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Study shows that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine

We've all been there before. One minute you're reaching into the pantry for a late-night bite to eat and, the next thing you know, you've missed two days of work and cruised through an entire sleeve of Oreos. A recent scientific study shows that the reason your cookie-fueled Fourth Meal turns out to be such a fiasco is that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine.

We've all been there before. One minute you're reaching into the pantry for a late-night bite to eat and, the next thing you know, you've missed two days of work and cruised through an entire sleeve of Oreos. A recent scientific study shows that the reason your cookie-fueled Fourth Meal turns out to be such a fiasco is that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine.

A team at the Connecticut College Fund tested the affects that sugary food (in this case, Oreos) and cocaine had on rats. Their study demonstrated that the two caused very similar behavior.

Schroeder's neuroscience students put hungry rats into a maze. On one side went rice cakes. "Just like humans, rats don't seem to get much pleasure out of eating them," Schroeder said. On the other side went Oreos.

Then the rats got the option of hanging out where they liked.

They compared the results to a different test. In that on, rats on one side if the maze got an injection of saline while those on the other side got injections of cocaine or morphine.

Rats seems to like the cookies about as much as they liked the addictive drugs. When allowed to wander freely, they'd congregate on the Oreo side for about as much time as they would on the drug side.

So, basically, what we've learned today is that cookies are a drug and our entire existence has been validated. It's not our fault that we need the whole sleeve. [Today]