What is Sitophilia?

DISCLAIMER - This posting begins with a very intimate account of Michael Samadhi's first exposure to a specific sexual fetish - Sitophilia.  This account is true and accurate, and is intended solely to illustrate the topic of this post.  If honest accounts of underage sexuality are personally offensive, please leave this page immediately.  In no way should this posting be taken as encouraging sexual activity between adults and minors (pedophilia) in any manner shape or form.  Serafina and I are both survivors of sexual abuse when we were youths, and as such we absolutely abhor the act of sexualizing children.  However, no one is served by pretending children themselves are unaware of sex.  Education is one key to preventing abuse, so please educate yourselves, and your children, to prevent child sexual abuse.

One early winter morning when I was about fourteen years old, my Mother got a call from her best friend Toni, who was in a terrible frenzy.  I'd already been awake for a few minutes, trying my best to be still and silent while masturbating under the covers.  At first, I was upset about the interruption caused by the phone, but then I realized this call wasn't going to be a problem for me at all.  You see, Toni had caught her daughter masturbating with a hot dog, just moments before placing the call.  I was good friends with her daughter Shelly, as we often swam and biked together during summertime.  I'd noticed her body maturing as we entered puberty together, but still had it in my mind that girls didn't want, and were not interested at all in sex.  Now I knew better.  By the end of that next summer, I'd lost my virginity to Shelly.  I mean how could I help myself from wanting to replace Oscar Mayer's wiener with my own.

This is Michael Samadhi, and that's a true story.

About a month ago I started what I intend to be a continuing series of essays discussing specific fetishes with a posting on Forniphilia.  That post was inspired, at least in part, by observing children at play in a Dentist's office.  As you might guess, inspiration comes to me in strange times and places, and in strange ways too.

I was inspired today by two very different blogs.

The first moment of inspiration was from a food blog called the Vibrant Chef.  A lovely lady chef from Vancouver, the Vibrant Chef describes herself by saying:

 "I promote Ethical Eating and community building. I love beauty in the form of food, people, and ideas."  

On her blog there's a reoccurring series called 'Food Fetish' that features individuals from the Vancouver region expressing their love of a specific food accompanied by sexy but tasteful photos that should be workplace friendly for most folks.

The other inspiration was decidedly not workplace safe, a blog named Between My Sheets, and a posting called Food, Glorious Food.  It's a guest post by a writer named Victoria Blisse, who's written a novel incorporating more than a little food play into the storyline.  The post also includes a simple sexy recipe.

Obviously, after that introduction, it should be clear I'm going to be discussing another fairly common fetish activity.  It's called Sitophilia by doctors of all kinds - (MD & PhD) - but to you and I, it's probably known as Food Play or Food Fetish.

Food play, aka Sitophilia, is a form of sexual fetishism in which participants are aroused by erotic situations involving food.  Sometimes the scientific and medical professions get a little odd in their naming conventions, and the term Sitophilia would seem to be one of them.  I can't easily find the name's origin online, but it's certainly listed among sexual fetishes in the old psychological textbooks.

The topic of sexually stimulating herbs and foods is one worthy of it's own postings, but it's a related topic that at least needs to be acknowledged here.  In some cultures it is believed that consuming certain food items can cause, or increase, sexual arousal.  Quite a few different foods and herbs are considered to be aphrodisiacs, and that's also true for some specific animal parts.  Chocolate, for instance, is a widely considered to be an aphrodisiac, an assumption that sheds more than a little light on the tradition of giving chocolates to our lovers on Valentine's Day.  Oysters have a similar reputation, as do a number of other foods.

Eating itself can be a sensual activity, so food play can come in a great variety of shapes and forms.   Among the most obvious food candidates for purely sexual use are a number of fruits and vegetables with phallic shapes that make them primary candidates for insertion.

Here, we're talking the food sex "classics" like banana, cucumber, and zuchinni.  Gourds and corn are perhaps less commonly used, but fall into the same general group.  Also categorized with the insertable fruits and vegetables are some cooked and processed meats, items like summer sausage and hot dogs, a topic I touched in the introduction.

Then there is the other side of the coin, items that aren't inserted, but instead can be made to facilitate a man's cock for a simulated fucking. Traditional items in this category include watermelon or pumpkin, but, an entire generation has also been exposed to at least one baked good alternative, as in the movie American Pie.

Yet another form of foodplay is the Japanese tradition of Nyotaimori.  This is the practice of serving sushi from the body of a naked woman, also commonly called "body sushi."  Here's a quotation describing the practice:

Before becoming a living sushi platter, the person (usually a woman) is trained to lie down for hours without moving. She or he must also be able to withstand the prolonged exposure to the cold food. Before service, the individual is supposed to have taken a bath using a special fragrance-free soap and then finished off with a splash of cold water to cool the body down somewhat for the sushi.
    -- Jack Herbert on Nyotaimori (body sushi), Japan for the Uninvited

It shouldn't be surprising that a sexualized activity like Nyotaimori is a controversial topic in Japan.  While some highly prize the tradition and it's eroticism, other's call it a, "National disgrace for Japanese women." It's beyond the scope of coverage I'd like to include here, but there's a nice fairly recent article in The Japan Times about the controversy, if anyone is interested in more background on this topic.

Within the BDSM community, food play can take on a great number of other guises as well.  Masters and Mistresses can choose to control their submissive's eating habits and food intake as a regular part of their D/s play.  I've observed a number of references to this type of practice in submissive's journals online, but have never yet attempted it myself.

Food play is also used directly in BDSM scenes, where a submissive might be blindfolded for surprise and to increase her sense of taste, and then fed a variety of foods.  The movie 9 1/2 Weeks, while flawed in a number of other ways, features a great food scene of this kind between Mickey Rourke's and Kim Basinger's characters.

While some food play may be relatively mild in it's intensity, other forms can go towards the other extreme. Some dominants may go as far as restraining their submissive's hands in some way, followed by instructions to eat from a bowl on the floor.  For individuals into erotic humiliation or pet play, this can be a highly charged activity.

I'd like to wrap up today's essay now, despite knowing that there are a great number of variations on the theme of food play I've ignored in this post.  By no means am I attempting to be encyclopedic in my presentation, so there's plenty of room to revisit this subject.

If I've missed a favorite activity of yours, don't hesitate to let me know, and I'll gladly include your personal style of food play in another post, when I'm inspired to revisit this topic at a later date.