Addiction Addicted to Oreos?

You truly might be,

Bob MacDonnell / Connecticut College

A rat and Oreos at Connecticut College in New London, Ct.

Oreos are as addictive as cocaine, at least for lab rats, and just like us, they like the creamy center best.

Eating the sugary treats activates more neurons in the brain’s “pleasure center” than drugs such as cocaine, the team at Connecticut College found.

“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/ high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do,” neuroscience assistant professor Joseph Schroeder says. “That may be one reason people have trouble staying away from them and it may be contributing to the obesity epidemic.”

Schroeder’s neuroscience students put hungry rats into a maze. On one side went rice cakes. “Just like humans, rats don’t seem to get much pleasure out of eating them,” Schroeder said. On the other side went Oreos.

Then the rats got the option of hanging out where they liked.

They compared the results to a different test. In that on, rats on one side if the maze got an injection of saline while those on the other side got injections of cocaine or morphine.

Rats seems to like the Cookies about as much as they liked the addictive drugs. When allowed to wander freely, they’d congregate on the Oreo side for about as much time as they would on the drug side.

Oh, and just like most people - the rats eat the creamy center first.

“These findings suggest that high fat/sugar foods and drugs of abuse trigger brain addictive processes to the same degree and lend support to the hypothesis that maladaptive eating behaviors contributing to obesity can be compared to drug addiction,” Schroeder’s team writes in a statement describing the study, to be presented at the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego next month.

“It really just speaks to the effects that high fat and high sugar foods and foods in general, can have on your body. The way they react in your brain, that was really surprising for me,” says Lauren Cameron, a student at Connecticut College who worked on the study.

“I haven't touched an Oreo since doing this experiment,” Schroeder says.

OMG, this thread has turned into junk food porn! Oreos and ice cold milk were my study food of choice during finals and thesis writing, I could easily eat an entire bag . Someone up in the thread mentioned how they used to be made with lard and are now made with partially hydrogenated oil, the irony being that the ones made with lard were probably better for you and no doubt tasted better. Sweet fat, the original taste we are wired for, mother's milk.

Since we're getting all lusty about bad foods, let me just throw grilled cheese out there. Mmmm, I could fall into a pile of crusty melty gooey grilled cheeses and not emerge for days .........

What's wrong with a little day dreaming and fantasizing?

OMG' date=' this thread has turned into junk food porn! Oreos and ice cold milk were my study food of choice during finals and thesis writing, I could easily eat an entire bag . Someone up in the thread mentioned how they used to be made with lard and are now made with partially hydrogenated oil, the irony being that the ones made with lard were probably better for you and no doubt tasted better. Sweet fat, the original taste we are wired for, mother's milk. Since we're getting all lusty about bad foods, let me just throw grilled cheese out there. Mmmm, I could fall into a pile of crusty melty gooey grilled cheeses and not emerge for days .........[/quote']

EVERY THREAD on this forum is turning Ito food porn lately! I guess get a bunch of addicts together, what else we gonna talk about?

Between the food porn I'm trying to avoid and the "I lost 80lbs in 1 month" threads that I'm trying to avoid as my weight loss slows, I have to wonder how I still manage to spend waaaayyyy too much time on this forum!

My weakness is mashed potato anything!!! probably not with oero's though.... ew

Wow, well done kvdme, you have managed to do it - find a way to turn my stomach enough so that I desire neither mashed taters OR Oreos. bleeeyachh barf.

And you know what Gamer, I'm with you, VST used to be a forum where actual sleevers could come and discuss the issues that arise from having had the sleeve. Now it seems to be full of people who are like, "I haven't had the sleeve, it may be a few years away if ever, but I have an opinion!" That's nice and all, but, no. And there seems to be an awful lot of suspicious posters, who seem like they are hawking either a doctor or product, and way way way too many trolls who post threads like "VSG destroys lives, I gained 100 pounds BECAUSE of the sleeve" yadda yadda.

I really think Alex and Susan need to clean house.

Things like Oreos are a triple whammy:

1) They are calorically dense, so you get a lot of calories without eating much food.

2) Because they stimulate the pleasure centers, people will eat more of them than they would a lot of other foods.

3) Because they are a combination of a fat and a carbohydrate, your body will much more quickly remove the excess calories from your bloodstream and pack them away into your fat cells. This is because the carbohydrate stimulates an insulin release, which opens the fat cells to storing the fat and the conversion of the carbohydrate to fat and then that being stored. This means that after you eat 500 calories of oreos you will be hungry much quicker than if you had eaten 500 calories of bacon.

I can't do sweets. I can't stop when I start. I make a mean spotted d**k, well used to...

I love oreos. I haven't had one in 10 months, and wasn't thinking about one until now! I always said cake and cookies are like crack to me. I'm going to have suppress this vision of a fresh bag of oreos and a gallon of whole milk. Sigh. I remember those days....

And you know what Gamer' date=' I'm with you, VST used to be a forum where actual sleevers could come and discuss the issues that arise from having had the sleeve. Now it seems to be full of people who are like, "I haven't had the sleeve, it may be a few years away if ever, but I have an opinion!" That's nice and all, but, no. And there seems to be an awful lot of suspicious posters, who seem like they are hawking either a doctor or product, and way way way too many trolls who post threads like "VSG destroys lives, I gained 100 pounds BECAUSE of the sleeve" yadda yadda.

I really think Alex and Susan need to clean house.[/quote']

Is it just me or has Susan been MIA for a while now? I was just thinking about this yesterday and then you mention cleaning house. I have not seen moderation type posts in a while, but perhaps I am either looking in the wrong places or there was above average moderation previously.

And you know what Gamer' date=' I'm with you, VST used to be a forum where actual sleevers could come and discuss the issues that arise from having had the sleeve. Now it seems to be full of people who are like, "I haven't had the sleeve, it may be a few years away if ever, but I have an opinion!" That's nice and all, but, no. And there seems to be an awful lot of suspicious posters, who seem like they are hawking either a doctor or product, and way way way too many trolls who post threads like "VSG destroys lives, I gained 100 pounds BECAUSE of the sleeve" yadda yadda.

I really think Alex and Susan need to clean house.[/quote']

A-f**king-men.