French women would choose chocolate over sex, French men wouldn’t

What's your sure-fire route to happiness?

According to a Harris Interactive poll which surveyed 1,000 French adults, men are more likely to rank sex over food, giving a roll in the hay a 7.5 rating out of 10 on a well-being scale, while women gave love making a 6.7.

When it came to cutting back on life's good stuff, men said they'd rather cut back on food than on sex. Women, however, would rather give up sex than their chocolate.

"Chemically, the same thing happens in the brain during a 'culinary orgasm' and a sexual orgasm. In fact, when we are sad and we decide to eat chocolate, we are actually masturbating the hypothalamus," sexologist Gérard Leleu explains to French Grazia.

Of the 74 per cent of respondents who were willing to give up sex for food, the foods worth ditching "the deed" for included chocolate, cheese, foie gras, oysters and strawberries. (Oddly, all foods associated with romance.)

Twenty-five per cent of women even dared to claim they get more pleasure out of a good meal than from sex.

See the poll here.

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"What gives?" asks the Chicago Tribune's Heidi Stevens.

"A lot of people have just lowered their expectations around sex," says sex counsellor and author Ian Kerner. "So many people have gotten accustomed to being in sex ruts or not having sex. The prospect of sex with their partner just doesn't light them up, or they figure the best sex they're going to have is somewhat mediocre."

He adds, "People break up every day over their sex lives. I have yet to see anybody who's breaking up over chocolate."

Maybe because chocolate doesn't let us down?

"One last thing we should highlight is that for 72 percent of French people it's worse to have a partner who's bad in bed than bad in the kitchen," the polling agency says.

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In fact, a 2010 survey of 1,000 French adults revealed that more than three-quarters of the population has a pretty bad sex life. One in three women admitted to using excuses to get out of sex, and nearly one in six men admitted the same.

So much for the myth of the great French lover.

The French aren't the only ones willing to ditch sex for their favoured vices.

A 2012 study by Cancer Research UK asked women what would be the hardest thing to give up for an entire month. Less than one in 10 women chose sex. More than double that chose chocolate.

That same year, Match.com and TODAY collaborated on a dating-and-dining survey and found that 1 in 3 singles would rather give up sex for a year than ditch their favourite foods for the same period of time. (Admittedly, a year without chocolate would be a VERY long year.)

Fortunately, most of us don't live in a world where we have to choose.

"In my personal opinion, there's nothing like a great meal to follow great sex," says Kerner. "But if you find yourself picking food over sex, perhaps you need to approach sex a bit more like food and vary your diet."

Other things people have claimed they wouldn't give up for sex: iPhones, romance novels, tea, moisturizer and bacon.

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There is some good news here: most experts advise us to not take these surveys too seriously.

Heather Armstrong, a PhD candidate in the Human Sexuality Research Lab at the University of Ottawa, argues that context is important when considering the results of these anecdotal surveys.

"They are surveys done by companies using a very specific audience and are therefore not generalizable to anyone other than the sample surveyed," she says.

"Surveys like the ones mentioned get picked up and talked about because they are sensational. However, they are not representative of the general population. Based on the scientific research available, most people are in satisfying relationships and most people are having sex on a regular basis."

It's easy claiming you'd give up sex for bacon — knowing you'll never actually have to choose between the two.

Check out some common myths about sex debunked in the video below.