As an ingredient becomes common, and thus cheaper, it loses its magic. Case in point: the potato. Your modern Brit is unlikely to find a plate of mashed potatoes sexually stimulating, but potatoes and sweet potatoes were hailed as aphrodisiacs when they were first introduced to the European palate; in Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Falstaff reels off a list of the era’s aphrodisiacs: kissing comfits, snow eryngoes (the candied roots of sea holly), and potatoes. Once rare ingredients such as cinnamon, cloves, marmalade, rice and pepper have likewise lost their sexy status.

The second largest umbrella group of chewable aphrodisiacs is based on the crude logic that if something looks like your nasty bits, it’ll undoubtedly put your prospective partner in the mood. Thus, scheming Lotharios and temptresses have long relied on the amorous offering of edible flowers and roots. In the British Isles, wake robin (Arum maculatum) was once valued as a thickener for puddings, a starch for Elizabethan neck ruffs, and for its phallic bloom, which earned the plant a reputation as an aphrodisiac and spawned over 20 suggestive folk names, including Adam and Eve, lords and ladies, devils and angels, stallions and mares, and dog’s dick. On a similar note, the word “orchid” is derived from the ancient Greek word for testicle. Pliny the Elder recommended bulbous orchid tubers as an aphrodisiac, and the Romans called orchids “satyrion” because legend had it that the phallic roots grew from the spilled semen of a satyr.

The tribes of Mexico preferred not the root but the flower. The Totonoc Indians believed that the orchid Vanilla planifolia sprang from the blood of a goddess, and the Aztecs named it tlilxochitl, or black flower. Vanilla planifolia is an inherently romantic plant: its small blossoms open in the morning and are exclusively pollinated by hummingbirds and melipone bees. The dirty-minded Conquistadors noted the pod’s resemblance to female genitalia, and gave the plant the name vanilla, which derived from the Latin for sheath. Europeans soon prized vanilla as an aphrodisiac; wild stories circulated that vanilla could transform the ordinary man into an astonishing lover. Elizabeth I is said to have been especially fond of vanilla pudding.

Oysters and clams have had a lewd reputation since history’s dawn. The Roman author Juvenal (a nasty misogynist) uses oysters to complete his portrait of a slut partying away the night: “When she knows not one member from another, eats giant oysters at midnight, pours foaming unguents into her unmixed Falernian, and drinks out of perfume-bowls, while the roof spins dizzily round, the table dances, and every light shows double!” In keeping with the Roman talent for using food to call attention to those ultimate aphrodisiacs — wealth and power — emperors and aristocrats turned their noses up at local oysters and sent away to the British Isles for a superior variety. The association between oysters and strumpets would have staying power: As Rebecca Stott points out in her book “Oyster,” “Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the woman oyster seller was used in poetry as a figure of erotic play, something like the oyster, to be consumed, part of the sensuous fruit of the street for the male urban voyeur.” In 19th century America, underground oyster saloons catered to base instincts — guests could slurp back dozens of oysters while cavorting with good-time girls and prostitutes; some of the seedier joints offered private rooms. A few decades later and a few hundred miles south, scantily clad ladies would shimmy in a popular striptease act called the oyster dance. In the 1940s, Kitty West (a cousin of Elvis Presley) danced on Bourbon street as “Evangeline the Oyster Girl”; to open her act, she stepped with aplomb from a giant half shell.

But food and sex also play an entwined role in more “respectable” culture. If we look at the big picture, we see food at the heart of every human ritual. As Lionel Tiger points out in “The Pursuit of Pleasure”: “The exchange of mates between families was the only process more significant for human evolution than food sharing. But it was also wholly associated with it; the wedding dinner established a circle of implication and meaning.” The Tzteltal Indians of Chiapas, Mexico, take it to the next level: in traditional families, a young married couple lives with the girl’s parents. For the first 15 days of marriage the bride and groom don’t speak to each other or sleep together. Their sole means of communication is through food. Every evening, the wife cooks a meal for her husband. If all is well on the 15th day, the couple will sleep together that night. These people clearly know their foreplay.

