Actually, I love cookies. I’m considered a bit of an expert (at least within my own family) on the merits of different varieties of chocolate chip, though occasionally I’ll freelance with a brownie or blondie. Or an oatmeal raisin.
Honestly, nearly anything will do in a pinch. I especially like cookies when I’m feeling lonely, depressed, angry, frustrated, anxious, or despondent. Washed down with a cup of dark roast coffee, they cover the entire spectrum of negative emotions.
My brain cells like cookies, too. They enjoy the instant reward as the sugar triggers off a cascade of feel-good chemicals bathing the brain’s pleasure centers.
And what harm has sugar ever done to anyone, anyway? (I mean, apart from driving the slave trade throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of course.) Maybe a few dental cavities here or there? An extra ten pounds of middle aged spread? An epidemic of type 2 diabetes, soon expected to affect one in three Americans before the age of 50?
Alzheimer’s disease? Behavioral changes in children? Osteoporosis? High blood pressure and cholesterol? An epidemic of malnutrition despite being awash in excess calories?
Dwelling on all these frightful consequences can be upsetting. Fortunately, I have a reliable strategy when I start to get upset about something. What should it be today? Those cranberry-orange scones look yummy……
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I hear you! I’m 58 days in to the 30-day Whole30. I promise, blueberries start tasting like ice cream.