People have been sharing their amazement after learning how police became associated with doughnuts – with many shocked that the stereotype started almost 80 years ago

It has been a common stereotype for around 80 years – but people are only just learning why police and doughnuts go hand-in-hand. Since the 1940s, police have been closely associated with the sugary snacks – making many social media users wonder how this came to be.

It prompted one Reddit user to ask: “Where does the cop and doughnut stereotype come from?”, as others jumped on the thread to discover the answer. According to Norm Stamper, the former chief of the Seattle Police Department, graveyard cops in the 1940s and 1950s worked long hours and needed a snack or two to get through their shifts.

However, as most cafes and restaurants had already shut for the night, they turned to the only other option available – doughnut shops. He said in The Donut: History, Recipes, and Lore from Boston to Berlin by Michael Krondl. : “Graveyard cops in the forties and fifties had few choices. They could pack lunch, pray for an all-night diner on their route, or fill up on doughnuts.

“They were cheap and convenient.” Backing this, Dick Ellwood, a former Baltimore City police detective, shared how he was allowed to eat doughnuts off the assembly line shortly after the shops opened in the early morning

Paul Mullins, a professor of Anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, told TIME: “The early-hours doughnut shop is a post-World War I phenomenon in major cities and did not spread to most of the remainder of the country until after World War II, so the stereotype of an overweight officer drinking burnt coffee and eating a glazed doughnut is a relatively recent creation.”

Commenting on this revelation, one user said: “My dad is a retired cop. According to him, it was because cops would often get assigned random patrol shifts in the middle of the night, and when you’re hungry at 3am back in the day the only thing that would be open at that hour was…doughnut shops and bakeries.”

Another user added: “In the small town where I grew up the overnight cops always hung out at the donut shop at like 3am.” A third user said: “My dad was a cop and this was the story he told me. They gave freebies for a little late-night security…”