Shaye Phillips, Features Editor–
It’s 2 p.m. in the third-grade classroom. The teacher stands at the front of the room to make a special announcement.
“Students, as you all know, it’s Emma’s birthday today, and she’s brought in a special treat,” the teacher says. A girl with blonde hair tied up neatly into pigtails picks up a large-sized plastic container from her desk and smiles. “Sugar cookies!” she exclaims, happily.
I peer at the cookies in the bin, curiously checking to see if what I think is true, is true. I can make out the pink frosting on top and the dotting of green, yellow, and blue on the cookies’ surfaces. My heart sinks as I realize that these aren’t the classic brown sugar cookies.
The entire class erupts into cheers of delight as they race over to Emma’s desk to grab what they consider to be a grocery store delicacy. “Bakery fresh,” the yellow label reads; everyone instantly recognizes them to be an elementary school classic dessert. I remained seated while my classmates wolfed down those cookies, licking the frosting and sprinkles from their sticky fingers. The thought of which made my stomach churn.
The frosted sugar cookies are actually called Lofthouse Cookies and remain at the top of every child’s list as their favorite birthday treat. Described as having a super soft, cakey texture and sweet pink buttercream frosting, it makes sense that these cookies taste fantastic to the average consumer.
I stand among the minority when I claim that the texture of the cookies resembles chalk and the frosting is too sickly sweet to be appetizing. It makes me wonder why Americans like these cookies so much.
In 2017, the Herald-Times, of Bloomington, Indiana, released an article discussing people’s preferences when it comes to types of frosting. They ran a poll on their social media site for nonscientific reasons and got 158 responses from people ranging in age from 25 to 44. Of those responses, 98 people (62%) said they preferred buttercream frosting. Only 57 (36%) chose whipped, and three people reported that they were not frosting consumers.
Most Americans have a preference for more sugary types of foods, hence the popularity of buttercream frosting. According to a study done by the National Library of Medicine, nearly 61% of adults in the U.S. eat sweet foods every day, 161 kilocalories from candy and 372 kilocalories from sweet bakery products.
These numbers explain why the cookies are so popular among my friends and family, even without the added nostalgia for childhood associated with them. It’s just my taste buds that don’t agree with buttercream frosting. I’ve been sensitive to sweet, sour, and salty flavors since childhood, which made eating snacks at birthday parties and camp a challenge. My friends would always tease me for not liking snacks like Fudge Stripes, Twinkies, and even regular cupcakes.
AncestryDNA is a site that teaches people about their ancestry. It also shares information about genetics, including physical and psychological human traits. Genetics accounts for 30% of the variation in perception of sweetness among different people.
There’s a cluster of three genes called the TAS1R3 found in one chromosome that are responsible for sweet and savory taste perception. Certain DNA differences in one of these chromosomes can cause enhanced sweetness perception. One copy of the TASIR3 gene is passed down from each parent, so either one or both are responsible for sweetness perception. A single copy of the DNA difference will make sweet flavors taste sweeter but not as strong as two copies. I guess I’d have two copies then, because I can detect sweetness in foods even if it’s well hidden.
Why do we live in an age where people have to be judged by what they like and don’t like to eat? It is not even as if I want to dislike the Lofthouse Cookies; I’m sure if I did, I would have so much more fun during birthday events.
So, the next time a person tells me that the grocery store frosted sugar cookies are the best dessert around, I will simply have to politely disagree. I can’t help it that my “sweet tooth” is more sensitive than others.
Shaye Phillips ‘27 is a journalism and sustainability and environmental studies major from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.