Our literary masters have made much of the sensual significance of food. Eve parting her lips for the fruit of knowledge may mark the most infamous sexy food metaphor, but it is by no means the only time food and sex intersect in the Bible. Half the lyric beauty of “Solomon’s Song” stems from food metaphors: “I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste”; “thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits.” Some phrases draw a direct correlation between eating and love: Food is a gift for the beloved, and the space where the lovers meet is made more beautiful by spices and fruit: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” Certain passages hint that food is part of the path to the boudoir: “The mandrakes gives a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.” Mandrake, a poisonous root from the nightshade family, was a popular aphrodisiac during ancient times. “Solomon’s Song” also references other more tasty aphrodisiacs of the day: cinnamon, saffron, figs and pomegranates.

Food scholars and scientists tend to ignore and/or ridicule the idea of a food that functions like Viagra. The Western world’s most popular edible aphrodisiacs, chocolate and oysters, do actually create a sexy hormone rush, but generally only when they are eaten in gross quantities. As food writer Amy Reiley notes, “You’re more likely to go into a diabetic coma than get that rush because you’d have to eat so much chocolate to get the effect.” Revered food historian Alan Davidson sums it up best in “The Oxford Companion to Food”: “In short, the concept of a truly aphrodisiac food is on par with that of finding a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow.”

So why the proffered carrots and the bowl of sparrow’s tongues? Perhaps because our entwined pair, food and sex, is really a threesome: food, sex and superstition. The human libido is both excitable and fragile, easy to titillate yet just as easy to destroy. So much of sexuality is subject to the vagaries of nature and the whim of another, it’s no wonder humans have sought to control the situation by relying on witch doctors, poisonous roots, dubious elixirs and our old fallback, food, a substance that we viscerally know to be the staff of life.

Or maybe we persist in the belief that specific foods can lead to sex because there’s something to it. According to anthropologist Robin Fox, food leads to sex because a male’s ability to provide food plays into the female’s need to reproduce with a mate who will help nurture their young: “a male’s willingness to provide food becomes an important index of his suitability as a mate. Above all, it suggests his willingness to ‘invest’ in the female’s offspring.” No doubt there’s something to it, but we prefer a less clinical explanation: The act of procuring or preparing a special food can be sexy in itself. We associate food with comfort, and cooking is an act of love. By creating or acquiring a special food or beverage for a potential lover, we are creating at least the illusion of love and security, which is generally conducive to sex. In his excellent book “Heat,” Bill Buford convincingly describes the concept of cooking with love: cooking as a singularly intimate act of love one performs for friends, family and lovers. He also writes of cooking to be loved: “The premise of a romantic meal is that by stimulating and satisfying one appetite another will be analogously stimulated as well.” If you’ve ever factored a date’s restaurant choice or cooking skills into your decision to put out, you’ve experienced the aphrodisiacal qualities of food.

A big part of that is that the “romantic-industrial complex that nets billions of dollars from Valentine’s Day and weddings, and it needs you to ‘buy into’ outdated ideas of love and marriage,” she wrote in a recent Op-Ed for the Nation. “The more you express your love through candies, chocolates, diamonds, rentals and registries, the more the RIC makes!” (Indeed, it’s estimated that consumers will spend roughly $17.6 billion on cards, chocolates, flowers, jewelry and the like this Feb. 14.) But instead of just trashing V-Day — or VD (i.e., venereal disease) Day, as its biggest haters like to call it — she wants to honor “the different ways we engage in loving relationships.”

A less political alternative is one introduced by everyone’s favorite fictional mid-level bureaucrat, Leslie Knope of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” She celebrates “Galentine’s Day” every Feb. 13 by getting together with her lady friends for a brunch of her signature dish, whipped-cream with a side of waffle, to celebrate female friendship. Leslie doles out quirky gifts (sculptures of everyone’s spirit animal or mosaics of their faces made out of crushed diet soda cans, for example). She compares the celebration to Lilith Fair — “minus the angst and plus frittatas.”

Granted, Galentine’s Day started as a comedy punch line, but the concept was popular enough in the real world that this year NBC put together a guide on how to create your own Galentine’s Brunch. Bon Appetit even cooked up a special waffle recipe for the occasion. It’s also inspired DIY-ers to make Galentine’s Day e-cards and re-create some of Leslie’s more memorable gifts, like crochet flower pens.

Of course, “Parks and Recreation” didn’t invent the idea of single friends getting together on Valentine’s Day — that’s no doubt been around as long as the holiday itself — it just popularized a cute term for it. Let’s not forget the gender-inclusive Palentine’s Day, Singles Awareness Day or the concept of having a friendly “anti-valentine.” Greeting card companies are increasingly cashing in on anti-Valentine’s Day card for friends, including — gasp! — Hallmark itself.

