diet, but I can eat my food with confidence, knowing that it’s really dead and isn’t going to kill me in return.

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Whynter SNO Ice Cream Maker

We tend to get through quite a bit of ice cream, even though there’s just the two of us (not forgetting our seven dogs, of course), and as we never drive anywhere, it all has to be delivered.

Now, the good news is that we have a frozen food home delivery service that calls round every fortnight; the bad news is that there are very few flavours that my wife is able to eat.

So, after doing a lot of research, we decided to splash out and buy our own soft serve ice cream maker – a Whynter SNO Ice Cream Maker to be precise – so that we could make whatever flavours work best for us.

Originally, we were going to go for the Lello 4090 Gelato Pro, but after reading some of the reviews on Amazon.com, we decided not to bother. To be fair, there are plenty of people who have found it to be a great machine, but there are also enough saying that they have had significant problems.

The machine arrived a couple of days ago, although owing to various diversions, we’ve not even unpacked the box yet.

However, we are looking forward to trying it out (having also bought several recipe books and other accessories / ingredients), and I’ll report back once we’ve tasted the results.

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The Truth About Serving Sizes

There are many ways that you can have a healthy diet.

For example, you could eat less food, although calorie-counting is not necessarily the best way for long-term weight loss and may not make your diet any healthier.

Or you could try food-combining, which can make sure your body receives the right balance of nutrients.

Or, you could eat “the right food”, whatever that may mean today (as the medical profession change their minds about what is healthy or not on an all-too-frequent basis).

And part of deciding what is “right” or not is based on the ingredients.

Which is why manufacturers nowadays are obliged to print details on the label – so you can see exactly what is in the product.

But there is, of course, a problem with this – the number of unhealthy ingredients that are in some of these foods.

As an example, let’s take a product called Chef Boyardee Beefaroni, which is basically macaroni and beef in a tomato sauce.

The version we’re interested in here comes in a 14.5 oz (or 411.068085 grams for you metric people) microwavable tub.

The first two things we look at on any food label are the amounts of trans fats and sodium in the product.

Now, the good news with Beefaroni is that there are no trans fats.

However, the amount of sodium is somewhat scary – 920mg, which represents 38% of your RDA (i.e. Recommended Daily Allowance):

Just by itself, nearly a whole gram of salt in such a small tub of food is too much …

… but then you realise that this 14.5oz tub is meant to contain nearly two servings, not just one – they claim the serving size is 249 grams (or 8.78 ounces).

I don’t know about you, but half a tub of Beefaroni is not going to cut it – even as a snack. Even a full tub needs topping up with something to transform it into something worth eating.

And in case you can’t see what the wording says on the left of the label, let me spell it out for you – it says “Big Size Bowl – For Big Appetites“.

Yes, it’s true – for those people who don’t have a “big appetite”, they also make this product in a 7.5oz (or 212 grams) tub, although I’m not sure who the target audience is for this size of Beefaroni, as even our Chihuahua could polish that off without any trouble.

Anyway, back to the label.

So, once you realise that in spite of what they say the serving size is, you actually need to eat the entire tub to even begin to feel like you’ve eaten anything at all, you find that you’re actually eating almost 1.5 grams of salt, and that means you’ll be consuming nearly two thirds of your daily sodium requirements – in a single small tub.

And that’s why they quote their nutritional facts using absurdly small serving sizes – because if they showed the size of portion that most real people eat, some of those nutritional figures (especially the sodium content) would be so high that nobody in their right mind would buy them.

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100 Chocolate Recipes

I have to confess to being a chocoholic.

There, I said it – in public!

Actually, this will come as no surprise to those who know me well.

I even used to belong to a luxury chocolate tasting club, but moving to the US meant I had to cancel that – I’m not sure those chocolates would have survived being mailed internationally.

So, although it’s possible to order chocolate online over here in the US, the extreme heat in summer means that most companies won’t ship it – not even an overnight service with ice packs is enough, and high quality chocolate is far too good to let it melt and go to waste.

Well, you can probably imagine that I was more than excited to learn about Read more…

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