Understanding How Flavor Makes Food and SEX Even More Delicious

The Benefits and Joys of Tasting Your Way Through Life

Jun 15, 2023

Humans may eat alone, but we rarely dine alone. Dining is a social experience. Sharing a meal is pleasurable. That is the reason that celebrations almost always involve food.

Food bonds families. It connects friends. And it helps strangers to relax.

We use food to mark and commemorate occasions. Weddings, birthdays, and rights of passage. Food is made and dished out at funerals and religious gatherings. We create and execute rituals around food.

Food is symbolic.

We express ourselves emotionally, energetically, and physically through food.

Food brings us together. Sharing food is a gesture of peace. Language and communication are developed and grown at the table.

Taste is the most intimate of the five senses. It requires you to be up close and personal.

You cannot taste from long distances. And our mouths are a gateway to pleasure.

History of Taste

Our first encounter with taste is often born of love.

Breast milk is a love offering from our mother’s heart. Saturated with adoration and affection. In the early stages of development, it is not unusual for a mother to feed her child with her bare hands. And sometimes, while the child is still toothless, she will chew the food first so that it can be easily digested.

There is an Indian custom where at birth, the grandmother dips her pinky finger in a jar of honey. She then writes “Om” with the honey on the baby’s tongue. The baby is gifted with a very loving, sensual experience from the very beginning of its life outside of its mother’s womb.

Food is not just about physical nourishment. It’s also about physical pleasure, even for people who only eat to live.

The taste of food is important.

For many, flavor and texture make all the difference. We devote more time and energy to seeking the foods we enjoy.

Adults have approximately 10,000 tastebuds, which can identify salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami.

The tip of the tongue senses sweetness. The sides sense sour. The rear senses bitter. And salty and umami are pretty much all over the tongue. There are also taste receptors on the cheeks, palate, and throat.

Those little pits and grooves (papillae) on your tongue are not tastebuds. But each papilla contains several tastebuds within it.

The lifetime of a tastebud is between a week and ten days. Just as aroma must be airborne before we can smell, we can only taste once a flavor begins to dissolve, which is one of the many functions of saliva.

Heredity also plays a role in our tasting abilities. And naturally, the presence of scent is essential.

Taste is not just about flavor. It’s also about the sensation we experience while eating and drinking. Taste encompasses texture, temperature, and smell.

Close your eyes and imagine you are eating a spoonful of delicious ice cream.

First, you feel the softness on your tongue. Then the coolness in your mouth. As the ice cream warms in your mouth, experience the aroma penetrating your palate.

Tasting is a multisensory experience.

The basic tastes have also developed identities outside of the mouth.

Bitter is associated with feelings of anger, hurt, and resentment.
Sweet conjures pleasant feelings and delight.
Sour is often used to convey disappointment.
Salty is related to being upset or insulted.

And according to Urban Dictionary, bland Umami is:

“A person who is flavorful yet he/she doesn’t live to his/her full flavor. This person is exciting but doesn’t act on his/her wants or feelings.”

Taste has many dimensions.

Bitter is theorized to be at the rear of the tongue to encourage a gag reflex in the event of ingesting poison. Although we often bypass the bitter response, as is the case with alcohol consumption. Unless, of course, you like your drinks sweet!

Sweet is a different story. Most people enjoy sweet because sweet is a carbohydrate signal. And carbs are essential to our survival. But unlike other animals, humans crave sweets… a lot.

Salt is a jack of all trades. It lessens the bitterness and enhances sweetness. Salt is necessary to sustain life.

We season our food with salt. And salt seasons our bodies. Salt is in blood, sweat, and tears. If we did not consume salt, we would die because the human body does not produce salt. So we must get it from outside.

Taste is so much deeper than delicious food.

The Sensuality of Taste

Food is sexy.

Sexy may not be your first thought when it comes to food. For many people, food is sustenance. A source of energy. A biological necessity.

But nature disagrees.

Food and genitalia.

Cucumbers, carrots, zucchini, and bananas are some of the many phallic foods.

