Dyrk cut out alcohol and pizza, and frozen blueberries are his idea of a “sugary snack.” For Joseph, drugs of any kind are off the table, and “coffee and other forms of caffeine are no exception.” Jason avoids red meat “like the plague,” and Nick used to keep an emergency can of pineapple juice in his room, “just in case.”
These men aren’t getting a jumpstart on their New Year’s resolutions or trying to transform their corporeal husks into temples — they’re trying, desperately, to improve the flavor profile of their cum.
There’s no shortage of men on the internet searching for the secrets to better tasting semen, nor is there a dearth of articles, videos, Reddit threads and sketchy WordPress blogs attempting to provide answers in the form of dietary modifications or dubious sugar pills. For most, searching for these things is more of a boredom-induced internet activity than an earnest stab at a solution, but for an elite community of cum connoisseurs, the art of semen flavor enhancement isn’t just a matter of idle curiosity — it’s a way of life.
“It’s something I actively obsess over,” says Joseph, a 29-year-old bouncer from Washington State. While he says enhancing his partners’ oral sex experience is the primary motivation behind his obsession, having superior-tasting spunk is also matter of personal pride — and even arousal. “Living a normal life with the knowledge that everything I consume revolves around the enhancement of an erogenous act is arousing,” he tells me. “I walk around with the feeling that I’m more pure than other men — that they’re rotten and I’m almost ethereal with the differences between our cum.”
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For Joseph, maintaining seminal purity demands a strict diet rich in grains and nuts and largely devoid of meat and dairy. He also hydrates “to excess” and abstains from drugs, alcohol and caffeine. And though his diet does include plenty of pineapple — the classic yum-cum staple — he argues that semen flavor is more a matter of “what you don’t eat than what you do.”
In other words, you cum what you eat, and no amount of pineapple can atone for a generally poor diet. “Garbage in equals garbage out,” agrees Dyrk, a 30-year-old from Ohio who says he’s consumed so much pineapple juice in the quest for sweeter semen that he ended up with burns in his mouth. He tends to relax his semen flavor enhancement rituals a bit when not in a relationship or actively anticipating an upcoming sexual encounter, but when he’s “really taking semen taste into account and trying to get max results,” he cuts out red meat and alcohol and starts mainlining leafy greens and fresh fruit.
In addition to the pre-sex dietary changes, Dyrk regularly takes bromelain extract, a pineapple juice shortcut that’s less abrasive on the mouth. He can occasionally be found extolling the virtues of bromelain supplements on Reddit, sharing his wisdom with the myriad aspiring semen flavor hackers who routinely flock to r/sex and r/AskRedditAfterDark seeking advice from more seasoned “semen sommeliers,” as Joseph puts it.
But for these so-called “sommeliers,” there doesn’t seem to be much actual tasting going on. Both Joseph and Dyrk claim they’ve never tasted the fruits of their semen-hacking labor for themselves, instead relying on input from partners to gauge their results. “I’m personally not courageous enough to directly taste myself,” Joseph admits. “When I hear, ‘Oh wow, your cum tastes good’ from someone who also says, ‘I love sucking dick,’ I consider that all the feedback I need.”
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For others, no news is good news. “As long as it goes down easy with no comments like ‘Ew, that tastes gross,’ that’s enough for me,” says Jonathan, an IT manager in the U.K., who says that he has sampled his own product before, but he doesn’t consider himself a reliable judge, and tends to defer to a more objective palate.
Nick, a 23-year-old health-care worker from Massachusetts, employs a similar strategy. “I’ve never tasted it, and have no plans to,” he says. “Everything I do to make it taste better is for the girl that I’m going to be with.”
Like his fellow arbiters of semen taste, Nick’s dedication to the pursuit of better tasting jizz varies somewhat depending on his level of sexual activity — whether real or anticipated — at any given point in time. He says he wouldn’t turn down a spontaneous blow job just because he’d happened to eat McDonald’s that day, but he does like to plan ahead when possible, sticking to a cleaner diet in advance of an expected sexual encounter and making semen-conscious menu choices on promising dates, even at the cost of a less enjoyable meal.
On one occasion, in anticipation of a meetup with an old flame on an upcoming business trip, Nick went into full training mode for an entire week. “I completely changed my diet and exercise routine,” he says. “I worked out for an hour everyday, drank cranberry juice in the morning, avoided all fatty foods and ate an almost vegan diet, drank all the classic pineapple juice and hydrated properly. I did whatever I could to make sure I was ready to go.” His efforts paid off: “That was the only time in my entire life a woman made a pleasant comment about the taste without being prompted.”
But what, exactly, does “good” semen taste like?
Nothing, apparently.
Although pineapple juice folklore has traditionally promised the seminal sweetness of a penile piña colada, an effectively flavorless profile appears to be a more realistic goal for most guys. “I can only imagine a good taste is one that tastes as little like cum as possible,” says Joseph, though Jonathan adds that “it’s not all about the taste; you must also consider consistency.” Hydration, then, is key to diluting the splooge. “Imagine if semen had a bad taste, then concentrate that [through dehydration]. That’s what it’s like when you don’t hydrate enough,” he warns.
Essentially, the overall goal seems to be to make semen less semen-y, and it’s one most of these guys have been actively pursuing from a young age. Most trace their current preoccupation with semen flavor back to middle school rumors about pineapple, though Nick points to a more specific early influence: porn. “When I was younger, I saw a pornstar swallow a load for the first time, and I was bewildered,” he says. “I’d never even considered the idea that people swallowed it, so it got me thinking: If it tasted like it smelled, it couldn’t be good.”
Despite being years away from his first sexual encounter, Nick spent much of middle and high school actively implementing whatever flavor-enhancing tips the internet could provide. Today, while his efforts are largely undertaken with his partner’s comfort and enjoyment in mind, he also sees it as a way of increasing his sexual market value. “I recognize it as something that I can improve in the bedroom,” he explains. “I can’t make my penis any bigger, but I can make the end result more enjoyable.”
Joseph, too, views his efforts in this area as an advantage elevating him above competitors blowing less palatable loads (currently, he’s attempting to infuse his splooge with notes of festive holiday eggnog). “Men are always sizing themselves up against one another,” he says. And though the competition presumably has no way of knowing what they’re up against, Joseph and his fellow semen sommeliers still walk a little taller knowing they cum a little sweeter.
Kayla Kibbe
Kayla Kibbe is a New York City-based writer covering sex, dating and culture. An associate editor at InsideHook, her work has also appeared online at Bitch, Brides, YourTango and other outlets.