A similarly heartwarming option is Quirkyalone Day, founded by Sasha Cagen, author of “Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics,” a book about people who “prefer being single to dating for the sake of being in a relationship.” She tells me, “I’m not against Valentine’s Day, but I have never been particularly inspired by it. The aim of International Quirkyalone Day is to offer a fresh alternative where you get to create your own day free of all cliches.” It’s an excuse to “celebrate yourself and your whole life,” she says, and that can manifest in a number of different ways: “take a long walk alone (leave behind your cell phone), buy yourself daisies, start a neglected creative project, buy yourself hot lingerie, get a massage, host a dinner party.”

Of course, not all Valentine’s Day alternatives are so charmingly earnest. Anti-V-Day events across the country call on bitter singles to bring a photo of their ex to put through a paper-shredder or pin to a dart board, or exact some other form of questionable revenge. And make no mistake, while it’s nowhere near a $16 billion industry, there is a market for Cupid-hating goods — from cards reading “Love stinks” to T-shirts featuring upside-down hearts to candy hearts with sayings like, “U left seat up” and “Dog is cuter.” The social network game Farmville even has virtual anti-Valentine’s Day items for purchase, like a barbed heart and a black flower. The truth is this isn’t anything new: Long before there were pithy e-cards, there were Victorian-era vinegar valentines, insulting cards sent to one’s enemies.

Why has the holiday generated such cynicism and, sometimes, downright hatred? Cagen says, “Valentine’s Day has this way of making people feel bad, whether they are single or in a relationship. If you are single, you feel left out. If you are dating or in a relationship, you feel pressure and expectation to have a romantic evening.” She’s all for “a pure celebration of love in all its forms,” but “the problem is when we narrow that definition of love to a romantic connection.” Cagen explains, “Almost 50 percent of American adults are single, so people are bound to feel left out. It’s sort of like a Thanksgiving that only 50 percent of the population feels invited to.”

Lana, my wife, is from Jenin in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  She has a diploma in economics from Al-Najah University in Nablus. We met and fell in love in Jenin in late 2002 after Israel’s destruction of the Jenin refugee camp during the second intifada. She moved to Israel in 2005 to live with me. We now have two children, Adnan, who is 4 and a half years old and Yosra, who is 3 and a half years old.  My family means the world to me and yet our standing in Israel is extremely tenuous because of my ongoing failed effort to secure citizenship for my wife.

Despite the might of the Israeli government arrayed against us, Lana and I persevere because love is a force far more powerful than the state.  No matter the government responsible for repression, whether in apartheid South Africa, the Jim Crow South, or elsewhere, love has always been more powerful.  We knew the risks when we married after the law passed in 2003. But we were determined not to allow an apartheid state that discriminates against Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line to disrupt our love.

Lana’s residency has so far been possible only through yearly extensions of her permission to stay in Israel. Yet these have been entirely subject to the arbitrary discretion of Israel’s Interior Ministry and its security services. She has no legal or social rights, nor the possibility of obtaining health insurance or social security. She is not allowed to hold a job or drive a car. She is, by any fair reckoning, a third-class resident of Israel.

Lana used to be an independent woman – having worked for four years in the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Jenin – but today, in “modern” Israel, she is now totally dependent on me. Our home, rather than a haven, has become her prison.  She is stuck and there is no immediate prospect of release. This situation causes her and us permanent frustration. “I feel my freedom was stolen from me by this racist law,” she says. “It doesn’t matter where you live, you are always controlled and denied rights by the state of Israel, [merely] because I am Palestinian.”

We are not alone. There are tens of thousands of other Palestinian families targeted by the so-called Citizenship Law.  Originally promulgated in 2003, it prohibits Palestinians without Israeli citizenship from joining their spouses in Israel or seeking eventual rights of residence. There is no comparable prohibition against family unification for non-Palestinian citizens of Israel, i.e., the country’s present-day Jewish majority.

The law explicitly discriminates on the basis of race.  Notwithstanding this fact, the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice earlier this year rejected a final appeal against the law. As a result, my wife could well be denied the right to live with me, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, and our two children in my hometown of Akka.

