Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
Speaker 2: that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating
Speaker 2: facts about your favorite movies, TV shows, music and more.
Speaker 2: We are your two doyens of drivel. I'm Alex Heigel and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Runtag.
Speaker 2: And today, Jordan, we are venturing into a bold new
Speaker 2: direction for TMI foodstuffs, specifically Oreos, which are celebrating their
Speaker 2: one hundred and tenth anniversary this year. I have personally
Speaker 2: always thought of Oreos as the season NBA metaphor, the
Speaker 2: sixth man of the cookie world, the anchor. You know.
Speaker 2: They're not chalky and disgusting like a Chips de Hoy.
Speaker 2: They're wantonly sexual like a Nutter butter or snooty like
Speaker 2: those high falutin Pepperidge Farm folks. They're the John Stockton
Speaker 2: Utah jazz reference of the cookie aisle, all time assist leader,
Speaker 2: just happy to be out there with the rest of
Speaker 2: the guys, having a good time, playing their best and
Speaker 2: helping the team. But Jordan, you you hit me with
Speaker 2: a scorching hot take right before we started recording. Would
Speaker 2: you like to repeat that for the fine folks out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'm not a huge Areos fan, and
Speaker 1: I do have strong thoughts on sweets. I don't really drink,
Speaker 1: and you tend to find that people who don't drink
Speaker 1: have an especially intense sweet tooth. So I can pratle
Speaker 1: on about cookies like some people do about brandy or wine,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a case of familiarity breeds contempt, but I'm just not
Speaker 1: a huge Oreos fan, and the flavors okay, but just
Speaker 1: the experience of eating them to me is garbage. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's pay say, the cookie itself or the wafer, if
Speaker 1: you're being professional, is trash. It's stale, it's crummy, it's
Speaker 1: bitter tasting, terrible mouthfeel, if we're getting really professional here.
Speaker 1: I'm not a dipper, so maybe that's part of the problem.
Speaker 1: Maybe if I dipped, it would be less like you know,
Speaker 1: eating gravel. Feel like, no one actually likes the cookie
Speaker 1: portion of Oreo. It's all about the cream feeling. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the cream, and the cream is fine.
Speaker 1: It's sweet, it's vaguely cream tasting, it's sugary, it's sweet.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's fine for me. Oreo is great
Speaker 1: as a flavor of ice cream or milkshakes or the
Speaker 1: cookies and cream candy bar. That's where the flavor profile
Speaker 1: of oreo is great. But the actual experience of eating them, eh,
Speaker 1: not for me. I could take them or leave them.
Speaker 1: I'll take malamars or their fancy cousin pin wheels any day.
Speaker 1: But how about you.
Speaker 2: You know, as someone who used to smoke a lot
Speaker 2: of weed, I've had a lot of experience with oreos,
Speaker 2: all kinds of oreos, the peanut butter. Also, you know,
Speaker 2: as longtime listeners of the show will know, I grew
Speaker 2: up in central Pennsylvania, so I have eaten my fair
Speaker 2: share of chocolate covered and or deep fried oreos at
Speaker 2: the state fairs.
Speaker 1: That I've never had. I've never actually had that, despite.
Speaker 2: My disgusting Just why it's awful? Just put yourself into
Speaker 2: like a painful state of food coma and or diabetic shock. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're bad. I don't know why people do that to themselves. Well,
Speaker 2: folks from the Vicious family feud at the heart of
Speaker 2: the cookies invention to the insane process of making that
Speaker 2: famous filling kosher certified in the late nineties to the
Speaker 2: definitive scientific proof regarding the distribution of said filling to
Speaker 2: the high school seniors who got in trouble for shoving
Speaker 2: oreos up there. But that was Jordan's edition. Here's everything
Speaker 2: you didn't know about oreos. The tangled web of oreos
Speaker 2: actually begins in a bit of family slash corporate battles.
Speaker 2: I did not know this. Around the turn of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, biscuits were big business in America. Did you
Speaker 2: know this?
