October 3, 2010
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Is Food the New Sex?
Warning: Some mention of eating disorders and/or porn may appear. If you have easily-triggered addiction issues, you may want to skip.
Also, please forgive my lazy time-stamping. Too busy to write a good post today for Sunday Devotional, so this Saturday post got bumped.
This post is only for patient people with long-winded attention spans, but go read this article and tell me what you think. I definitely think the point about appetites for food and sex being surprisingly interchangeable are good.
My brief thoughts on it is that I feel that for many women, food is the new boyfriend. After years of being told by ladies magazines that they would have amazing boyfriends if they would just follow 5 simple rules and 50 new ways, many women seem fed up with sex and love. They are too burned out or stuck in bad relationships. So food becomes a sort of escape. They become fascinated and obsessed with food. And as such, food becomes the source of pleasure for them. I know otherwise well-meaning, pleasant women who would KILL ME if I dared shut off the Food Network on TV. How did this craze occur when as few as ten years ago, cooking seemed to be a nuisance? It's at the point where I feel like I have to up my cooking skills to continue to be the shining paragon of boyfriendable material I am (chuckle).
Also, I'm intrigued by how men and women have opposite attitudes towards overdoing food and sex. I feel that stressed men binge on sex/sexual materials, while stressed women binge on food. Thoughts as to why this may be so? I have a theory that there is a weird correlation between eating disorders for women and porn addictions for men. I'm not able to quite describe it, but I believe it. The cruelest correlation of all is that women don't want to admit they have a porn problem; those are for men! Men don't want to admit they have an eating problem; those are for women! And yet I believe a significant minority of men and women suffer in silence with the "wrong" type of addiction, while thinking they are the only ones in their gender who suffer from this. News flash: you aren't.
Comments (18)
I haven't read the article yet, but I am reminded of Lewis' analogy between the two, in which he imagines a world in which a nice roast or something similar is brought out on a silver platter, and the lid is seductively, slowly lifted while a room full of people whistle and hoot until finally the lid is completely off, the entire leg of lamb is revealed, and then the room is plunged into darkness. Then they wait for the next leg of lamb.
All quite interesting for sure. I can say this, food is a better spouse to me than my actual husband. Food listens to me and doesn't get on my last nerve as much. And when I do get irritated with food I can easily shut the cupboard or fridge doors and go in the other room. Not so easy to get away from my husband when he's pissing me off lol.
Dont know. I love to cook, been doing since I was a young girl with my Nona. Maybe women like food because unlike some men, it doesnt stand you up?
Of course it is, duh.
lol.
LOOK, all I know is.....you are supposed to wait AN HOUR after eating.....before having sex....
and thats some truth.
We're created to hunger and thirst for God. Anytime we're using any created thing to supplant the place of the Creator, though we may gain some short-lived satisfaction, things are going to end up poorly for our souls in the long run. We become more and more empty even as we continue to feed our eyes and our stomachs more and more, e.g.- Ezekiel 16:28-29.
Well i think food can be a replacement addiction. Yet I think its how you view things....like I have said in certain persons blog before, we are all raised on different beliefs about food and sex. For myself food was a comfort.... But i have learned that food is your friend and your enemy.
My sex life is non existent...so I can't really comment on that...plus that article was super long and boring...sorry!
Yeah... they're both addictions. There's the commonality. If you look into psych books on addictions, porn and ED will probably both be mentioned. I used to have anorexia and it was more of a control thing for me. Whenever I get stressed out... I lose my appetite. Whenever I get really to the point of feeling out of control I want to start starving. I don't, but I also believe addictions / addictive personalities never leave us. :shrug: The commonalities are... that it's easier to become addicted to something w/i a catalyst, rather than deal w/ your issues. You should submit this to Healthkicker and watch the ANA sharks come out.
i agree the food is like the new sex im a good cook and in school to be a chef. i love cooking for people but my fav people to cook for are my friends but when women find out that i love cooking and am trying to be a chef tey go nuts for me and want to be with me for that alone. kind of like the attention but hate how its ment.
