Food and Sex

In Jared Diamond’s book, The World Until Yesterday, he talked about what we can learn from traditional societies. He was concentrating on the bands and tribes of small scale farmers and hunter-gatherers, mostly from New Guinea, South America, Africa and Australia.  

He has this observation on the Sirionos Indians in Bolivia, 

“the Sirionos’ strongest anxieties are about food, they have sex virtually whenever they want, and sex compensates for food hunger,”

while

“our strongest anxieties are about sex, we have food virtually whenever we want, and eating compensates for sexual frustration.”

It is a sweeping statement, but many people will probably agree with Diamond.  By “we”, I suppose he is referring to people living in developed countries such as the USA, Europe, … and Hong Kong.  For many in Rwanda, Cambodia, and elsewhere, food hunger is still a major concern.