Speaker 1: I did not know this.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I know that they were basically trying to make biscuits
Speaker 1: a thing over here in the way that they were
Speaker 1: in the UK for tea time. Yes, I think that
Speaker 1: was kind of the whole idea, was that they were
Speaker 1: trying to create a market need where there was not
Speaker 1: over here.
Speaker 2: Yes. And so in the late nineteenth century, two brothers,
Speaker 2: Jacob and Joseph Leos, bought a controlling interest in the
Speaker 2: Coral Cracker and Confectionery Company in Kansas City, Missouri. So
Speaker 2: I can't believe you read that tech neither can I.
Speaker 2: Particulars of this are not interesting. The point is that
Speaker 2: Jacob decides that a bunch of Midwest bakeries can form
Speaker 2: together and become a regional powerhouse to compete with those
Speaker 2: snooty coastal elites Big Biscuit in New York. And So
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety he hires a lawyer named Adolphus Green
Speaker 2: to oversee a merger that creates the American Biscuit and
Speaker 2: Manufacturing Company, which becomes the second largest corporate bakery in America.
Speaker 2: Jacob names himself president, appoints his brother Joseph to the
Speaker 2: board of directors, and Adolphus to general counsel. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine, a guy named William H. Moore combines
Speaker 2: a number of other bakeries to start the New York
Speaker 2: Biscuit Company. More is more lest the archetype for what
Speaker 2: would become the kind of nineteen eighties. Patrick Bateman, corporate
Speaker 2: writer ac mergers and acquisition guys. His whole thing was
Speaker 2: buying and consolidating companies. He lost one point one million
Speaker 2: at one point in an attempt to buy the Carnegie
Speaker 2: Steel Company, but subsequently tried again with the assistants of
Speaker 2: JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller and succeeded creating US Steel,
Speaker 2: which is one of the archetypal industrial mega corporations of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. So this is the guy who's behind
Speaker 2: New York Biscuit.
Speaker 1: So moral the stories, you don't want to mess with
Speaker 1: New York Biscuit.
Speaker 2: It sounds like no, no, no no. So American Biscuit,
Speaker 2: New York Biscuit, and a third company called the United
Speaker 2: States Bacon Company. These guys didn't have just terrible names,
Speaker 2: battled each other for years in what broadsheet journalists actually
Speaker 2: dubbed the Biscuit Wars at the time, and it got
Speaker 2: so bad that Jacob had to take a step back
Speaker 2: from American Biscuit for health reasons, and Joseph, now in control,
Speaker 2: decides to make peace and merge with the other two
Speaker 2: companies in eighteen ninety eight, a move Jacob vehemently protested
Speaker 2: against from his sick bed.
Speaker 1: Isn't this like the plot of The Godfather very much?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Sonny trying to make peace with the other families.
Speaker 2: While how they massacred my boy. Yeah uh, he said
Speaker 2: that about Chipshy later. So the merger nevertheless goes through
Speaker 2: and the three companies become the National Biscuit Company. Nah bisco,
Speaker 2: I get it. There's no way to say that that
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like a cult indoctrination. Forever forever, bah ram
Speaker 2: you nah Bisco. Anyway, Joseph installs himself uh lawyer Adolphus
Speaker 2: dream of.
Speaker 3: Us nah Bisco and some other ex buddies of Jacob's,
Speaker 3: and the company builds an enormous factory in what is
Speaker 3: now the Chelsea Market and is well on its way
Speaker 3: to national dominance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this building in Manhattan is absolutely massive. It's a
Speaker 1: full city block, and that stretch of Ninth Avenue is
Speaker 1: named Orio Way in its honor. And interesting point of fact,
Speaker 1: the birthplace of the Oreo is now owned by Google.
Speaker 1: They were just the building in twenty eighteen for two
Speaker 1: point four billion.
Speaker 2: That's what That's a spicy cookie.
Speaker 1: That's a little block of meatpacking district Manhattan costs, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Boy.
