Like drugs
A new study finds that Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine or morphine – at least for lab rats.
- ConColl: Student-faculty research shows Oreos are just as addictive as drugs in lab rats
- Outside: Oreos as Addictive as Cocain
As usual this finding gets blamed on the “high-fat, high-sugar” nature of the cookies. Is that really right?
I checked the nutrition panel on Swedish Oreos and they are 65 percent carb (mostly sugar) and only 21 percent fat. That’s high-sugar for sure, but it’s not really high-fat. Olive oil, at a hundred percent, is high-fat.
However, there’s no question that the fat is necessary to make the cookies taste better and be more addictive. Without fat these cookies would be as addictive as sugar straight from a bag – not very.
You can make sugar addictive without fat though, soda is a great example. Make it a fluid to be quickly absorbed and add caffeine for an extra addictive punch.
Fat can be necessary to make processed food taste better. But it’s likely the huge amount of sugar and flour in these cookies that makes the fat-storing insulin shoot through the roof and makes people fat.
