I will never know the taste of Lady Gaga Oreo cookies.
It’s not that I have anything against Lady Gaga. Nor do I have a dislike for Oreos that are the best-selling cookies in the United States and have been around since 1912.
The fact the Lady Gaga cookies are the Golden Oreos — the version I prefer over the original chocolate — done with a pinkish wafer in three designs inspired by her Chromatica album with the white cream filling switched out for one that is dyed green doesn’t repulse me.
Instead I have done something I never thought I would do. I’ve sworn off cookies, cold turkey.
Do not laugh. I have had a lifetime habit of devouring cookies that would make the Cookie Monster envious.
Yes, I know, most people have a cookie habit. Mine is more like an addiction complete with binges.
And the worst thing to put in front of me for years was the 18-ounce package of Oreo cookies.
Don’t get me wrong. I could polish off a bag of everything from Mother’s Circus Animal Cookies — the pink and white frosted ones with rainbow sprinkles and not the original Barnum’s Animal Crackers that drove PETA crackers a few years back until they were packaged as range free animals — to Grandma’s Fudge Chocolate Cookies.
But with the standard pack of Oreos it was a one sitting thing.
That’s 45 cookies with 2,400 calories and 1½ day supply of saturated fat all in one sitting. This wasn’t a lazy nibble-a-thon where you leisurely unscrewed the cookies and then ate the cream-less sides before feasting on the remaining chocolate wafer with the cream. No, it was a Tasmanian devil inspired attack that would leave Nicholas Cage’s head spinning as they’d be gone in 15 minutes.
This was not just a childhood thing. I did it well into adulthood and I did not use a milk chaser when I ate them.
At one point in my 30s I replaced the once a week cookie binge with three or four days of “personal cookie packages.”
You know the type. They are the packages of six cookies or so that is part of the store inventory that has made corporations from Southland to retail gas companies highly profitable when people buy snacks combined with fuel purchases.
At some point when I realized I had slipped into a one or two king size bag habit of plain M&Ms six days a week fueled primarily by stops at the former Beacon gas station that has since been razed on the southeast corner of Alameda and North streets, I decided it might be healthier to have a once-a-day cookie eating habit as opposed to slamming down plain M&Ms that never got a chance to melt in my hand even on a 100-degree day.
Keep in mind this is when everybody I know believed I was eating 100 percent healthy after I dropped 140 pounds and even later when I lost another 20 pounds to get where I’ve been for the last 15 years at 170 to 175 pounds.
I did for the most part eat healthy except for “dinner” on days that I ate at my desk. I was consuming more than 4,000 calories at the time with almost a quarter of them were courtesy of places like 7-Eleven and their candy aisle.
About five years ago I settled into what I call my four big cookie period. Most weeks I was working six days a week and without fail it at some point during the day I consumed two packages of two cookies apiece.
The rationale, of course, was that the calories were less empty than plain M&Ms. For half that time my poison of choice was Grandma’s Cookies, a deceiving name if there ever was one.
My grandmother’s cookies never that fresh and moist nor did they have a two-month plus shelf life. She obviously didn’t have the access to Grandma’s chemicals. My weakness for Grandma’s Cookies in descending order is fudge chocolate chip, chocolate chip, and peanut butter.
My obsession with Grandma’s Cookies was so bad that a few years ago after Red Cross bought Delta Blood Bank I was irked that the canteen had dropped them from their offerings after I donated platelets every two weeks.
As for my nightly convenience store trips when I was working, about three years ago they became exclusive to the 7-Eleven at Powers and Yosemite avenues.
I had discovered “fresh baked” cookies that were supplied to 7-Eleven by local bakeries. More specifically, my taste buds got hooked on the chocolate chunk as well as M&M cookies.
At four cookies that were usually gone in five minutes or less at my desk, that was a 1,000 calorie hit with 100 percent of the daily recommended consumption of saturated fat that set me back $3.16 a day or $15.90 a week.
I get it. That is an obscene amount of money to spend on an ongoing basis on a cookie habit. To put it in financial perspective that’s $70 shy of three of my $290 monthly car payments in a year’s time.
Fifty days ago I swore off cookies.
The reason that number is important is simple. Over the years when I’ve decided to make a diet change I discovered I could overcome how I managed to program my taste buds, urges and/or thinking process if I stuck with a change for 50 days.
By then I had acquired a taste for whatever I replaced it with. This time around it was upping my daily consumption of longtime favorites such as bananas, rice cakes, almonds, and carrots.
I guess if there’s a secret to my so-called “will power” to forgo a bad habit, it’s the fact I’ve come to realize it is only a 50 day struggle and not a lifetime struggle. That’s because religiously eating the replacement for that long eliminates the old cravings and gets your taste buds and other senses hooked on the replacement.
That leaves me basically with two “junk” style items in my weekly diet: The half gallon of Dreyer’s ice cream I polish off in 20 minutes or so every Saturday night like clockwork and personalized bags of Cheez-Its.
The Cheez-Its are what I now use to eat when I’m on long day hikes so I don’t think I’ll be dropping them anytime soon. As for the ice cream, that will be a major challenge if I ever decide it’s time to jettison it.
But then the 1,600 or so calories are just over the amount in six 7-Eleven cookies.
And it is certainly healthier than my childhood Saturday morning habit while watching cartoons of two bowls of Frosted Flake cereal each with three extra spoons of sugar.
You might ask why I just didn’t eat sugar. I was getting there. More often than not I followed it up with two spoonful of sugar.
All things considered, it’s amazing I’ve only had one cavity in my entire life.
This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com