Speaker 2: So, Nabisco launches the wildly popular Barnums animal crackers in
Speaker 2: nineteen three, although that is like most things this company does,
Speaker 2: a ripoff of an existing British cookie. Fig Newton's also
Speaker 2: come up around this time, and then in nineteen twelve
Speaker 2: both Laura Dunes and Oreos so quite a batting average
Speaker 2: out of the gate.
Speaker 1: But all those cookies are trash. I mean, especially Fignutons
Speaker 1: are popular to eat at the beach because it already
Speaker 1: tastes like you're eating sand, So now I can tell
Speaker 1: when there's already sand in it. Yeah, I mean, Laura Dunes,
Speaker 1: I can't believe those are still being made. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anybody under the age of seventy
Speaker 1: who eats those. I hate all these cookies. Oreos gets
Speaker 1: a pass just out of nostalgia alone. But yeah, interesting
Speaker 1: fact about the sort of democratic way that the BISCO
Speaker 1: goes about developing products. There was an article that appeared
Speaker 1: in a nineteen thirty one issue of The New Yorker
Speaker 1: written by E. B. White, the man who wrote Charlotte's Web,
Speaker 1: and he describes his visit to the BISCO headquarters in
Speaker 1: New York and the very kind of casual way that
Speaker 1: employees could suggest new cookie ideas. Presumably there was like
Speaker 1: a suggestion box, and then the bakers would make them
Speaker 1: and then test these products out by basically just leaving
Speaker 1: them out in the breakroom and watching to see how
Speaker 1: many were eaten. And EB White writes in this piece,
Speaker 1: a baker makes up a trial batch off the new
Speaker 1: model and sends them upstairs, where they're placed in an
Speaker 1: open rack by the water cooler. Employees may help themselves.
Speaker 1: Everything is informal. There are no charts or tables. After
Speaker 1: a few days of elapse, the heads of the department
Speaker 1: simply meet and talk the thing over. As soon as
Speaker 1: the cookie has passed its test, it gets a name.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about the Orio name later. That's how
Speaker 1: Pablo Escobar ran his business too.
Speaker 2: But Jacob in the meantime heals up and from his deathbed,
Speaker 2: rises with a vengeance and launches another new biscuit company
Speaker 2: with another guy and calls it the Loose Wiles Biscuit Company.
Speaker 2: They really got to work on these names. But with
Speaker 2: the burning hatred and drive born of this Cane and
Speaker 2: Able esque story, he brings the Loose Wiles Biscuit Company
Speaker 2: up into the number two biscuit slot in the country
Speaker 2: behind Nobisco, largely on the strength of one cookie, a
Speaker 2: shortbread and cream sandwich with an ornate stamp design called Hydrus.
Speaker 2: So we have to backtrack here because the quiet part
Speaker 2: loud about Oreos is that they are a total ripoff
Speaker 2: of Hydrugs. They came out in nineteen oh eight. NBISCO
Speaker 2: files a trademark on Oreo in nineteen twelve, and it
Speaker 2: is granted in nineteen thirteen. The first Oreo was sold
Speaker 2: on March sixth, nineteen twelve, to a grosser in Hoboken,
Speaker 2: New Jersey.
Speaker 1: They were sold by weight, originally at a cost of
Speaker 1: two dollars and thirty five cents for nine and a
Speaker 1: quarter pounds. The oreos cost a dollar eady five and
Speaker 1: the tin they came in costs another fifty cents. The
Speaker 1: original oreos were ever so slightly larger than the ones
Speaker 1: we enjoyed today, and most importantly to me, they went
Speaker 1: on sale just a month before the Titanic set sale
Speaker 1: on her maiden voyage meeting. There's quite possibly remains of
Speaker 1: early Oreo packaging on the ocean floor, although it departed
Speaker 1: from the UK, so it doubtful got over there, but
Speaker 1: people on board the Titanic may have been aware of oreos,
Speaker 1: and that's good enough for me.
Speaker 2: They were eating hydrugs. You know.
Speaker 1: I just want to recap for a second, just because
Speaker 1: this story, mostly due to the really terrible corporate names,
Speaker 1: can be a little hard to follow, but it's amazing.
