"Broken cookies don't have calories"

“Broken cookies don’t have calories” (or “broken cookies have no calories” or “broken cookies have fewer calories”) has been a popular saying on refrigerator magnets and T-shirts. “Broken Cookies Contain Fewer Calories” has been cited in print since at least 1983.

“I eat the broken cookies first because I feel bad for them” is another saying about broken cookies.

22 June 1983, Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe, pg. 3 ad:
Broken Cookies Contain Fewer Calories

23 May 1984, Cedar Rapids (IA) Gazette, “Unwitnessed dietings evokes the trickiest in self-deceit” by Melinda S. Tomsic, pg. 9A, cols. 1-2:
My friend Joan brought me a refrigerator magnet that sums up my point. “Broken cookies,” it declares, “have fewer calories.”

2 January 1987, The News (Frederick, MD), pg. B2, col. 5 ad:
GAMES DIETERS PLAY
“Broken cookies have no calories.”

Google News Archive
29 January 1996, The Southeast Missourian (Cape Girardeau, MO), “Substitutes weughed in the balance for dieters” by Peggy O’Farrell, pg. 2A, col. 3:
That’s the same kind of math that stipulates broken cookies don’t have any calories because they all leaked out.

Google Books
Murder at the Watergate
By Margaret Truman
New York, NY: Fawcett Crest
1999, ©1998
Pg. 99:
“Two small pieces. Not big enough to contain any calories.”
“You always say broken cookies don’t have calories.”

Google Books
Body & Soul
By Gail Harris
New York, NY: Kensington Books
1999
Pg. 180:
A lot of the other ways that people do that is: broken cookies don’t count, because when the cookie breaks the calories break, ...

Google Books
Motivation & Emotion:
Evolutionary, physiological, cognitive, and social influences
By David C. Edwards
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publ.
1999
Pg. ?:
Broken cookies don’t have calories; they have ...

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Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams
From: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (Mirhanda Sarko)
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 18:10:19 GMT
Local: Sat, Apr 28 2001 1:10 pm
Subject: Re: See Me on TV!

And broken cookies have no calories at all, because the broken area lets all the calories leak out.

Organic Gardening Forums
gardenz
Posted February 20, 2003 02:55 AM
(...)
Oh, and as evidenced by what you mentioned in your post…you obviously know the “Cardinal Rule of Cookie Consumption”..........Broken cookies have no caloric content. Some kind of convoluted physics/geothermal/trigonometric/NASA/particle-excellerated scientific math-u-maticul thingy, I guess. Or did I hear that on an infomercial?

Democratic Underground
mikeytherat
Mon Oct-15-07 07:50 AM
3. Exactly. Just like broken cookies have ZERO calories.
Something about dispersing the calories when the molecular cookie bonds are broken. It’s been a while since P-Chem, but I know I’ve seen this somewhere!