Are Oreos the New Cocaine?

We have all found ourselves reaching for that second delicious, crunchy Oreo (or maybe the German variant, Neo) after we finished the first one all too soon. But just because we do not stop with one cookie, does this mean we are addicted to them? Can Oreos be compared to drugs of abuse? Maybe. At least in rats.  

Source

Researchers at the University of Connecticut made headlines with their discovery that rats spent as much time in a chamber where they got Oreos as in one where they got a shot of cocaine or morphine. In other words, when rats had to pick between two chambers – one with a boring, bland, rice cake and one with an Oreo cookie – they preferred the Oreo chamber. And when given the choice between a shot of saline and a shot of morphine, they picked the morphine chamber. The researchers also found that eating cookies activated more neurons in the brain's nucleus accumbens than exposure to drugs of abuse [1]. 

EATING AN OREO GIVES US PLEASURE

Can we conclude that Oreos are as addictive as drugs of abuse? No! Here is a fatal flaw in the experiment: the researchers never directly compared Oreos to cocaine. They performed two independent experiments in two different groups of animals comparing rice cakes to Oreos and cocaine to saline. What the study does show is that eating an Oreo produces pleasure. But this is nothing new! In order to really find out if Oreos are as addictive as cocaine, we have to compare how hard a rat will work (for example, how often they press a lever) to get either an Oreo or a dose of cocaine [2]. Junk foods can create addictive-like tendencies [4] – this idea is neither new nor wrong. But the conclusions of this particular study certainly are [3].

How addictive are high fat/high sugar foods? Read the upcoming article to find the answer before checking into the treatment center for your addiction just yet!

[1] http://bit.ly/1KrTRTG
[2] http://bit.ly/1er5Fdp
[3] http://bit.ly/1MuWaIS
[4] Avena et al., Method Mol Biol, 2012


by Apoorva Rajiv Madipakkam
This article originally appeared 2015 in CNS Volume 8, Issue 3, Food for Thought.