Speaker 1: So two brothers start a cookie company, a cookie conglomerate.
Speaker 1: The older brother works so hard that he then has
Speaker 1: to take a step back. He's he's worked himself to
Speaker 1: the bone. His younger brother makes peace with all the
Speaker 1: competing other cookie companies and they merge against the older
Speaker 1: brother's wishes. The older brother gets well, and he's so
Speaker 1: angry that his younger brother has sold his own company
Speaker 1: out from underneath him that he makes a competing company
Speaker 1: to take them on. And this competing company has made
Speaker 1: basically what's the prototype of Oreo, known as hydrox. I
Speaker 1: just think that's amazing. Canaan Abele doesn't even begin to
Speaker 1: cover it.
Speaker 2: Here's what's funny about this. Hydrugs were far more successful
Speaker 2: than oreos at the time. The real power behind the
Speaker 2: throne at this point is the Jewish community. In nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty four, Loose Wiles, the company behind hydrox, partnered with
Speaker 2: the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America to create
Speaker 2: the country's first kosher certification program, which, because hydroxes don't
Speaker 2: use lard in their cream whereas oreos did, made hydroxes
Speaker 2: enormously popular among the Jewish community, and this contributed to
Speaker 2: their early market dominance. Nibisco attempted to hitch the Oreo
Speaker 2: name to a bunch of their other more successful products
Speaker 2: in displays and advertisements. There's a wonderful anecdote of this
Speaker 2: copy from Serious Eats. One in nineteen fourteen, one stores
Speaker 2: found itself with a surfeit of Oreos to the tune
Speaker 2: of seven hundred tins, so they slashed the price and
Speaker 2: literally berated their customers into trying to buy them. Yesterday,
Speaker 2: we advertised those splendid oreos and they were a great bargain.
Speaker 2: While we sold a few, they didn't move anything like
Speaker 2: we expected. It's simply a case of you not knowing
Speaker 2: what a fine biscuit delicacy they are. The customer, they're
Speaker 2: literally the principal skinner meme. Is this cookie bad? No,
Speaker 2: it's the customer who is wrong. I love that, But
Speaker 2: you know they hydrouck Span. These guys, they bungled an
Speaker 2: early lead man. It's rough, yeah, I mean for starters.
Speaker 2: There's that truly horrendous name, Hydrox. It sounds terrible on
Speaker 2: the page, It looks terrible. It looks like a Greek
Speaker 2: monster with like six heads.
Speaker 1: It's awful. They were looking for a product name that
Speaker 1: would evoke purity and goodness and good lord. They failed,
Speaker 1: but they.
Speaker 2: Maybe they succeeded too much and just evoked antiseptic sterility.
Speaker 1: Right because I guess the name hydros came from the
Speaker 1: atomic elements of water, hydrogen and oxygen high DROs. And
Speaker 1: this was surprisingly given how ugly it sounds and how
Speaker 1: it does not roll off the tongue in any way,
Speaker 1: it was actually a really common name at the time.
Speaker 1: There was the hydrox arated table water. There was hydrox
Speaker 1: ice cream, Oh God, and hydrox ginger ale, and as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, has a very antiseptic medical connotation and not
Speaker 1: something that you want connected with confections. So perhaps because
Speaker 1: of the whole Warring Brothers thing for fifty years, loose
Speaker 1: Wiles really leaned on the whole copycat aspect of oreos.
Speaker 1: They were really promoting hydrogs as the original beware of imitators.
Speaker 1: There was one ad that featured a bear cub literally
Speaker 1: crying over stolen crease, and their ad copy use words
Speaker 1: like first and the finest, and the original and the
Speaker 1: only and the classic and Warren consumers don't be fooled
Speaker 1: by lookalikes.
Speaker 2: So much finger wagging, I love it or did, however,
Speaker 2: I throat cookie World. Yeah, exactly, Jacob. The same year
Speaker 2: Jacob dies, the older brother who quit his body not
Speaker 2: even cold in the grave, Oreo sends out a series
Speaker 2: of ads that would change the world. With no exaggeration.
