Is it possible to stop eating Oreo cookies?

The manufacturers of Oreo are clear that they have to integrate sugar in the preparation of the cookies, because they know that then they will become addictive. Each cookie weighs 11 grams, 4 of which are sugar. Scientists who study addiction say that sugar needs six tenths of a second to stimulate the brain’s pleasure center from the time the sweetness touches the tip of the tongue until it reaches the brain. And that’s why it has such a great addictive capacity, because the time it takes to excite the brain is minimal. On the contrary, “it takes ten seconds for smoke to cross the nervous system of the throat and lungs to reach the brain”. Physicist and journalist Toni Pou explains it based, among other studies, on the book Hooked (2021), by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Moss. Pou has written it in the current edition of the history magazine The World of Yesterdaydirected by the journalist Toni Soler, who has just published a volume dedicated entirely to sugar.

However, humans have not always eaten sugar as they do now. “Our ancestors ingested sugar in its original form, that is, in the form of fruit and other plant-based products”, which did not cause any alteration in the body because, “accompanied by fiber and the rest of components, the sugar was absorbed little by little”, says Pou, who adds that in the 1st century BC sugar had already been refined and later reached Europe that way.

Beyond the nutritional and scientific story explained by the physicist, the magazine also deals with the product from different perspectives, which delve deeper into a product that has daily implications in our language (attribute the qualifier sweet to people or objects always has positive connotations). From the point of view of literature, journalist Valèria Gaillard focuses on the French writer Marcel Proust’s cupcake, the sweet that has become a symbol of memory, with different layers of meaning. What has transpired the most is that the cupcake refers “to the tenderness of childhood”. It also “has a sensual connotation, if we look at its rounded shape, which gives a lot of play to ambiguities”. The journalist’s writing in the magazine The World of Yesterday underlines that the episode of the cupcake is the best known in the history of literature, but little is known that the book in which it appears, In search of lost timeconsists of seven volumes and is about the story of a boy who wants to be a writer, but cannot find a way to fulfill his desire to write.

The edition of the magazine dedicated to sugar is completed with many other interesting reports, such as that of journalists Marc Casanovas, Paula Molés and Carme Gasull. And, at the end, it ends with photographs of a dessert by pastry chef Jordi Roca, from Celler de Can Roca, entitled “And for dessert, a book” and which describes the step-by-step invention of a Sweet with a taste for books. He explained it on his Instagram account.

Toni Soler: “I’m looking for the cream that resembles the one my mother used to make”

Toni Soler, director of the magazine, likes sweet food more than when he was young, but at the same time he likes foods with strong, spicy, salty tastes. “Before it was brie cheese and now I’m gorgonzola”, he says. And he adds more examples: “I used to drink whiskey masked with Coca-Cola and now I drink it alone”.

Regarding sugar, the journalist also confesses that he prefers to end meals with dessert. And, of all, the favorite is cream. “The cream drives me crazy, I ask for it everywhere and make an inventory, because I’m looking for the one that most resembles the one my mother used to make”, which was very fine and elegant. However, the journalist maintains that it is difficult for him to find good ones in restaurants: when he does, he would drink a whole liter. And a recommendation for surfers in creams: “La Fageda is very good to be packaged”.