Researchers in behavioral neuroscience at Connecticut College, in the United States, have shown that the famous Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine, at least for laboratory rats. And curiously, like humans, these rodents usually open the cookie and eat the cream that it contains in the center first.
In a study designed to shed light on the addictive potency of high-fat and high-sugar foods, Joseph Schroeder and his students found that the association between the sensation of pleasure and the consumption of cocaine or morphine established by rats is identical to that of rats. which is established in the brain's pleasure center when Oreo cookies are consumed. What's more, the number of neurons that activated the cookies was greater than that ignited with the use of cocaine. This confirms the idea that foods high in fat and sugar stimulate us in the same way as a drug and generate a strong addiction, which "explains why some people cannot resist these foods despite knowing that they are bad for them" . The study will be presented next month at the annual conference of the American Neuroscience Society in California.
