Our diet affect how our breath and urine smell, so it seems pretty reasonable that it would also affect how we taste “down there” (if you catch my drift). If you go on the hunt for foods that will make you taste better, you’ll find no shortage of articles telling ladies what to eat to make their lady parts more pleasant.
You might have heard that pineapples make the vagina taste better, but there’s actually no scientific basis to support that. Other suggestions have some scientific backing but rely on big leaps of logic.
For example, strong smelling foods like asparagus, garlic, and curry can make your sweat and pee stinkier and could therefore possibly make your vagina smell (and taste) worse. Also, eating foods high in alkaline, like red meat, alcohol, and caffeine, could throw off your vagina’s pH balance, making it taste unpleasantly acidic.
GIF courtesy of homes.com
But these are all assumptions. I oddly could not find any scientific study about how foods influence the taste of genitalia. Even if such a study exists, articles telling you how to make your vagina taste better are not citing any scientific sources.
So if they’re not reporting any real scientific discoveries, then why do so many websites feel the need to tell women how to make their vaginas taste better? Why aren’t they talking about how these foods impact the vagina’s health? Why are we so desperate to improve the its flavor?
Sure, you can find suggestions on how to make semen or the penis taste better, but they mostly come from highly specialized sex publications, sketchy NSFW sites, or YouTube videos. You don’t really see the mainstream media like Jezebel, Buzzfeed, or Elite Daily telling dudes how to make their penises taste more pleasant.
Genitalia in general just aren’t particularly appetizing, but only women seem responsible for doing something about it. A single article about how to make a vagina taste good may not seem like an issue, but when you put it in the larger context, a bigger problem arises: society constantly tells women that their natural bodies are flawed and in need of improvement.
Gif courtesy of mtv.tumblr.com
This trend goes beyond the classic body shaming (which also happens to men). Consider make up and shaving. Society teaches women to get rid of their natural body hair and cover up their natural faces.
And I know a lot of women enjoy and gain confidence from shaving and wearing makeup. I am one of those women. However, I often wonder how my life would be different if society had never taught me to feel the need to alter my body in these ways.
I think of all of the time and money that I would save. More importantly, I wonder if I would be more comfortable in my own skin if I hadn’t been taught that my natural body needed to be changed to be desirable.
Constantly telling women what foods to eat to make their vagina taste good sends the same message. It’s one more way our society conditions little girls to think they must change their body for the pleasure of others.
Gif courtesy of giphy.com
I also want to clarify that I’m not saying people shouldn’t try to make their genitalia taste good. As the Jezebel author notes, improving the flavor of your lady parts could be seen as just a polite thing to do for your sex partner. That’s valid in theory.
But if it’s really a matter of courtesy, these articles wouldn’t be solely geared towards women. If we’re really just trying to make oral sex more pleasing for everyone, then we would also be focused on telling men how to make their penises taste better.
If someone wants to do a real scientific study about how different foods affect the flavor of all genitalia, be my guest. But until that happens, let’s focus on informing women how they can keep their vaginas happy and healthy. Not tasty.