(The way to a man’s heart is through his chest.)

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Guys, there’s new news in the world of online dating. If you want to hook up with that perfect woman in cyberspace, avoid yams.

According to a new study by Zoosk, which is a highly respected pancontinental think tank, or a dating website, just mentioning yams in your online dating profile could reduce your potential hookups by 70%. Apparently, the lowly sweet potato is to women online what garlic is to vampires. In fact, if you shove garlic into a yam, there’s almost zero chance of you getting a date with someone who’s undead.

As it turns out, Zoosk.com is a website devoted to some 40 million yam-challenged singles worldwide, all looking for Mrs. or Mr. Right, or how ever many genders it is we have this week. They offer online profiles (where you lie about yourself), a raft of success stories (where you lie about each other), and even free dating advice (including a brutally fascinating page listing “60 Songs About Jealousy”).

The success stories page is full of anecdotes about couples who now live happily ever after despite never having actually seen each other in person. Here’s an actual quote: “I sent him a wink, and I’m so glad I did!” Evidently, winking is now some sort of technology, unless you’re Elmer Fudd, in which case winking means “rinking,” which may be a new gender.

Thankfully, Team Zoosk relied on hard science while compiling their research on how yams can make you sterile. They claim to have analyzed nearly 360 million online messages among 3.7 million dating profiles, although it turns out that 30 million of the messages were all from one very disturbed teenager in New Jersey.

Now that the research is public, you should know that the second-worst food to bring up in your online flirting adventures is fried chicken. That’s insane. As inventions go, fried chicken is right up there with electricity, antibiotics, and Steely Dan. I don’t know who all these anti-fried-chicken-biased women are, but it’s just one more argument for staying single.

And the number one food to mention in CyberDateLand? Guacamole. That’s right, guys: mash up an avocado, toss in a lime, some chili peppers, and tomatoes, and you’re on the road to true love.

(Interestingly, the second-best food to include in your online dating profile is potatoes…even though mentioning sweet potatoes is pure dating doom. I remember Popeye used to say “I yam what I yam.” Maybe that’s why he got stuck with Olive Oyl.)

Unfortunately, the research labs at Zoosk offer no evidence as to why an avocado-based side dish is so wildly popular among romance wranglers. After all, history tells us that guacamole was first developed by the Aztecs, who ate lots of weird stuff, including other Aztecs. (The Aztecs also invented what we know today as “basketball,” but they named it something ridiculous like Tonzlltzintliyeymactl, so it never caught on in North Carolina.)

I personally think part of guacamole’s allure is the Mexican restaurant presentation. You know how it works: for a fee, you can have a waiter come to your table and start mauling an avocado right before your eyes. It’s like having your own wine steward, but with dip; a guacasommelier, if you will.

End-Of-Civilization-As-We-Know-It Sidebar: Some goober on Google actually asked “what’s the difference between avocado and guacamole?” One response was “the difference is the first item is a fruit, and the second item is a dip.” And the goober who asked the question is also a dip.

In case you’re keeping score, some other foods you should mention in your dating profile are chocolate, sushi, and eggplant, but not in the same milkshake. Another popular pro-dating item is something called pho, which I suppose could be an actual phood, or Zoosk could just be phooling around.

Buried in the Zoosk analyses are some interesting nuances. Mentioning burritos in your online dating profile is a good thing, and might help you, to use the politically-correct technical term, “land a hottie.” However, if you mention burritos in an online dating message, your suburban lawn will die and all your offspring will need expensive orthodontics.

By the way, in the “sexy food” sweepstakes, tacos also made the cut, so maybe there’s still a woman out there for me.

Of course, with my luck, she’ll probably change genders and swear off yams.