- December 4, 2025
One morning as we were walking to the bus stop, my 7-year-old son, Luke, revealed a crumb of wisdom for the ages.
“Did you know that if you eat a cookie while you’re walking around Publix, you will lose one pound?” he said.
On one hand, someone as skinny as Luke might know a thing or two about weight loss. On the other hand, no.
“And how do you know this?” I asked.
“I went to Publix, and I weighed myself,” he explained. “Then, I ate a cookie.”
With some professorial excitement, he concluded: “And when I left, I weighed myself again.”
There you go. It’s settled. Time to call the TV stations. Time to tell the manufacturers of Ozempic and Mounjaro that they’re wasting their time. The cure for obesity has been right under our noses all this time: sugar cookies.
“I’m guessing you didn’t read the scale correctly,” I said.
Luke was indignant. “Dad! I read it correctly!”
Over the next few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about this wild claim. I daydreamed of eating cookies while my pants got looser and looser around the waist. So much easier than fasting or forcing myself to eat another cucumber.
Kennedy, Luke’s 10-year-old sister, wasn’t too convinced. When Luke explained his discovery to her after school, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Umm, no. That’s just confusing.”
I rushed to Luke’s defense. “Kennedy, it was a science experiment. Science.”
“I think he was remembering his weight wrong,” Kennedy said.
There was only one way to settle this: We had to replicate the results.
I drove Luke and Kennedy to Publix. We parked. We approached the industrial scale in front of the rows of shopping carts, and Luke climbed onto the platform. Fifty four pounds. I took a picture so that there would be no confusion afterward.
We then headed straight for the cookies, and both of my children chose the sprinkle variety.
Anticipating that the results would confirm his previous findings, Luke began some preliminary extrapolations: “Maybe two cookies would make me lose two pounds?”
We wound our way up and down several aisles to pick up some groceries, before, as if fate had planned this moment centuries ago, we ended up right back in front of the scale!
Up he climbed. This time, I recorded a video, so that the celebration would live forever in history museums, alongside the footage of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.
The needle bounced around the 52-pound mark.
Was it possible? Two pounds lost?
Eureka!
“This is one small step for cookies, one giant leap for —”
But then I looked down at him more closely …
“Luke, get your hands off the handlebars!”
He looked up with a sheepish smile. Oops.
With his hands at his side, sure enough, the needle rose back up to 54 pounds exactly.
So much for scientific discovery.
We drove home, sadder and wiser.
But, the more I think of it, while we didn’t prove that cookies cause weight loss, we did prove that they don’t cause weight gain, either. Can’t argue with science.
