Alas, strawberry yields forever

by Hugo Rifkind

The most powerful aphrodisiac in the world, for men and woman, is now available in a punnet near you. Nature’s Viagra? Ugh!
“Natures Viagra”. Now there’s a mucky phrase. In a mere two words, it manages to combine notions of mud, lusty old men and Charlie Dimmock. Down right grubby. It’s not a phrase that you really want to find looming out at you from your lunchtime newspaper, when lunching in a rather in a rather salubrious Marylebone cafe. Especially not when everybody else in said cafe appears to be both over the age of 70, and reading the same newspaper that you are. And especially, especially not when your lunch just happens to consist largely of “Nature’s Viagra” itself. In a punnet.

Strawberries. Who would have thought it? Not oysters, rhino horn, not chocolate. But strawberries. According to a report just released by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, strawberries are among the most powerful aphrodisiac in nature, and “increase the sex drive of both men and woman far more effectively than any other fruit or vegetable”. Did you get that? Any other fruit or vegetable. Even a particularly rude-shaped fruit or vegetable. Even, to paraphrase Blackadder, a “turnip shaped like a thingy”. The humble strawberry beats them all.

How are you supposed to react then, in a salubrious Marylebone cafe, when you discover that you have been stuffing your face with Nature’s Viagra? How are you supposed to face the genteel, platinum-haired Marylebone ladies, who eye you supposed with horror from their tables laden with more chaste and puritan lunchtime delights? Your fingers daubed with love juice, your mouth sticky with hot crudhed lust, you sit, branded by their stares as a drug-crazed sex beast who ought to be locked away in a cell. Is there any way out ? How are you supposed to even summon the waitress? “Excuse me? Miss? I no longer desire Nature’s Viagra. For decency’s sake, I would prefer a less depraved food. Have you a turnip, shaped like a thingy?”

Certainly, you cannot just keep eating. Not once you know that Patrick Holford, the scientists behind this disquieting research, has this to say: “Every time you have sex, or simply want to ready yourself or your partner ready for sex, you should rapidly consume a handful of raspberries or strawberries.” Granted, this might conjure up a mildly amusing image when seen in the context of a pub at closing time. Granted, it could provide, over time, a more honest alternative to the convention of asking an intended partner home for a “coffee”. But in a salubrious Marylebone cafe at lunchtime? It is an etiquette nightmare.

Scientifically, I gather its zinc. Berries- principally strawberries, but with raspberries coming close behind- are stuffed full of the stuff. Once ingested into the body, zinc governs testosterone, helps non-specified female areas prepare for sex, and acts as a major ingredient in human sperm. These things rarely all happen in the same body, obviously, except in the most specialist of Soho night-clubs. Holford insists that “a dieting containing high levels of berries will improve performance within days or even hours”. All of which made my salubrious Marylebone lunch seem rather tawdry. And don’t even get me started on Wimbledon. It’s like something from the last days of Ancient Rome.

Most troubling of all, though, is the very idea that there could be such a thing as Nature’s Viagra. What else lurks inside the seemingly innocuous foodstuffs we shovel down our gullible gullets? Where is Nature’s Valium? Nature’s Imodium. Nature’s crack cocaine? Nature’s laxative is the coconut, as I discovered a few years ago after I arrived for a month’s camping on a remote island in the Indian Ocean, and found myself, severely under equipped, paper-wise. Thanks heavens, is all I can say, for the copy of Men are from Mars, Woman are from Venus my girlfriend has had brought along. A very satisfying read, my way.

Will time reveal Nature’s expectorant, Nature’s antihistamine. Nature’s emetic? And what of the potential cocktails. Are there combination of fruit out there that can make us break out in hives, glow blue, or hop around screaming and thinking we are Napoleon? Can we risk it? The humblest of fruit salads suddenly seems a minefield. In Marylebone cafes, can we ever brave such things again? Who knows what beak-outs, ruptures and explosions we might face over the simplest of seemingly healthy puddings. Our mealtimes are a Russian roulette of alternative pharmacology. Perhaps Fruits of the Forest tartlet will render us of worms, perhaps it will render us bald for life. Who can say? Myself. I just paid for my lunch and shuffled off home, feeling as though I ought to be in a dirty mac. Behind me, those aged Marylebone ladies winked at each other, and smirked, and no doubt ordered the fruit salad themselves. Nature’s Viagra indeed. Ugh.

May27th 2004