Speaker 2: I say this. They promote the classic Oreo twist method
Speaker 2: of eating. It's on street cars. I believe it is
Speaker 2: the big one saying everybody's doing the Oreo twist. Maybe
Speaker 2: they didn't say that. I don't know, but that's where
Speaker 2: the twist dates back to his nineteen twenty three coincidentally,
Speaker 2: the same year the brother dies. I just this whole
Speaker 2: thing is so Shakespearean.
Speaker 1: They did the Oreo twist on his grave.
Speaker 2: Hey. By twenty fourteen, the Hydros name had fallen so
Speaker 2: far that Keebler Kellogg's let the trademark lapse and it
Speaker 2: was snapped up by Leaf Brands, who four years later
Speaker 2: filed a complaint with the FTC against Oreos, alleging that
Speaker 2: they hid Hydrox companies from customers on store shelves.
Speaker 1: Oh, they hid Hydrox cookies from customers.
Speaker 2: That was the basis of the suit. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it was actually settled, but man talk about with
Speaker 2: my last breath. I stab at THEE from Hell's Dark Heart,
Speaker 2: I stab at thee. They went. They just Hydrox versus Oreo.
Speaker 2: Few to the century.
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, I mean this was the Coke Pepsi of
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century. We're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more, too much of
Speaker 1: in just a moment.
Speaker 2: Wow. With hydrux dead and buried, Oreos were free to blossom.
Speaker 2: So shortan tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Oreo went my many variations of their famous
Speaker 1: name over the years. When they were first introduced in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve, they were simply known as the Oreo biscuit,
Speaker 1: and then by nineteen twenty one the cookie embraced its
Speaker 1: shape and it was renamed the Oreo Sandwich, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven the name was changed again to the
Speaker 1: distinctively high brow Oreo cream Sandwich. And I was saying
Speaker 1: earlier at the top of the episode this was a
Speaker 1: way to play off the British biscuits that were served
Speaker 1: at tea time, and upon their initial launch, Oreos were
Speaker 1: marketed as fairly high end. There's this amazing bit of
Speaker 1: ad copy from I think around nineteen twelve, when they
Speaker 1: were first unveiled and it describes the Oreo as quote
Speaker 1: two beautifully embossed chalk flavored wafers with a rich cream filling,
Speaker 1: which is over selling Oreos slightly. And the final official
Speaker 1: name changed to Oreos came in nineteen seventy four when
Speaker 1: the cookie became known as the Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookie,
Speaker 1: or Oreo for short, and that's its official name to
Speaker 1: this very day. Anyway, while we're on the topic of names,
Speaker 1: it's still anybody's guess where the term Oreo came from,
Speaker 1: but there are many theories. It could be derived from
Speaker 1: the French word for gold, which was an early decorative
Speaker 1: element for the Oreo packaging. But here's a grab bag
Speaker 1: of other explanations that are out there. There's one theory
Speaker 1: that says that the name stemmed from the hill shaped
Speaker 1: test version that never made it to store shelves. I
Speaker 1: guess the cream was piled up like a little mountain
Speaker 1: and that inspired this cookie prototype to be named Oreo,
Speaker 1: which is the Greek word from mountain. So that's one theory.
Speaker 1: There's another theory that says that the word Oreo is
Speaker 1: a combination of the ra from cream and sandwiching. It
Speaker 1: just like the cookie between the two o's in chocolate.
Speaker 1: Oh from chocolate, ree from cream, oh from chocolate. It's
Speaker 1: a verbal visual pun. It's not I I you don't know,
Speaker 1: I might.
Speaker 2: I just want to say I want you to do
Speaker 2: you're doing like the drunk don draper like hand gesturing is.
Speaker 2: It's just like the two o's and chocolate. It makes
Speaker 2: makes story. Roger Sterling throws up in the lobby.
Speaker 1: I mean that's probably how this was name.
