Skip to main content

Natural Aphrodisiacs - A Valentine's Day Special


With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, your thoughts turn to that special someone and the once a year night devoted to showing each other how you truly feel. It is a pressure-filled evening, to say the least.

This year, instead of braving the crowds for an overpriced dinner for two, consider making dinner at home. To make the evening even more, ahem, romantic, incorporate three all natural aphrodisiacs in your menu.

An aphrodisiac appropriately takes its name from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Aphrodisiacs are supposed to cause the brain to release chemicals, which stimulate feelings of arousal and sexual desire. Whether they truly work or not is debatable, but it can’t hurt, right? If nothing else, just feeding your special someone a supposed aphrodisiac might have a psychosomatic effect and just have you both thinking you’re more in the mood than usual.

Three commonly available, all natural aphrodisiacs you could incorporate into your dinner with ease are tomatoes, hot spices, and chocolate.

Begin your meal with a simple caprese salad, dressing the tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella, and fresh basil with balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes in your salad are supposed to have a calming effect, getting rid of Valentine’s Day jitters. Additionally, this fruit has been linked to increased muscle control, which may come in good use later.

For your entrée, make a simple pasta dish with a spicy arrabbiata sauce, which is a simple tomato sauce with garlic, basil, and lots of hot red chili. Or make a more traditional marinara sauce to serve with spaghetti and spicy meatballs. Or toss some pasta with fresh cheese and spicy sausage. The key here is the spicier, the better. Hot spices have been linked to an increased heart rate and light perspiration, two physical side effects that will remind your partner of another activity that will raise his or her heart rate and cause him or her to perspire.

Finally, end your meal with a chocolate. You could bake up some molten lava cakes (Williams Sonoma carries great ones!) or just feed each other squares of high quality chocolate. And there’s nothing wrong with going the chocolate-covered strawberry route either. Chocolate is the strongest of these natural aphrodisiacs and a great way to end your romantic meal. Containing phenyl ethylamine (PEA), chocolate stimulates the same part of the brain as falling in love.

Why spend unnecessary amounts of money for a Valentine’s Day special when you could have an equally romantic dinner at home? And even better, your dining experience will be completely private.