Habit-Forming

Even though I was never particularly good at science when I was in school I can understand the basic scientific principle which states that sometimes to reach an important breakthrough you have to take a rather circuitous route. Often it is the job of research students to make a series of small breakthroughs which do not appear remotely connected to one another to eventually come up with the one major discovery which cures a disease or solves one of the great mysteries of humanity. It is all about a lot of small steps in a long journey but, unfortunately, justifying some of these studies gets a little hard when you hear the basic premise of them and we have this very annoying habit of only talking about the experiments that start with absurd premises. (Sometimes I wonder if the lead scientist leaves it to the grad student because even they know a couple of these studies are way out there.) One such study came to light this week researchers at Connecticut College released the results of an experiment they recently concluded in which they set up a maze of test rats, putting Oreos at one end and rice cakes at the other (you really can study just about anything in college). Not surprisingly, the rats spent most of their time going after the Oreos. The researchers seem to think this result speaks to the very nature of addiction but I feel like all this study really proved is that Oreos are much better than rice cakes and we knew that already.

The reason this is important is because the results were startlingly similar to a test in which another maze was set up and rats were offered a shot of saline at one end or a shot of morphine or cocaine at the other and the rats spent almost as much time at the morphine end. Again, probably not that shocking when you remember that cocaine is one of the most addictive substances in the world, but taking the experiment one step further these scientists were also studying what was going through the rodents heads at the time and they discovered that Oreos activated more pleasure neurons in the brain than cocaine, leading them to conclude that Oreos were more addictive than crack. This feels like a bit of a stretch for a few reasons. Obviously I have never tried crack but we were always taught in various drug awareness groups that one hit of crack can make you an addict. Meanwhile I may enjoy the occasional Oreo but I have yet to start selling my possessions for Oreo money. Also, while too many sugary treats are not good for you they are certainly much better for you than crack. Besides, human brains are more evolved than rodents (well, most of us) so the idea that we would become as addicted to cookies just because it makes one area of our brains react seems far-fetched. I just have a hard time taking any study which tries to link cookies and drugs together, regardless of the results. Of course, it sounds like they only did this study with regular Oreos. If they try it again with Double Stuffed I could be persuaded that they may be on to something.