Smoothie vs. Cookie

So warm days are finally here, and with them comes my desire to eat more produce. It's warm enough in the morning for green smoothies again. Huzzah.

My current favorite green smoothie recipe:
1 or 2 bananas
A handful of frozen fruit- tropical (mango, pineapple) or berry (strawberry, blueberry, blackberry)
1/2 cup of organic yogurt, flavored or plain (organic coconut milk for vegan smoothie)
1/4 cup frozen spinach (less if no tropical fruit)
2 t chia seeds (cheap, and rich in Omegas. Read nutrition facts here)
A splash of unsweetened coconut flakes
Enough orange juice to make it your desired consistency

It's a great, filling breakfast for those of us with a sweet tooth, and I'm already well on my way to "5 a day." I find that when I have a breakfast smoothie, I tend to eat better for the rest of the day. The reverse is also apparently true. In a last-ditch bid for warming comfort foods, my body's been craving cookies. A weak moment at Costco led me to the packaged cookies and once I got a taste for them I wanted more. According to new research, it's not just me who's experienced junk food "addiction."
Published in March's Nature Neuroscience, a study conducted by the Scripps Research Institute looked at rats given unrestricted access to high-fat, high-calorie foods. The rodents began to eat compulsively, even when they received an electric shock every time they ate.

"We found that development of obesity was coupled with emergence of a progressively worsening deficit in neural reward responses. Similar changes in reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin are considered to be crucial in triggering the transition from casual to compulsive drug-taking. Accordingly, we detected compulsive-like feeding behavior in obese but not lean rats, measured as palatable food consumption that was resistant to disruption by an aversive conditioned stimulus. Striatal dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) were downregulated in obese rats, as has been reported in humans addicted to drugs. Moreover, lentivirus-mediated knockdown of striatal D2Rs rapidly accelerated the development of addiction-like reward deficits and the onset of compulsive-like food seeking in rats with extended access to palatable high-fat food. These data demonstrate that overconsumption of palatable food triggers addiction-like neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuits and drives the development of compulsive eating." 

It's my brain chemistry's fault that I love cookies. Luckily I also love watermelon, grapes, pears, peas, kale, asparagus, broccoli, and smoothies.