sitophilia describes sexual arousal involving food. It is arguably the most socially acceptable type of paraphilia. Within studies that address paraphilia more broadly, sitophilia has yet to receive sustained scholarly attention due to the lack of clarity as to whether it represents a deviant or a normal sex practice. In all probability, the word “sitophilia” was imported into the sexual sphere in the late twentieth century from biology, which labels a genus of weevils that threaten food stores as Sitophilus and several species of food-loving fungi as sitophilia. An expansion of the sensuality inherent in food preparation and consumption into the realm of the erotic, sitophilia realizes the alleged aphrodisiac properties of foods such as oysters or chocolate by making them into a sexual fetish. See aphrodisiacs.
