10 reasons why chocolate is better than sex

To celebrate National Chocolate Week, Emma Cowing contemplates the food we find it hardest to resist and presents some persuasive arguments as to why it has the edge on life's other greatest pleasure

1 CHOCOLATE IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEART

Apparently a chocolate researcher (this is a job? Are there any vacancies?) at the University of California, San Francisco recently reported seeing a number of heart benefits as a result of chocolate consumption – including increased blood flow, less clotting and an improvement in bad cholesterol levels thanks to cocoa's antioxidant qualities. Meanwhile, sexual activity actually raises, briefly, the risk of having a heart attack, and a number of deaths have been attributed to heart attacks during sex. Now correct us if we're wrong, but as far as we're aware, no-one ever died eating a Tunnock's Tea Cake.

2 CHOCOLATE ALWAYS SATISFIES, NO MATTER WHAT ITS SIZE

Have you ever noticed all the wonderful different sizes chocolate comes in? There are fun-size Mars Bars, extra-large Toblerones, even Curly Wurlys out there, all of them ready to offer up their own unique form of pleasure. And the wonderful thing about them is that they are all, in their own individual ways, entirely 100 per cent satisfying, no matter how big, small or curly-wurly they are. Unlike some other things we could think of.

3 CHOCOLATE IMPROVES YOUR BRAIN

Which is not to say that guzzling three bars of Green & Black's Maya Gold a day will guarantee you automatic entry to Mensa, but research at a university in West Virginia recently suggested that chocolate can boost memory, reaction time, attention span and problem-solving skills, all by increasing blood flow to the brain. And the best news is that it works not only on younger members of the population, but on elderly people too, proving yet again that chocolate is the gift that just keeps on giving. As for sex, did you know that at the point of orgasm most of a woman's brain shuts down? And that this has been linked to strokes among young women? Talk about a passion killer.

4 CHOCOLATE CAN BE ENJOYED BOTH HOT AND COLD

Ah, the joys of a cup of steaming hot chocolate by the fire on a cold winter's evening. Warm and fragrant, sweet and milky, with a stick of cinnamon for extra flavour, hot chocolate is streets ahead of a Cup-A-Soup in the "hug in a mug" stakes. At the other end of the spectrum, what could be more pleasant than a large glass of ice-cold chocolate milkshake, ice cubes clinking happily. Such extremes of temperature leave little to recommend themselves when it comes to our other pursuit, however. Sex by the fire is more likely to be a lesson in human frailties, particularly if your unmentionables get caught by the embers. And that whole ice-cube thing? So not worth the effort.

5 CHOCOLATE IS GOOD FOR YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE

If you're hypertensive, eating 3.5 ounces of dark chocolate every day for a fortnight may well cause your blood pressure to drop significantly, as it did during a study on a group of volunteers at the Antioxidants Research Laboratory. Ironically, this may actually help improve your sex life, as high blood pressure can lead to all sorts of sexual problems, such as impotence, lack of desire and a decrease of blood flow to, er, crucial areas. If you're having bedroom problems in the first place, though, chances are you're going to have a far more enjoyable time in bed with a bag of Revels anyway.

6 YOU NEVER HAVE TO FAKE IT WITH CHOCOLATE

Come on, who are we kidding here? We don't need Meg Ryan to demonstrate just how easy it is to fake an orgasm, but honestly, who can be bothered? Not, at least, when there's a perfectly acceptable alternative lurking in your local corner shop that doesn't require an Oscar-worthy performance to keep its own, fragile ego intact. Chocolate doesn't demand you wear flouncy knickers from Agent Provocateur before you can share a sofa and it doesn't mind at all if you only eat half, declare you're no longer in the mood and suggest that you finish it tomorrow night. Most importantly, chocolate doesn't turn round to you afterwards and smugly ask, "how was it for you, babe?"

7 CHOCOLATE HELPS YOU LIVE LONGER

Harvard's School of Public Health recently found that people who consumed chocolate up to three times a month lived a year longer than those who never indulged. Research suggests that sex, too, can help keep you alive for longer, but let me ask you this: would you rather stay alive only to be constantly exhausted, using up every spare atom of energy in the bedroom, or would you rather spend that extra year of life curled up on the sofa in the company of an enormous chocolate mousse?

8 CHOCOLATE IS MORE FUN WITH ONE

While sex is far from impossible alone (although one wonders what people did before the advent of the internet), it is generally agreed that it is a rather more fun activity when two individuals are involved. Not so with chocolate. Those enormous, headstone-sized bars of Galaxy? Clearly designed for "personal use". Enormous chocolate cakes that can be sliced into 12 pieces? Obviously meant as a "meal for one". And why on Earth would Thorntons offer that thoughtful service where you can choose each handmade chocolate for your box if they didn't mean for you to take that box home, lovingly unwrap it and sit, solo, enjoying every last vanilla truffle by yourself?

9 CHOCOLATE IS GOOD FOR PMT

Every woman, even those with little craving for chocolate, know what's in the post the moment they start fantasising about that Walnut Whip at the back of the fridge. When PMT hits a woman, making her irritable, on edge, teary and generally just plain mad at the world, the only thing that will soothe her troubled soul is a hefty dose of chocolate, probably because it is rich in magnesium, a deficiency of which exacerbates PMT. It is also a muscle relaxant (who knew?) and as such can help reduce stomach cramps. As for sex, well, as with everything else on the planet that isn't chocolate, didn't you just hear us say that it will only make us plain MAD?

10 CHOCOLATE LEADS TO BETTER SEX

And finally, proof that, as with most things in life, a little bit of one thing helps improve another. In a survey of 143 women published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, those who ate chocolate every day seemed to have more sex drive, better lubrication and an easier time reaching orgasm than those who didn't. So there we go: chocolate must be better than sex, because sex just isn't as much fun without it. Now, who's for a Curly Wurly?