What do we love more than love? Spin a few of our love songs, sugar pie honey bunch, and you’ll soon taste what’s really on the menu: food.

We are passionately attracted to calories, carbs and proteins — and the knowledge that just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

We grew up knowing the Muffin Man who lives on Drury Lane, we lost our meatball On Top of Spaghetti, found our thrill on Blueberry Hill and learned that C is for Cookie. One bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch, girl. Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.

I grew up during the “bubble gum music” era with such entrees as “Sugar, Sugar,” “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,” “Chewy Chewy” and “Goody Goody Gumdrops.” Well, Honeycomb, won’t you be my baby? Did I mention that I also like bread and butter?

But we’ve been rocking with bibs on and forks in hand for years from Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” in 1952 to The Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” in 1967 to Harry Nilsson putting the lime in the “Coconut” in 1971, all the way up to the Jonas Brothers’ deep conversations at the “Waffle House” in 2023.

There’s a whole buffet to be found in the Top 40 cuisine. Or a Jimmy Buffett “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

As Weird Al Yankovich crooned in 1984, “Just eat it, eat it, get yourself an egg and beat it. Have some more chicken, have some more pie, it doesn’t matter if it’s boiled or fried. Just eat it.”

We have such a melodic love affair with our food that back when I was a kid, before self-esteem had been invented, if we felt rejected by our peers, our recourse was to sing, “I wish I was an Oscar Mayer wiener, that is what I’d really like to be, because if I was an Oscar Mayer wiener, everyone would be in love with me.”

Yeah. Our therapy was to wish to turn into a hot dog and be gobbled up. Probably with a side of Fritos. Ay-yi-yi-yi.

“Were they hungry when they were writing those songs?” my friend Laura pondered over a cup of coffee.

I snacked on a Pop-Tart as I typed my reply: “Just think of the terms of endearment we use — honey, sugar, cupcake, cookie, sweetie pie, muffin, jellybean, sugar plum, dumpling and poopsie. Well, maybe not that last one.”

We call our favorite humans names of food, because we like them but we’re really thinking about our next dessert at the dairy drive-through.

And then there are the names of the bands themselves: Black Eyed Peas, Bananarama, Blind Melon, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hot Chocolate, Korn Cake, Cranberries, Cream and Cracker.

“Maybe they were hungry when they were trying to come up with a name for their group,” said Laura, who suddenly had the urge to order a pizza while listening to her tunes.

Sometimes, food names sprout organically: Fiona Apple, Chuck Berry, the Bacon Brothers, and Hall and Oates. And then there’s Jellyroll and Meat Loaf, topped off with some Vanilla Ice.

Have you noticed, I said to Laura, that except for the band The Salads, we generally avoid singing about healthy foods? I have yet to refer to any girlfriend as “my little iceberg lettuce,” “my crunchy carrot” or “my rad radish.”

We’ll fill up on songs like “The Candy Man,” “Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears,” “Ice Cream Man” and “Honeycomb.”

Adjust that dial and you also can run across “Sweet Potato Pie,” “Milkshake,” “Key Lime Pie,” “Watermelon Man,” “Lollipop,” “Strawberry Bubblegum,” “Melon Cake” and “Cake by the Ocean.”

You’ll also learn that, as Little Milton sang in 1969, “Grits Ain’t Groceries.” How do I know? “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Miss “Lady Marmalade.”

The message is as clear as Jell-O and ginger ale: If you love your candy crush, take her to the dinner table, sing her a little feast of food songs, and whisper sweet little nicknames, like Cupcake, Honey Bun or Pudding.

But be careful. Call her your sweet little Ding Dong, Dum-Dum or Goober Pie, and the tune she’ll sing back will leave a terrible taste in your mouth.

Sing a little melody to Burt at burton.w.cole@gmail.