Washing Your Cookie Down With Milk Is A Really Bad Idea

There's something just so perfect about a chocolate chip cookie with a tall glass of milk. After sinking your teeth into the gooey, chewy, chocolate-chunked dough, nothing feels more satisfying than the creamy, light-colored drink to wash it down.

But if you're looking to avoid feeling any kind of terrible after eating your treat, you should probably avoid the milk. Switch it out for something that's, you know, not filled with sugar.

Milk naturally contains a distinctive type of sugar called lactose. That pesky "–ose" suffix has been tacked on there the whole time, and we bet you didn't even notice. But don't fret too much about dairy. Lactose is a sugar, but it's one your body uses directly — unlike high-fructose corn syrup, sucrose, and the others that give sugar its bad name. It's also a probiotic, giving gut bacteria that extra boost to do their job well.

Even still, sipping something sugary after a sugary snack is a bad call. You know how after a cone of ice cream, a soda, or (obviously) a cookie, all of a sudden you feel excessively thirsty? Like salt, sugar acts as an electrolyte to help your body absorb water. However, like with salt, in excess it can make you feel thirsty. That's because the sugar particles are swirling through your bloodstream, collecting more and more water from the rest of your body. Noticing the sudden imbalance, your brain sends you those pesky thirst signals. This is why the glass of milk feels just so satisfying after your last bite.

But milk just adds more sugar to your system, unbalancing the hydration equation even further. You're bound to feel more parched, more imbalanced, and flushed with an even more severe sugar crash than ever before. Instead, try washing the cookie down with some water instead of another hydrating (but possible sugary) drink.