Don’t take sex advice from the Daily Mail
I usually don’t bother commenting on unsourced ‘nutrition’ claims, but the Herald has this one on the front page of the website, only four stories down from the increase in the number of Syrian refugees
It’s from the Daily Mail and it’s about sex. That’s never a good sign.
Some of the advice is plausible — they say the same things about alcohol that the Porter does in Macbeth, though less felicitously phrased. At the other extreme
The trans-fats found in most fried foods are known to decrease the libido in both men and women by increasing abnormal sperm production (lower sperm count and slower sperm movement) in men and interfering with gestation in women.
That’s fertility, not libido. The difference is kind of important.
Chocolate is always a favourite of this sort of story
A known aphrodisiac, chocolate is absolutely delightful, as it is full of anandamide and phenylethylamine, two ingredients that cause the body to release the happy hormones, known as endorphins. However, while the happy hormones are great, cocoa also contains methylxantines, which can make us lethargic and lower the libido.
The concentrations of anandamide and phenylethylamine have been demonstrated to be too small to have an effect. Also, anandamide doesn’t release endorphins — it has a direct effect (in larger doses) as a cannabis analogue. And phenylethylamine doesn’t release endorphins; it has direct but different drug-like effects (again, in larger doses). Methylxanthines are actually present in chocolate at what might be biologically relevant levels, but that description of their effects is very unusual: the best known one is caffeine.
There’s also the common sort of translation problem with stories from the other side of the world. Red meat in New Zealand typically doesn’t contain hormones used to promote animal growth — it’s illegal for lamb or venison and rare for beef. [Update: actually, this part wouldn’t be true in the UK either]
Overall, the food effects are either untrue or exaggerated, which is pretty much what you’d expect given the topic and the source. If your favourite member of the appropriate sex likes chocolate, giving them some might or might not have the desired effect. If it doesn’t, the problem probably isn’t the methylxanthines.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Red meat in the EU also doesn’t contain artificial hormones – these have been banned for about 20 years and were the subject of a bitter trade war with the US. Then again the article in the Mail only says that red meat can contain “hormones” so this could be a reference to those which will be naturally present – but having read the rest of the article I doubt it.
9 years ago
Thanks. So the story doesn’t even have that excuse, and I shouldn’t have trusted them to be right about their own market.
It’s still the sort of thing a local newspaper might care about.
9 years ago