Aren't they supposed to be full of sugar? Each time I've been tempted to pick them up when shopping, one look at the ingredients and nutritional profile is enough to dissuade me. I guess trying them once in a while won't kill me, though.

Apparently, they are a brand of speculoos cookies, and this Wikipedia synopsis is eye opening:

> speculaas [speːkyˈlaːs] ⓘ refers to the more traditional variant, made with a mix of various spices, which is nowadays most popular in the Netherlands; speculoos [speːkyˈloːs] ⓘ refers to a Belgian variant that omits the traditional spices in favour of caramelized sugar for flavour, and which is nowadays the most common variant in Belgium and worldwide

So the Belgians enshittified speculaas to create speculoos, pumping it full of sugar, and presented it to the world as something special.

They're... cookies. A treat.

Looking at the nutritional profile of cookies doesn't make sense. You're supposed to eat them in such low quantity/frequency that it doesn't matter.

> So the Belgians enshittified speculaas to create speculoos

Yes and no. This "Speculoos is actually cheap Speculaas" isn't completely true. That's what people like to say today, but the "Speculoos" name has been around much longer than Lotus bakeries. It's just a dialect thing and there is no reason. Some people called it "Speculaas", some people called it "Speculoos", and _then_ a cheaper variant got made and they choose the "Speculoos" term for it.

It all just sounds really fitting because the "-loos" suffix in Dutch means "without".

Yes things made with sugar have sugar.