Smells of the Season – Sex and Thanksgiving

It wasn’t long after I was first adopted by a kindly American family (they took pity on my “hollow existence” having never known Baby Ruths, Super Bowl commercials, or freely available hand guns) that I became acquainted with the customs of American Thanksgiving. Indeed, it only took one day of overeating, televised dog shows, and candied yams for me to fully appreciate why Thanksgiving is so carefully tied up with so many American’s memories of family and childhood.

Could it be this intimate relationship between formative experience and sense memory that explains the unique, and until recently, unexplained connection between Thanksgiving and sex? Could I be making this entire story up just to figure out a way to blog about Thanksgiving. I wish the latter were true, but sadly no. Science, as it often does, has something to say about this.

For many years, Dr. Alan Hirsch, the founder and neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, has been exploring the relationship between sexual arousal and smell, through a series of experiments where subjects are hooked up to monitoring equipment (measuring penile blood flow in men and vaginal blood flow in women) and then exposed to a variety of scents and see what grows (or flows, as the case may be).

In one study with men pumpkin pie and lavender increased penile blood flow by 40%, followed by doughnut and black licorice, lily of the valley, and buttered popcorn.

For women the top producing scent was (I’m not making this up) Good and Plenty candy and cucumber, followed by baby powder, pumpkin pie/lavender, and baby powder/chocolate.

The researchers are not drawing any conclusions from their studies, and acknowledge the dozens of alternative explanations for their findings, the limitations of the research design, and need for further study.

But it’s interesting to note that of the smells the men were exposed to, while pumpkin pie ranked highest, cranberry ranked lowest. It makes you wonder about the sexual conflict every man faces when he sits down to Thanksgiving dinner. It also makes you wonder who finds the combination of baby powder and chocolate arousing.

Read more – Weird Sexual Science: Sex and Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie May Trigger Sexual Arousal in Men