The Right Stuf

The rats who scored the Oreo study gig at Connecticut College must have been pretty happy about it.  I imagine them exchanging high fives all the way to the lab, and saying things like "No, really, I'm not joking. They actually just want us to eat Oreo cookies."  It must have been like hitting the lab rat lottery.

It seems the burning question spreading through the halls of academia was "Are Oreos addictive?"   Well, of course they are.  I could have told them that without a study.  Anyone who ever had a box of Oreos in the house could tell them just how impossible it was to resist them.  Clearly the researchers must have grown up in one of those sad little households where sweets were strictly forbidden.

However the study also showed that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine or morphine, because eating them triggered a powerful pleasure response in the rats similar to the drugs.  I don't believe this.  

Cookies and the corner piece of the cake with all the icing have always been my drugs of choice, but once I was given morphine for the pain when I was in the hospital after breaking my pelvis.  As happy as Oreos have made me, it was nothing compared to the euphoria afforded me by that morphine.  

Morphine is so addictive that they won't let you have it after you leave the hospital (I know, because I asked).  Oreos can be purchased in large quantities at the local supermarket, and in tasty treats offered in many food establishments.  I didn't do a study or anything, but I've never heard of anyone overdosing on Oreos, having actual physical withdrawal symptoms if Giant Eagle is out of them or turning to a life of crime in order to support their Oreo habit.  As far as I can see, the only danger of eating too many Oreos is becoming fat and happy.

One thing this study did teach me was that laboratory rats and I have more in common that I thought.  

When given a choice between an Oreo cookie and a rice cake, the rats always went straight to the Oreo cookie.  I'm with the rodents here.  There is no rice cake in the world than could win out over an Oreo with me.  Seriously, couldn't the researchers come up with some more compelling, non-sweet food item - like Shrimp Scampi-to put up against the Oreo in a taste test for rats?

Furthermore, the rats all opened up the cookie and ate the cream first.  That is exactly how I always ate my Oreo cookies!  As a child my one and only complaint about Oreos was that they didn't have enough cream in them.  I was an adult when Nabisco (who clearly did a little research of their own over the years) came up with Double Stuf Oreos, which meant that other people must have wanted more cream just like me, and the rats.

All this talk has just made me hungry for some Double Stuf Oreos, which I typically don't keep in the house because, you know, they're addictive.  

For more information about the study, and a photo of some researchers with one fat and happy rat, check out:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/18/rats-find-oreos-as-addictive-as-cocaine-an-unusual-college-research-project/