It seems like everything can make us addicted these days. Our iPhones. The internet. Oreos. But just because something is pleasurable and causes a relevant reward area of your brain to light up does not mean that it is addictive.
An addiction is like a compulsion, where you continue performing a behaviour even though it has resulted in negative consequences – like continuing to drink even though it's lost you your driving licence, your job and even your partner. Addiction also involves complex changes in your brain in areas where you process reward and self-control. These changes can result in feelings of craving and withdrawal, where your body has adapted to rely on the drug to feel normal. In some cases, withdrawal can be so severe that your body may actually shut down and you can die if you don't have another hit.
No matter how many Oreos you eat, this will not happen to you.
The idea of food addiction is not a new one, but a study released last week takes this claim to a whole other (and unsubstantiated) level, claiming that Oreos – and especially that all-enticing creamy centre – is as addicting as cocaine.
Unfortunately, the researchers from Connecticut College who ran this study, led by Professor Joseph Schroeder, never actually tested this hypothesis. They used a standard conditioned place-preference test, giving rats either an Oreo or a rice cake on one side of a maze or another and then watched to see where the animals later chose to spend their time. This type of task is typically used to measure associations between a stimulus (like cookies or cocaine) and the environment in which it was experienced, with the idea being that the more pleasurable an experience is, the more likely you will want to repeat it, and thus the more time you will spend in the place where you first received it. Stemming from this logic, as might be expected, the rats preferred the side of the maze where they received the Oreo.
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