The Streak That Rewired My Cravings

Fourteen weeks. That's how long I've kept my cook streak alive in Saltpig: at least four days of cooking, every single week, since early summer.

It's been about a month since my last post. In that time I've kept cooking, kept saving recipes, and quietly run an experiment on myself. The question I keep circling back to: is a streak on a cooking app actually building a habit, or am I just hooked on not breaking it?

Why our streak is weekly, not daily

Streaks are everywhere in games, and Duolingo built an empire on them. When we designed cook streaks for Saltpig, we made one deliberate change: instead of demanding you cook every day, you set how many days a week you'll cook a meal.

Real life doesn't run on a daily cadence. Some nights it's leftovers, a work dinner, or a kid's practice that runs late. A daily streak punishes you for having a life. A weekly one asks a fairer question: did you show up enough this week?

My rules are simple. Four days a week, no minimum number of meals, no required type of cooking. It just has to be a real recipe that I actually cook.

"We have Jimmy John's at home"

Something shifted, and I can't fully pin down what. I haven't dug through my credit card statements to prove I'm eating out less. Maybe it's money, especially with grocery prices climbing. But the honest truth is simpler: I now genuinely prefer to cook the thing rather than go out and buy it.

I can't remember the last time a craving drove me out the door. I used to crave Jimmy John's sandwiches constantly (it's just outside delivery range). Last week I baked a copycat recipe (from @theblues_travelers) of their bread instead. I'd never made that kind of bread, let alone shaped proper rolls. That night was a true "we have Jimmy John's at home" moment, and the at-home version won.

Now my cravings sound different. Every mooncake season, the Asian grocery stores stack them to the ceiling and I want them badly. This year the thought in my head isn't "I should grab a box at H-Mart." It's "I really want to make mooncakes."

I've never made them. Ordering a box from a reputable shop would be easier and probably better. Doesn't matter. Today I made my own golden syrup, and it's cooling in a glass jar on the counter. Tomorrow I attempt my first mooncakes.

What the research says about streaks

I went looking for whether this is a real effect or just me. Research out of CU Boulder suggests streaks work by turning each day of effort into a small win, so progress itself becomes the reward. Alix Barasch, a marketing professor who studies how technology shapes behavior, puts it neatly: a streak has no value in the world, but it has "real psychological value."

Three points from her work stuck with me:

• Streaks turn something you already sort of want to do into something you actually care about, even when the prize is just a number.
• Breaking a streak hurts more than it should, and it makes people less likely to keep going. That's why so many apps now offer freezes, repairs or forgiveness.
• The end goal isn't the streak. It's doing the behavior long enough that it becomes part of your day, so you'd keep doing it with no reward at all.

That second point is exactly why we went weekly. A missed Tuesday shouldn't erase three months of progress.

Habit, hobby, or founder bias?

So is this what having a cooking hobby looks like? I've always cooked. I feed a family of five, and I love sharing what I make with my sisters and neighbors. But since building and using Saltpig, the thing pulling me into the kitchen on a tired Thursday is, honestly, the streak.

I have to be fair to myself here. I built this app, so of course I care about the streak. Maybe I'm a little addicted to keeping it alive. Both can be true.

But here's what tells me it's more than that. The streak only asks for four days. It doesn't ask me to bake bread I've never made or boil sugar into golden syrup for a pastry I've never attempted. That part is all me. If the research is right, that's what a habit looks like when it takes hold: the reward starts it, and then the behavior carries itself.

Week 15 starts tomorrow with mooncakes. I'll let you know how they turn out.

What keeps you coming back to something: the streak, or the thing itself?

Sources

• Research Explains Why Streaks Make Resolutions Stick, University of Colorado Boulder via Newswise, Jan 2026