Bookmarking the article to read later (I have to run), but I just wanted to comment because I was JUST thinking about this very phenomenon two days ago. It's VERY weird, and I see it more here than anywhere else I've ever lived. Very odd.
OK, more later after I've actually read that article. And I'm glad someone already commented about Jack's (Lewis's) analogy.
I admit I haven't made it through the article either (drove 11 hours this weekend, to and from a wedding, my brain is not working at the moment). Will do later though.
I never thought of this though but it's very true. I can only speak for the perceptions of the female side but I know food is often used as control for those struggling with relationships. Whether it is a bad relationship or none at all, when your life and destiny seems out of your control, it's easy to turn to something like food to feel like you do have some control over your life.I've seen it go both ways. Control as in "I'll eat whatever I want" to "I'll eat as little as I want". Food can replace the good feeling that love has (or the closeness felt during sex with someone you love). It's a poor substitute. But I can see where it can become one.at
Most men see food as just food. It's not comforting, it's not a replacement for anything. It's enjoyable and satisfies hunger. That's it.
I don't think men think of sex the same way women do either. For women, generally speaking, it is about closeness and connecting. Men, again generally speaking, tend to think of it more as physical. I have a guy friend who is the complete opposite of me. He sleeps around with little thought or regret. When he is in a relationship he is faithful but when he is not...let's just say wow. I asked him once if sex meant more to him when it was with someone he loved. He said absolutely. But absent the relationship, sex with someone was better than sex with no one. This blew my mind. I never thought of him making a distinction. There are always the outliers but I think, in general, men are better able to separate the emotional from the physical.
And don't even get me started about how society perceives men who have multiple partners versus women. There is a clear stigma that is entirely frustrating. You know me, I'm a pretty innocent person but, if it's acceptable for a man to sleep with multiple woman and it's considered "just being a guy", why is a woman with the same history thought of as a whore? Ugh, I digress.
You are completely correct about the "do these 5 things" blah blah blah. These are generic statements and for those who don't know better, they get frustrated when those 5 things don't work. I know many single people (myself included when I was single) that say "I just don't understand, I'm a good person. What is wrong with me that I can't find anyone". There isn't a checklist in this world that would guarantee finding the right person. It's all about timing.
It is true that hunger for food and sex are basic drives. Very interesting theories:) I see what you're saying.
Kind of interesting idea. Moderation in both cases of food and sex is key!
Makes sense to me...
Word on the "wrong" addiction thing. Silence is deadly when you're stuck in something. That was me a few years ago; I would watch pornography online and didn't really tell anybody except my husband about it because I was worried they would think I was bizarre or something. I don't think I was quite addicted, since I managed to quit fairly easily and since I didn't ever feel like I *had* to do it--it was just a bad habit. But still. It's true we've been raised, especially in church I would say, to consider pornography a temptation for the men and not the women. Such a dangerous assumption.
~V
Really interesting article! I've never really thought about the two that way, but it does make sense!
By the way, I'm one of those Food Network junkies myself...but then so is hubby. So what does that say?
Oddly enough, I enjoy the process of cooking and baking more than actually eating the results. I mean, I love to eat, but there are times when I feel like baking just to bake and not necessarily to eat. Yep, I'm a weird one.
Great post and great article.
The article says
"decades of recent research have taught us that diet has more potent effects than Betty and her friends understood, and can be bad for you or good for you in ways not enumerated before.
All that is true, but then the question is this: Why aren’t more people doing the same with sex?"
I have been wondering that a lot as well. I think it's funny how you will see sexually promiscuous people risking their lives for the pursuit of pleasure, yet chastising others for doing the very exact same thing. (overeating)
@ShimmerBodyCream - Ha, yes! food self-control is good, sex self-control is bad...
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