Speaker 2: Right, They're all on cocaine. Just zut it up, like,
Speaker 2: what should we call it?
Speaker 1: Areo h very number three? It stands for a rexigenic,
Speaker 1: which is a medical term for substances that stimulate the appetite.
Speaker 1: I would tend to want to dismiss this out of hand,
Speaker 1: but considering hydrox.
Speaker 3: Was his competitive name, uh maybe, Well, way do you
Speaker 3: get to the plant conspiracy theory, which is the next one?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, this is a really good one. This is
Speaker 1: your personal favorite and probably mine too. The decorations on
Speaker 1: the top of hydrox the hydrox cookie at that point
Speaker 1: included a mountain laurel. And guess what genus of plant
Speaker 1: they belonged to? The mountain laurel. That's right, Oreo, Daphni, Oreo,
Speaker 1: daphne uh. And this was bolstered by the fact that
Speaker 1: someone in Nibisco clearly had a thing for plants. Of
Speaker 1: the cookies that Nibisco offered in nineteen thirteen, there's the Avena,
Speaker 1: the lotus, the helicon, the zephyrett, the zatona, the aola,
Speaker 1: the ramona, and Oreo, and those are all Latin or
Speaker 1: Botany names for different kinds of plants.
Speaker 2: I just love the idea that there's like one drunk
Speaker 2: guy in the Nobisco copywriting thing. He's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: name for plants no one will know. While we're on
Speaker 2: the topic of that embossing that beautiful lorel wreath, it
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a manhole cover at this point.
Speaker 2: When they launched, Oreos used a much more organic plant
Speaker 2: derived wreath for the emboss adding two pairs of turtle
Speaker 2: doves in a nineteen twenty four redesign. The contemporary Oreo
Speaker 2: stamp was introduced in nineteen fifty two and it has
Speaker 2: remained unchanged ever since.
Speaker 1: Every Oriole cookie contains ninety ridges, twelve flowers, twelve dashes,
Speaker 1: and twelve dots. I feel like that's going to be
Speaker 1: a great trivia question at some bar trivia somewhere.
Speaker 2: So remember that it's probably some kind of satanic numbering thing.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that.
Speaker 2: Many people on the internet credit a man named William
Speaker 2: Turnier who started as a mailboy at Nabisco with the
Speaker 2: four leaf clover and serrated edge design. But Nabisco is
Speaker 2: cagy about it. They will only confirm that a man
Speaker 2: by that name worked for the company during that time
Speaker 2: as a design engineer. In a very granular bit of
Speaker 2: Internet dorkery, in the comments section of a twenty eleven
Speaker 2: New York Times magazine article about the Oreo embossing, a
Speaker 2: guy aiming to be William Turnier's son, Bill said that
Speaker 2: the original blueprints for the cookie are in his possession
Speaker 2: in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Did you go into the comment section of this twenty
Speaker 1: eleven New York Times magazine article about the oreo and bossing,
Speaker 1: I just protu scanning all the comment good.
Speaker 2: Magician never reveals his secrets, Okay.
Speaker 1: But William Turnier's son, the aforementioned Bill, was interviewed by
Speaker 1: Mental Floss, and he said that the design on oreos
Speaker 1: quote goes back to monks who used it on the
Speaker 1: bottom of manuscripts they copied in medieval times. It was
Speaker 1: a sign of craft saying they did the best they could.
Speaker 1: And there are some out there Internet sleuths, most likely
Speaker 1: who have noted the similarities between the Oreo design and
Speaker 1: the graphics used by the Freemasons and the Knights Templar,
Speaker 1: thus linking the beloved cookie with the Crusades, which I
Speaker 1: did not expect when we started this episode.
Speaker 2: Bill also claimed that his dad modified the animal Cracker's box.
Speaker 2: His contribution to that was adding the grass along the bottom,
Speaker 2: designed the logo for Nutter Butters and Milk Bones, and
Speaker 2: may have contributed to the design for the Rich Cracker.
