Over 100 years ago on Mar. 6, 1912, Oreo cookies were sold for the first time. Thus began the argument about the best way to eat an Oreo.
Do you go for the cream first or bite the whole cookie when eating the best-selling cookie in the world? We are set in our ways about how we eat them. Surveys indicate 35 percent of consumers twist open their Oreos before eating them. Women are more likely to be twisters than men. Some 30 percent of consumers prefer dunking their Oreos. They are more likely to be men than women. Moreover, certain areas of the country favor one method over the other. Thus, New York, Las Vegas, and Nashville are cities where twisting is heavily practiced, whereas Chicago, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and New Orleans are cities into dunking.
Your preferred method of eating Oreos, according to some facetious psychologists, reveals insights into your personality. For example, it has been suggested dunkers obviously like to sugarcoat their experiences and may be in denial, while those who eat the whole cookie all at once are plainly carefree and reckless. As for twisters, those who break apart the cookie and eat the inside first are evidently naturally curious people who take pleasure in tearing things apart to see how they work. Twisters who break apart the cookie and just eat the crème filling reveal themselves to be greedy and selfish people who take what they want and throw the rest away. Some twisters break the cookie apart, discard the filling, and eat only the cookie.
Here in the United States, Oreos might as well exist in their own cookie stratosphere. Today, nearly one out of every five dollars spent on cookies is spent on an Oreo. The creme-filled wafers' nearest competitor is Keebler (of which there are 11 varieties, including Chips Deluxe and Fudge Shoppe). But last year, Americans spent only about half as many dollars on Keebler cookies as they did on Oreos.
Since 2005, Oreo sales have grown by more than 60 percent, which is easily the largest increase among any of the top cookie brands sold in the United States. So many are sold annually, in fact, their crème filling alone would amply cover all the wedding cakes served in the United States over the course of a year. That's even more impressive when you realize an Oreo cookie is only 29 percent creme. Nearly eight billion Oreos are consumed each year, over 20 million a day. For perspective, it would take a stack of only 15,000 of them to reach the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. All the Oreos sold to date stacked in a pile would reach to the moon and back – five times!
There are many reasons for Oreo's dominance. Perhaps most importantly, people really like them. The clearest indication of their appeal is how widely Oreos are used to enhance other foods. The cookie, after all, is gobbled up not only bare or dipped in milk, but fried in dough, mixed with ice cream, blended into milk shakes, pounded into pie crust, and crushed and sprinkled over a lot of sweets. One way to treat them is by using Oreos as an ingredient in other recipes. Chopped up, the cookie goes well in cheesecakes, bread pudding, parfaits, pancakes, brownies, cakes, pies, banana bread, and even other cookies.
There is also an element of reliability. After so many years of exposure to both the brand, which has been around since it was introduced by Nabisco in 1912, and the cookie's unique design, people are drawn to Oreos because no other cookie, no matter how similar, can replace the familiarity they offer. On the cookie's 75th birthday in 1986, "[Oreo] cookies are designed as consciously as buildings, and sometimes better," was written in “The New York Times.”
But Oreos have managed to grow by breaking with tradition, too. Over the years, the brand has reinvigorated interest by introducing new, often outlandish variations on the original formula. Some of them, like Golden Oreos, which are made with vanilla wafers, have proved popular and endured. Others, like Watermelon Oreos, have not. There are currently over 60 products listed on the official Oreo website, which include flavors like mint, peanut butter, and berry, as well as mini Oreos and 100-calorie snack packs.
Last summer in July, the latest twist on the Oreo was introduced. Oreo Thins are similar to the original wafers, except they're, well, slimmer. The new cookies are each about four millimeters thinner and 18 calories lighter. Oreo Thins, the newest addition to the lineup, are being pitched as a more "sophisticated" cookie. They are meant to be eaten on their own, in their entirety, rather than after being split into their two components—chocolate wafer and creme—as the original ones so often are dipped or twisted. And they offer the exact opposite appeal of the popular Mega Stuf and Double Stuf varieties.
The Oreo was merely one of three cookies introduced by Nabisco in 1912 to satisfy demand for English-style "biscuits." The other two, Mother Goose and Veronese, have long since disappeared, but Oreo now dominates the company's product line.
After growing up with cheaper brands of sandwich cookies, I now always have Oreos in the house for especially my grandkids. The cookies are always worth observing how the kids eat Oreos, creme first or biting the whole cookie.
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INKling of the Week:
That's the way the cookie crumbles is slang for something you say that means bad things sometimes happen and there is nothing you can do to prevent it, so it is not worth becoming upset about it.