As many as 30,000 Palestinian-Israeli families (approximately 130,000 individuals) are under a similar threat of separation. On either side of Israel’s unilateral line of separation, many are already living apart from their spouses and children. They have no voice in Israel and face a Supreme Court that seems to think allowing them into Israel, and upholding human rights, is akin to “national suicide.” Israel’s nonstop security emphasis has turned all members of its Palestinian minority – and their spouses – into would-be security threats.  Of course, settlers who have repeatedly employed violence from Gaza (prior to September 2005) to the West Bank to Israel face no similar restrictions on their married lives. Violence against Palestinians counts very differently in Israel.

The recent Israeli Supreme Court decision means that Lana can no longer hope, however tenuously, to acquire citizenship, or even permanent residency.  In the best case, she might obtain further extensions of her present status. Meanwhile, the threat of those extensions being suspended will hang all the more ominously over us. Each time we go to the Interior Ministry to renew her permission, and each time Lana goes to renew her permission from the Israeli military administration near Jenin, we face the possibility of being told the permit will not be renewed due to security reasons or some other excuse. It is a dreadful climate in which to raise a family. There is no certainty and stress pervades our lives.

The would-be harmony of family life is further disrupted by the fact that we cannot choose to live in Jenin. According to laws introduced after the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israeli citizens are not allowed to live in or even visit Palestinian cities in Palestinian Authority-administered areas of the Occupied Territories. We, and tens of thousands of our compatriots, are caught in a truly Kafkaesque dilemma. The fear of being torn apart as a family has become a daily part of our lives.

While many of us have since childhood suffered discrimination, dispossession and violence at the hands of the Israeli state, and have watched with dismay as the international community fails to hear and address the difficulties of Israel’s non-Jewish minority, we see the new “Citizenship Law” as marking a particularly ominous regression for Israeli society. It is clear, and explicitly acknowledged in the Israeli public arena, that the purpose of this law is to further compound the difficulties confronting the country’s Palestinian minority, to make that community ever less viable, and ultimately to secure an Israel empty of Palestinians. In recent years, and especially in this current Knesset, more that 25 laws and law proposals were passed or advanced that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel.  Many Palestinians affected are convinced that the law aims to make life so unbearable for families that they will permanently leave Israel.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who met last week with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a proponent of the legislation.  So far as I know, Secretary Clinton said not one word to him on behalf of the Palestinian families negatively affected by the “Citizenship Law” Lieberman touts. Thanks to the American silence, the United States abdicates its position as self-described “leader of the free world.”

Lieberman, who is a staunch advocate for the ethnic transfer of Palestinians out of Israel, regularly employs language that reminds Israel’s Palestinian population of the climate of violence in which our parents and grandparents were evicted from their homes in 1948, while those who remained were reduced to clear minority status.  In fact, the “Citizenship Law” has been forced upon us by a Supreme Court put in place by an Israeli democracy that holds hegemony only because over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled and never allowed to return at the time of Israel’s creation in 1948.  Such is the reality of the Middle East’s self-proclaimed “only democracy.”  It is a democracy built on ethnic cleansing that to this day is pulling apart Palestinian families from either side of the Green Line.  Meanwhile, Jewish couples from inside Israel and the illegal settlements of the West Bank face no such fears.

This Valentine’s Day I hold little hope for a steady and certain future with my wife and children.  Even venturing to share our situation – and that of thousands of other couples – endangers my family by exposing us to the whim of that faceless bureaucrat who may consequently be leaned on by an elected official unhappy that Israel is being exposed for its discriminatory laws.

This is a far cry from the Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu described last year to Congress.  In his make-believe Israel, the one delightedly indulged by an out-of-touch Congress, Palestinians enjoy full rights equal to those of Jewish Israelis.  This is a lie as the state’s discrimination against me and my family attests.

The United States has some experience with such laws through its own miscegenation laws of previous decades.  That American racism was best addressed by the civil rights movement and its success in guaranteeing equality for all citizens without regard to their race, religion or ethnicity.  On Valentine’s Day it is long past time for Israel to address its own racism by promulgating similar laws that will promote the legal equality of Palestinians and Jews alike.

I feel a certain fondness for these men. They have kept me company in my misery — even when they weren’t aware of it. They have seen a version of myself that I am not particularly comfortable with – ravenous, wild, destructive. There is intimacy there, sure. They assisted in my acting out, provided needed distraction and brought the comfort of a warm embrace, but then they were gone and the pain was still there.

