Oreos May Be As Addictive As Cocaine

There is no peer review here. There isn't even an article. There is just a poster someone is going to present at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in a month [1] and a press release with a ridiculous headline. To put things in perspective, there are approximately 10,000 posters at SfN, and a large proportion of them never lead to a published paper.

[1] "Nucleus accumbens C-Fos expression is correlated with conditioned place preference to cocaine, morphine and high fat/sugar food consumption" http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?sKey=2... for the abstract, although this link will probably break

"New study confirms Oreos are basically the cookie form of cocaine" is misleading (and not the original title "Oreos May Be As Addictive As Cocaine")

Anyway, the comparisons performed in the quoted study: preference over plain rice and amount of time spent in Oreo region (vs Morphine/Cocaine etc) seems a shaky correlation at best. Does addictiveness necessarily require withdrawal symptoms? If yes, the study seems to lack it any mention of it [1].

[1] http://www.conncoll.edu/news/news-archive/2013/student-facul...

There have been plenty of studies that link salty, fatty foods to brain activity (highs) similar to addicts. Anecdotal explanations usually trend around our brains rewarding us for finding and gorging on life sustaining calories as a leftover attribute from earlier humans who lived when food was scarce.

I'd be interested in a follow-up with oreos pitted against cocaine/morphine/etc. It's believable sugar would be more attractive and great to have supporting data but I'm not sure this substantiates oreos equalling cocaine.

See this awesome comic for an explanation:

http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/

Lab rats routinely pick sugar over cocaine. Nothing to see here.

A better way to phrase that experimental result would have been "Cocaine And Heroin No More Addictive Than Oreos".

Where's the hack?