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Why Your Brain Can’t Resist Reese’s
Ahead of Halloween, I’m thinking about self-control and king-sized candy bars.
This is a modified excerpt from Inside Your Head 🧠, a weekly newsletter exploring why your brain makes you think, feel, and act the way you do, written by me, Elemental’s senior writer and a former brain scientist. Subscribe here so you won’t miss the next one.
Your brain wants Halloween candy 🍫
I have a pretty gnarly sweet tooth. Like, “can’t keep a pint of ice cream in the freezer because I’ll finish it” kind of sweet tooth. My fiancé, on the other hand, can’t really be bothered about sugary treats. He’ll literally take a bite out of an Oreo and put the other half of the cookie back in the bag. (He may also be a serial killer for that move, but that’s another article.)
Our different, ahem, strategies were put to the test last week when he bought a two-pound bag of Halloween candy in case we had any trick-or-treaters this Saturday, and the bag disappeared four days later. The mystery of the missing candy remains unsolved…
But it got me thinking: Why do some people have self-control around desserts while others are seemingly insatiable?