As my escapades ramped up, so did my performance. Everything became a story, an anecdote. While talking to my longtime friend Margaret on the phone, I launched into a tale about how I had taken my roommate to a strip club for a sociological study of sorts and had a chance encounter with a dancer who, it turned out, was sleeping with the same man I had been casually involved with for a couple months. With the wry detachment of a soldier telling war stories at a bar, I explained how this had ended with me crying into my overpriced martini against the backdrop of men tucking dollar bills into G-strings. Margaret didn’t skip a beat: “That’s a really fascinating story, but the one thing I’m not hearing you talk about is your mom. How is she?”

What could I say — she’s dying? Again and again, I would relay these sensational stories and my friends, hardly prudes, would act thoroughly unamused. One time, I drank far too much at a party at my house and then brought a man back to my room — a man whom I’d gotten into a fight with moments earlier after he declared that he didn’t care about giving women orgasms. Afterward, when I walked out of my room, my buddy Jake, a sweet Southern boy whom I’ve known for nearly a decade and had never seen angry until then, confronted me. He was furious. “Tracy, you slept with that asshole?” He went on a terrific rant, which caused me to promptly burst into tears and I ended up sandwiched in a hug between him and his girlfriend. “My mom is dying, Jake,” I pleaded. “You know my mom! You’ve hung out at her house, you’ve eaten her food. She’s dying.” “I know, Tracy. I know your momma, I love your momma,” he said. “But you can’t do this to yourself.”

Eventually, I realized it wasn’t men that I needed, it was my friends. More than just calling me out, my friends have simply been there. Whenever I write Elissa at 2 a.m. in a frenzy of sorrow, she writes back immediately and at epic lengths. Sarah brings over wine and cries as I cry, fondly repeating, “Oh, my lady.” I give Jake branches of jade from my mom’s garden and he plants them in his yard and sends me photo updates of the plants’ progress. Susan and Katherine consistently ask me, unafraid, about how my mom is doing and what chemo she’s on now. When I come home after Christmas, shell-shocked from the realization that it is the last one I will have with my mom, my roommate Emily asks me all the right questions until I break down and sob in her arms.

Of course, the various warm bodies that I’ve had in my bed during this time have helped me to come to this revelation, but only because of what they didn’t provide. Those dalliances were educational in their emptiness, and my friends have been the antidotes. My friends are the ones who have actually supported me through this chaotic time. They are the ones who have made me feel less alone. The fantasy of having all of these things in one person — a person who can also be a warm body in your bed — is a nice one. But, honestly, the most meaningful love affair that I’ve had in the past year is the one I’ve had with my friends — and that makes Valentine’s Day not so bad at all.

1. “Valentine’s Day”: Never have so many semi-talented actors been crammed into one film with such disastrous results (and I’m including “She’s Just Not That Into You” in this assessment). So weird that a movie starring both Taylors (Swift and Lautner, who were dating at the time!) and both Jessicas (Biel and Alba, who were not) wouldn’t end up being the riveting romance film of the early 21st century, or even a close second to the British “Love, Actually,” which “Valentine’s Day” tries desperately to rip off. As a nation, let’s suck this one up and blame it on Ashton Kutcher, just like everything else. On the other hand, it’s a perfect movie to watch if you want to remember how annoying everyone can be on Valentine’s Day, whether or not they have someone to share it with.

2. “8 1/2″: Fellini’s dreamscape focuses on an aging director who’s had one too many Valentines in his life, though he keeps on trucking to find that great, mysterious l’amore. It is also a great reminder that, love or not, we all die in the end anyway. Perky! (Note: This film also works as an antidote for people who pretend they are into Italian new wave but are actually just hipster posers.)

3. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”: A great get-together film for the entire spectrum of relationship statuses, since Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman’s trippy love story works like a Rorschach test. If you believe in fate and true love, the ending is uplifting. If you’ve ever tried dating your ex after you both forgot how awful the other one was, this film is the ultimate in pragmatic reminders not to do that.

4. “Leaving Las Vegas”: An alcoholic writer meets a hooker with a heart of gold. What could go wrong? A perfect Valentine for those who believe that true love can only be found at the bottom of a bottle.

5. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”: Two girls embark on a trip to Spain, where they both are wooed by the handsome Javier Bardem (whom American audiences only knew at that point as the guy with the terrible haircut from “No Country for Old Men”). Though this movie portrays how stifling a marriage of convenience is, it doesn’t offer the freewheeling bohemian concept of romance as any type of solution. Which leaves us with the feeling that Woody Allen, like Valentine’s Day in general, is not in the habit of leaving anyone feeling good about love.