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The Science Behind Why We Can’t Stop After One Cookie

Sachin pandit
Hello, Love
Published in
5 min readJan 3, 2025
Photo by Jan Baborák on Unsplash

It is Tuesday, 10:30 PM, when I find myself standing in my kitchen.

It started with “just one cookie” from the fresh cookies I baked for the office tomorrow, but here I am, stuck on either five… or is it six?… of them.

As I reach for another, a vague thought again runs: Why is it so impossibly hard to stop?

If you have ever been in this situation—and let's be honest, who hasn't?—you are not alone, and more importantly, you are not without willpower. There is actually some terrific research about that sweet, round treat’s hold on us, and it’s far more than just simple hunger.

Why Cookies Are Irresistible?

High fat and sugar content are not usually found within the same food products in nature. Fruits contain natural sugars, but very little fat; nuts, on the other hand, contain a lot of fat and little or no sugar. Cookies, however, provide this powerful combination in each bite and what scientists call a supernormal stimulus, meaning that it activates our pleasure centers even more actively than natural objects.

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Sachin pandit
Sachin pandit

Written by Sachin pandit

Trying to spread some positivity, medical student interested in neurology.

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