Speaker 2: William Senior left the East Coast and settled in Salt
Speaker 2: Lake City, where his grave marker features an Oreo. Bizarrely enough,
Speaker 2: given their seeming silence on crediting him, Bill claims that
Speaker 2: Nabisco contacted his dad at one point to help confirm
Speaker 2: aspects of the Oreo's design in order to build a
Speaker 2: lawsuit against a company making a copycat cookie in Trinidad
Speaker 2: and Tobago. Turn about his fair play Nabisco, But the
Speaker 2: only thing in the official Craft Archives four turnire is
Speaker 2: the receipt of a Suggestion Award in nineteen seventy two
Speaker 2: for an idea that increased the production of nilla wafers
Speaker 2: on company machinery by thirteen percent. So the company reaches
Speaker 2: out to him. They're like, hey, do you have the
Speaker 2: original blueprint for Oreos someone is trying to copy as
Speaker 2: a Trinidad and Tobaggo. He's like, sure, I'll help you up,
Speaker 2: and they still like disavow his credit for that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: So between Oreos, milk bones, nut butters, animal crackers, ritz crackers,
Speaker 2: and increasing the productivity of nilla wafers in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two by whopping thirteen percent, William Turnier maybe the secret
Speaker 2: MVP of the Oreos story. I just wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I want to do my transition. Here is ding doom
Speaker 2: ding ding ding ding dom ding ding all right on
Speaker 2: my way? Dum. I would say that was terrible cut
Speaker 2: that that might went over much better in my head.
Speaker 2: The name of the heading is Ori on my Way,
Speaker 2: like the song that's I'm rust send me on my Way.
Speaker 2: That's that's not Rusted Root, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I saw Rusted Root as a kid. No way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how'd that go for you's I'm sitting here talking to you.
Speaker 2: Great, all right, that digression well and truly dead. Now
Speaker 2: we arrive at the real heart of the matter.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Oreo filling really the only good part of Oreos,
Speaker 1: if we're all being honest with ourselves.
Speaker 2: This is the most heated you have been about anything
Speaker 2: in the months we've been doing this podcast.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's there's no reason why Oreos
Speaker 1: should be as big as they are. There's there's some
Speaker 1: part in effectively every way, just get on with it.
Speaker 1: But yes, the Oreo filling. The man credited with its
Speaker 1: modern incarnation is named mister Sam Porcello. First of all,
Speaker 1: did you know that there's a reason why cream in
Speaker 1: Oreo is spelled cr e e because it contains no
Speaker 1: dairy and therefore cannot be marketed using the spelling of cream,
Speaker 1: which implies that cash is everywhere around me. Also, while
Speaker 1: we're on the topic of cream, each original Oreo cookie
Speaker 1: is twenty nine percent cream and seventy one percent cookie.
Speaker 1: That is the official ratio, and Oreo bakeries make more
Speaker 1: than one hundred and twenty three thousand tons of cream
Speaker 1: to fill their cookies each year. That's incredible.
Speaker 2: I want you to Viking funeral me into the Oreo cream.
Speaker 2: Event it just put me on a pire and sent
Speaker 2: me on fire in the middle of one of those.
Speaker 1: The gentleman who's credited with creating the modern incarnation of
Speaker 1: the Oreo cream mister Sam Porcello. He arrived at Nabisco
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty nine and worked there for thirty four years,
Speaker 1: retiring in nineteen ninety three. Porcello's actual title was Principal Scientist,
Speaker 1: but his son described him as one of the world's
Speaker 1: foremost experts on coco, which eventually earned him the nickname
Speaker 1: the autorific. Really, mister Oreos.
Speaker 2: This is where it gets really wild. Sarah Joyner is
Speaker 2: this woman who uncovered this. It basically makes journalists look bad?
Speaker 2: Is this whole story? So, but go ahead continue. I
Speaker 2: just want to credit her because she really did the
Speaker 2: leg work here.
