When love translates to food, some swear that equals comfort food. Depending on which culture you’re most at home with that could mean anything from naan and masala to a big fat kielbasa sausage, moussaka or fried pork chops with mushroom gravy.
If you translate love as life force, as in vitality, tea or coffee might be your love-food of choice, what with all those life-affirming but mysterious antioxidants – can you even pronounce epigallocatechin gallate? – never mind the zing from caffeine.
You’re French? Then here’s to red wine and its polyphenols that limit the negative effects of smoking and fatty foods like a double-cream Camembert that might have come straight from heaven.
If your first love-food struck you down on the prairies a few years back, you might go for the aptly named ambrosia – a gooey concoction of miniature marshmallows, tinned pineapple and mandarin oranges, sweetened coconut and just enough sour cream to glue it all together and qualify it as salad at the buffet counters of every cheesy mall restaurant from Winnipeg to Edmonton.
However, if you’re a die-hard believer in aphrodisiacs, those larger than life legends that promise to make you feel, well, larger than life, raw oysters will be front and centre on Valentine’s Day, their reputation as Love Potion Number 9 even edging out the traditional North American love-dinner offering of steak and/or lobster.
I know, I know. Some people, like Chris Field, the Oyster Guy at Bearfoot Bistro, swear that the oyster’s love reputation resides more in fact than fiction. Those squiggly little guys are the richest animal source of vitamins and minerals. Their biggest asset as aphrodisiac: their high level of zinc, which aids in the production of testosterone in men and estrogen in women.
But if you’re asking me about my love-food of choice, just in case you’re thinking of couriering it over in time to wow me for Feb. 14, you can keep your ambrosia salad and perfect Camembert, you can chuck those shell-shucked critters and just deliver the chocolate. Pounds of it, trays of it, tins of it, little foil-wrapped cubes of it – and the darker the better.
For I would argue, with all due respect to the Oyster Guy and company, that chocolate is, hands down, the closest thing you’ll get to an aphrodisiac this side of heaven’s gate.
I do believe I’m not alone on this.
All hail to a whale of a lift
"Chocolate is one of the most effective restoratives," wrote French gastronome Brillat-Savarin, as quoted in Larousse Gastronomique . "All those who have to work when they might be sleeping, men (I would add, and women) of wit who feel temporarily deprived of their intellectual powers, those who find the weather oppressive (sound familiar?), time dragging, the atmosphere depressing; those who are tormented by some preoccupation which deprives them of the liberty of thought; let all such men imbibe a half-litre of chocolat ambré ."
It’s pretty unlikely you’re about to whip up a half-litre or even a cup of the chocolat ambré to which Monsieur Brillat-Savarin refers, since such chocolate no longer exists. But if you can get your hands on some real ambre gri s, an excretion from the intestines of sperm whales, you may be on to something.
Ambre gris
alone was thought to be an aphrodisiac. Again, Brillat-Savarin: "When I get one of those days when the weight of age makes itself felt – a painful thought – or when one feels oppressed by an unknown force, I add a knob of ambre gris the size of a bean, pounded with sugar, to a strong cup of chocolate, and I always find my condition improving marvellously."The burden of life becomes lighter, thought flows with ease and I do not suffer from insomnia, which would have been the invariable result of a cup of coffee taken for the same purpose."
Well then, the hell with chocolate. Pass me some of that ambre gri s.
Unfortunately for us, it is no longer used in food, but only as a preservative in perfumes, and that’s a synthetic variety since possession of any real ambre gris would land you in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Chocolate’s insider magic
So back to chocolate.
Why is it so good for you and your mood? First off, it’s a great source of antioxidants, the chemicals that roam around your body protecting cells by fighting off free radicals, which are linked to things like cancer in your body and causing rust in other bodies. The USDA advises that dark chocolate has the most antioxidants, twice as high as prunes, the best of all fruits and vegetables for antioxidants.
Chocolate contains the highest ratio of polyphenols, a big family of antioxidants. The amount of polyphenols in a serving of dark chocolate is comparable to that in a cup of black tea and higher than that in a glass of red wine.
If you’re concerned about your girth, hot chocolate is your best bet for adding antioxidants without the paunch cocoa butter delivers. Make your hot chocolate from scratch with pure cocoa powder, milk and sugar and you’ll come up with a drink like Brillat-Savarin enjoyed, sans ambre gris. It will contain five times as many antioxidants as a commercial mix and taste even better.
Dark chocolate also contains more flavonoids than any other food, including green tea and red wine and blueberries. Flavonoids, which also have antioxidant properties, are good for your cardiovascular system and are related to lower risk of heart disease, lung cancer, prostate cancer, asthma and type II diabetes.
But never mind all that good healthy stuff, why does chocolate make us feel good?
To start, it triggers the release of endorphins, those swell morphine-mimicking chemicals our own bodies make that give us a boost and make us feel happy and satisfied.
Now you could go out and run to do that, but I prefer to grab a chunk of chocolate, which will also deliver a little hit of caffeine, magnesium and copper and a wallop of tyrosine, key to making dopamine, a hormone that increases all those good feelings of alertness, motivation, decisiveness and clarity.
Can you think of a sweeter way to lift that "weight of age" right off your poor hunched shoulders? Neither can I. Please pass those chocolates.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning freelancer who never looks a gift chocolate in the mouth.