Oysters, figs, grapefruit, papaya, and onions are all reminiscent of the vulva.

Peaches look like plump, tight rumps.

Tomatoes were once called love apples and have been suspected in the the Garden of Eden incident.

Then there are the foods that are rumored to be aphrodisiacs. Chocolate, truffles, and oysters, to name a few.

Food is creation…

As in intercourse.

“…the earth becomes pregnant and produces crops as its offspring. And since fruits are the product of the sex of plants, we are literally eating the fruit’s placenta.”

Take a moment to take all that in…

Life, in all its variation, is sexually transmitted.

These things may not turn you on, but it is most certainly sexy.

The lips, tongue, and genitals are all highly sensitive. This is due to the fact that they all have the same type of nerve receptors, also known as Krause’s bulb.

The mouth is multipurpose. We use it to eat, talk, kiss, and to perform oral sex. And even if you do not include food in your sexual escapades, food is almost always a prelude, an epilogue, or both, to sex.

Let’s explore kissing a little bit more, shall we?

Kissing is by far one of the most intimate of human experiences. In fact, some people believe that a woman’s lips are even more sensitive than her genitals. And we cannot ignore the way that the mouth mirrors the female genitalia.

According to Kama Sutra, a woman’s mouth is a reflection of her vagina.

“the lips are like the labia, cupids bow (a.k.a. the dip in your upper lip) is like the clitoris. And the hard palate above the front teeth is like the g-spot.”

Vaginal tissue is much like the tissue found inside the mouth.

Women (including myself) have been known to have orgasms from kissing alone. I mean, think about it, kissing uses taste, touch, smell, sound, and sometimes sight. Because sometimes you gotta peek, right?

That’s all the senses!

Kissing is both sensual and erotic. It’s an act of surrender and vulnerability. It’s stimulating and soothing simultaneously.

If you and your partner aren’t kissing, I encourage you to start. Invite the art of kissing back into your relationship.

And if you not seeing anyone at the moment, I encourage you to keep these things in mind. So that you will be mindful when the opportunity to share a kiss arises… and it will.

Now let’s get back to the sensuality of taste.

What do you crave?

Although the link to taste is quite obvious. It’s the emotional element of craving that makes it sensual. Let’s explore the most popular and widely universal craving, chocolate.

Chocolate is an emotional go-to food. Particularly heavy emotions. Women eat it when they’re PMSing. We eat when we’re heartbroken. Or when we are feeling stagnant or stuck.

Our love affair with chocolate is linked to phenylethylamine (or PEA for short). This brain chemical is responsible for the love roller coaster. I’m sure you are very familiar with the emotional highs and lows of falling in L.O.V.E.

PEA is also found in cheese… which is another favorite of mine.

Food cravings can be just as intense as sexual cravings.

Food cravings are the body’s way of communicating — sometimes a need for physical affection or emotional expression is being ignored.

When I am horny and partnered sex is not an option, my craving for chocolate increases. But I am not always privy to this information.

When my craving is just a craving, a single square will do. But when I am craving physical release, one square is not at all satisfying. The craving is insatiable because it is not what my body wants.

Chocolate becomes a temporary substitute for sex when it’s not available.

A friend of mine shared a similar experience. During a telephone conversation with her husband, she became aroused. Unfortunately, he was on his way to work. So sex was out of the question. All of a sudden she hungered for Neapolitan ice cream! Something she had not had in years.

So beware of your cravings. You might have a hankering for something else!

The body will always find a way to communicate what it needs.

The body will also instigate cravings when it needs something vital. For example, it is not at all uncommon for people suffering from iron deficiencies to crave ice or dirt.

One woman had a hankering for iceberg lettuce. Her husband who happened to be a forensic scientist thought it was strange. So he researched the compounds found in lettuce. He discovered a compound called sulforaphane, which exhibits anti-cancer traits. And tests later confirmed that his wife had early-stage breast cancer.

The body always knows… and will always share its wisdom.