If you give a girl a cookie

(I feel the need to preface this entire post by letting every know that I've been craving a bean burrito for two weeks and my coworker just brought one in and sat down next to me to eat it. I moved.)

So if you give a girl a cookie ... If you give ME a cookie, there is only one reliable outcome. Anyone who's been in the newsroom past midnight during production week knows that if you give me a cookie it does not necessarily help me meet deadline any faster (tends to have the opposite effect, generally), and except for helping to evade a few stress-induced breakdowns, cookies don't really improve my frame of mind either. Sometimes my fingers loosen up and I work a little faster (with more typos) and sometimes I just start craving milk and can't do any more work until I've had some (the 7-11 run usually puts us another half hour behind). Sometimes I just sit in a chair and stare at the floor and whimper, "Picas. Whyyyyy?"

But always, always, if you give me a cookie, I will ask for a second one.

They say sugar is addicting and I totally agree. But I think, more than that, food is addicting (to some people). We don't live in a hunter/gatherer society where everyone subsists on grass and apple cores. We don't go for weeks without meat or bread. We don't live in India where clean drinking water is miles away. It's not a chore to eat -- something you do to stay alive, because you have to, no matter how good or bad the food tastes. You need it.

In America food is so plentiful, so affordable and of so much variety that it has almost become a way of life, rather than a means for life. Consumption? Right? We've all heard that term cynically thrown about when refering to Americans. Asking for a second cookie would seem like the obvious, most natural reaction (especially if it's a really good cookie). But as I discovered two summers ago when I went without sugar for 90 days, having access to good food can distort your appreciation of it. People begin "wolfing" their food instead of eating it -- whether or not they're even tasting it at all becomes almost an entirely different question.

(I'm reminded of the scene in Winnie the Pooh where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's front door - hilarious - and when Rabbit confiscates his honey he says, "But Rabbit! I don't want to eat it, I just want to taste it." We all know that's impossible. You can't taste without eating.)

Last night my family went to the beach to do hot dogs and s'mores. I said 'no' to the chips and the sodas and the bonfire-burnt sausages, but when they passed out the chocolate dribbled cookies... Well. I had one. (No judgement, folks. It was my favorite kind. I'm human, too.)

I spent about four minutes slowly picking that cookie apart, letting each flavor sit on my tongue before it finally disolved completely. And I thought to myself, Wow, that was a really good cookie. Consumerist instinct tells me there are plenty more cookies left so I should have another (a fact my mother confirms while gently shaking the package of confections.)

Normally, when you give a girl a cookie, she will ask for a second one. This time I didn't. Because I agree with Pooh - it is possible to taste and enjoy without eating in excess.