With cheesy greeting cards lining the shelves and heart-shaped treats filling our bellies, there’s no doubt about it: February is the month of love. Here at MyFitnessPal HQ, we gave in to the love bug and analyzed some of our sexiest data yet. (That’s right, sexy data. Such a thing does exist.)
We took a look at the states where MyFitnessPal members logged the most champagne, chocolate and sex over the course of 2014, and then combined those measures into a single Romance Index to see which states really are for lovers (spoiler alert, Virginia didn’t make the top 10). Check it out:
We’re pretty happy with our beloved California clocking in at number five, but some states didn’t fare so well. The three least romantic states were Hawaii, Nebraska and Wyoming. Seriously, Hawaii ranked 48th out of 50—who would have guessed?
To explore the data underlying our list, play around with the, ahem, heat map below. Use the buttons on the top left to switch among the overall Romance Index, champagne, chocolate and sex.
There are lots of little love nuggets nestled in the data above, but here are a few of our favorites:
- As 2Pac put it, “California knows how to party.” Californians drink more champagne than the rest of the country by A LOT. That’s especially true in Napa, CA, which our data shows is the most bubbly metropolitan area in the country.
- And who exactly is drinking all of this champagne? Ladies. As a percentage of foods logged on MyFitnessPal, women drank more than twice as much champagne as men last year.
- The Midwest has a major sweet tooth—seven out of the top 10 chocolate-loving states were in the Midwest.
- People in Arkansas logged more sex (as a percentage of exercise calories burned) than did residents of any other state in the country, whereas Nebraskans logged the least. Use this information as you see fit when considering your next relocation.
- Suspiciously, a larger percentage of men’s exercise minutes are logged as sex than women’s—a non-trivial 22% more, in fact. Something doesn’t add up here. I think you may be overstating the facts, gentlemen.
What do people eat on Valentine’s Day?
In a separate analysis from the Romance Index, we focused in on Valentine’s Day to ask: How are people eating differently on this amorous holiday?
We can confirm a definite sexy food spike. For starters, sweets consumption skyrockets. Valentine’s Day was the biggest chocolate day of the year last year, up 36% from average, with all things “chocolate-covered” up an impressive 323%. Additionally, Red Hots were up 91% over average, Hershey’s Kisses were up 34% and, taking the cake, candy hearts increased by a whopping 3777%.
Oysters, everyone’s favorite aphrodisiac, are up 57% from average on Valentine’s Day, and what’s a candlelit dinner without steak (up 52%)?
What are people not eating? Hot dogs. Down 43% from average, this decidedly drab cuisine joins both burgers and meatloaf (down 8%) as members of the not-so-sexy food club.
Methodology:
The Romance Index is a composite measure of chocolate and champagne consumption as well as sexual activity, based on foods and exercises logged on MyFitnessPal.
All individual food and drink data is represented as percentage of foods logged on MyFitnessPal. Similarly, the sexual activity data is in terms of percent of exercise minutes logged. As an example, we counted up how many times people in California logged “champagne” in 2014 and divided that by the total number of foods entered in California last year. Voila! You have a measure of how popular champagne was among members in California.
The data reflect over 3 billion foods logged by U.S. members in 2014. All data was analyzed in aggregate and is completely anonymous.
MyFitnessPal members, what are your favorite Valentine’s Day treats?
