Sweet like chocolate..?

Marinade:

4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon mirin

½ tablespoon fish sauce

½ tablespoon soy sauce

2 small dried chillies

Pinch soft brown sugar

Vegetables for marinade, left overnight:

½ cucumber, seeds removed, diced

Handful of radishes, sliced

1 Asian pear, peeled and piced

To serve:

Watercress

That was my dinner last night. And no, it wasn’t an attempt to pickle my insides. I just love a good tang.

Whilst enjoying said tang, toes fully curled, eyes resting on nothing in particular except the distance, crunching and munching in peaceful harmony, my mind rested upon something (yes, it does happen every so often).

What is it, or why do women, by and large, go nutty for sweet things more than men do? Please note the “by and large”. There are exceptions to every rule, case or scenario. I am one of them. But, the majority of females I know get positively fizzy (oo eer missus) about the idea of some melting moment death by whatever temptation sensation chocolate bomb explosion. And if it’s not chocolate it will be a ludicrous, sorry, ‘cute’ cupcake (excuse me whilst gouge my own eye out with a hot schpoon. An act more enjoyable than a cupcake) piled high with tooth-decayingly offensive buttercream.

Is it the language or imagery used to market and describe these items? Think of Magnum, the ice-creams – sultry colours, the impression of silk or velvet fabric as the background for each advert, lips, swirls, indulgence – it’s all there. 

And then there’s chocolate “melting moments” sold in most supermarkets and on most “gastro” pub menus. I need no genius to identify what moment makes a woman ‘melt’. And one would hope she is not so starved that it comes only in the form of said dessert.

As for our nefarious little cakes, raunchy may not be at the fore, but an overt femininity pervades every crumb. They are ‘cute’ and ‘fun’ and ‘pretty’ and, perhaps most importantly, ‘indulgent’. I have had the misfortune to be trapped on a bus listening to two females extoling the virtues of cupcakes, finishing with the fact that “it is literally like having one whole cake all to yourself, but, like, so much less guilt!” To which the other replied, “Oh my god, how. Fun.” Only in the realms of Blumenthal and Adrià can I imagine food to be “fun”. Otherwise it is enjoyable, delicious, tasty and all the rest of it. But “fun” the food is not. And if it is, the food itself, you need to reassess your interpretation of “fun”.

I have yet to see a man, (without a woman at his side having bought it for him), gleefully tuck into a cupcake as he walks down the street. Krispy Kreme far more likely. But why? They too come in feminine forms – pink glazes, chocolate, sprinkles and flakes. Whilst women most certainly do get fizzy about Krispy Kremes, there is a robustness about just what an assault they are on the palate that make men more amenable the idea. Even the word “doughnut”. You can really cough it out. “Cupcake” on the other hand. It’s infinitely more delicate. Or, tongue in cheek, it sounds like the greeting you’d get from the local grocer as you walked past in the morning.

The other notion is that women spend more time agonising over food and the effects food has on their figures.

A man is hungry. He goes to a shop. He sees a chocolate bar. He buys it. He eats it. He continues with his day.

 A woman is or is not hungry. She craves chocolate. She tries to ignore the craving. She reminds herself of that dress or that party or the bikini. She craves chocolate. She tries to ignore the craving by buying a new piece of clothing online. She craves chocolate. She reminds herself that chocolate is b-a-d. She craves chocolate. She relents and proceeds to eat two chocolate bars. She spends the rest of the day, if not week, regretting having eaten the chocolate.

For the same sort of reasons, women often only eat desserts when eating out, or on a ‘special occasion’. And the same Bacchic frenzy can overtake them at the point of sinking their schpoon into the luscious and impenetrable molten lava glistening before their eyes. There is a sense of having allowed themselves to indulge.

I get that. Everybody ‘indulges’ in something that we know is not wise or healthy to eat every day. Mine would be bread dipped in amazing, virulently green olive oil, Italian cheeses or gelato. But what I don’t get is why this sense of “no, I mustn’t” and then “yes I can indulge” appears to beset women more than men. Is it really all social conditioning to make women care about their figures more than men?

I find that a difficult pill to swallow.

I go mad for fruit, which is sweet, and sorbets or Italian ice-cream (English is too creamy. Bleh), which are also sweet, but that is where it stops. The occasional meringue if it’s still chewy on the inside, maybe one macaron if it is from Mr Incredible Hermes. But otherwise my palate revels in sour, bitter, tangy and sharp. I find chocolate, cream and butter weighty and visually uninteresting. I cannot explain why, and I do not believe myself to be superior because of it. But seeing my fellow females flip a screw over the dessert menu, whilst the males in the group idly glance over it, perhaps pick something, perhaps don’t, and find myself scouring the coffee making apparatus, cheese on offer, or digestifs, well, it doesn’t make sense to believe there is nothing behind it.

Is there something in a woman’s sensory receptors that is more responsive to desserts and sweet tastes? You don’t hear many men ordering an Archers and lemonade at the bar…

Or is it the internal dialogue that besets even the most relaxed and confident women, gently reminding them of the potential negative effects of having that dessert?

Or, is it the marketing used for these products? Are women more susceptible to the hidden messages? In daily life we are most certainly more sensitive to nuances than men. And most definitely more thinking than men (no, not a feminist rant. Just that on the whole [again, exceptions to every rule] women think about ‘things’ more than men. Men tend to accept what is there in front of them, end of).

As I ate, occasionally screwing my nose up slightly in delight at the sharp, salty, tangy KAPOW my dinner was enrobing my palate in, I resolved that I had no idea. Probably a mix of it all. And if the genetic or mental wiring element holds true, I definitely don’t have it.

And with that I reached for my dessert. The jar of pickled onions, and my schpoon.