Oreos Are as Addictive as Crack?

We have all heard the cliche' phrase where someone compares their favorite food to being as addictive as crack cocaine (for me it's donuts).. Well, turns out if your favorite food is Oreos, you may not just being saying it, it may actually be true! 

A new study suggests the brain responds to Oreo cookies quite like it responds to actual drugs – at least if you’re a rat. The “pleasure center” of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, apparently gets just as activated in response to Oreos as it does to cocaine and morphine, which could actually have some major public health implications.

Here is a snippet of what students and researchers just discovered out of Connecticut College:

In a study designed to shed light on the potential addictiveness of high-fat/ high-sugar foods, Professor Joseph Schroeder and his students found rats formed an equally strong association between the pleasurable effects of eating Oreos and a specific environment as they did between cocaine or morphine and a specific environment. They also found that eating cookies activated more neurons in the brain’s “pleasure center” than exposure to drugs of abuse.

“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/ high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do,” Schroeder said. “It may explain why some people can’t resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them.”

They compared the results of the Oreo and rice cake test with results from rats that were given an injection of cocaine or morphine, known addictive substances, on one side of the maze and a shot of saline on the other.

 

As long as Oreos aren’t going to start being sold illegally on the black market for 100x their value by the shadiest people around, they can compare the cookies to the Black Death for all I care...

[HUFFINGTON POST]