Speaker 1: Yes, ground zero for this whole theory that Porcello is
Speaker 1: the guy who created the modern Oreo filling appears in
Speaker 1: his twenty twelve obituary in the New York Daily News,
Speaker 1: which was then picked up by the blogging community around
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, this woman Sarah Joyner researching Pacello in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, reached out to Mondelez, which is the parent
Speaker 1: company of Oreo, and they told her it would be
Speaker 1: inaccurate to say that Sam Porcello invented the modern Oreo cream,
Speaker 1: and a former Oreo rep she was exchanging emails with
Speaker 1: said that she hadn't even heard of Porcello. So there's
Speaker 1: some kind of erasure going on here at this time.
Speaker 1: Orio really isn't like crediting the people who are behind.
Speaker 1: You got the guy who invented the embossing, you get
Speaker 1: the guy who invented the modern cream. Something's going on here,
Speaker 1: But it turns out that the real story is, as ever,
Speaker 1: very technical and boring. Porcello what's largest contribution to the
Speaker 1: Orio cookie was in modifying the chemical composition of the
Speaker 1: filling so that it was solid at room temperature but
Speaker 1: melts ninety eight degrees as in when it hits your mouth.
Speaker 1: But he shared those developments with three other food scientists,
Speaker 1: and basically the credit he gets for being mister Oreo
Speaker 1: pretty much comes down to the work of his own
Speaker 1: family's hagiography since his death.
Speaker 2: This whole thing is so fascinating to me because if
Speaker 2: you look up Oreo and you look up oreo filling.
Speaker 2: It's like lodged in seo. But the original New York
Speaker 2: Daily News link is dead and you can only find
Speaker 2: it through the Internet news archives. So the only link
Speaker 2: to this story is now in like it's like playing telephone.
Speaker 2: It's only in blogs aggregating that story. So one is
Speaker 2: on Time, the Time magazine website. And so this woman,
Speaker 2: Sarah Joyner is researching this and it basically I think
Speaker 2: what happened was this New York Daily News guy knew
Speaker 2: or heard or got a tip about this guy dying
Speaker 2: and just interviewed his family, and his family was like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, Dad was like, mister Orio, he invented the
Speaker 2: oreo filling. But the more you dig into it, the
Speaker 2: more it turns out that, like he just refined the
Speaker 2: formula with a bunch of really boring food chemistry things
Speaker 2: related to filling solubility, and he retired nineteen ninety three, which,
Speaker 2: you know, we get into this next thing. They take
Speaker 2: out lard in nineteen eighty four, and they take out
Speaker 2: the vegetable oils they replaced the lard with in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six, So by twenty twenty, his formula was
Speaker 2: already two recipes out of date. And this woman, this
Speaker 2: Sarah Joyner, is it's very sweet because she's like talking
Speaker 2: to his son and she's like, oh yeah, like they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have kept up with the formula changes. Like to them,
Speaker 2: their dad is still the guy who invented the Oreo filling.
Speaker 2: Like their dad is still mister Oreo. They didn't mean
Speaker 2: to mislead anyone. It was just like lazy journalism. Nobody
Speaker 2: bothered to fact check that. And it's just I don't know,
Speaker 2: I find it very sweet in like this American life
Speaker 2: sort of way. Like this family from Jersey is just
Speaker 2: like their dad is mister Oreo to them, and they
Speaker 2: told he always will be and he always will be.
Speaker 2: And they told a single paper and the paper didn't
Speaker 2: bother to fact check it, and it's become fact anyway.
Speaker 2: I just want to tell everyone that I titled this
Speaker 2: next section a Rabbi and a blowtorch walk into a
Speaker 2: cookie factory. Remember how I said when hydrugs were hugely
Speaker 2: popular with the Jewish community because they were kosher, so Oreo,
Speaker 2: in their apparently never ending quest to bury all memory
Speaker 2: of their predecessor and salt the Earth, decided to alter
Speaker 2: their recipe and go kosher in nineteen ninety four, years
Speaker 2: after Burchello retired, or the year after Brichella retired.
Speaker 1: Also nineteen eighty four, at a time when hydrocks barely exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, they're like someone was just it's like a
Speaker 2: Monty Burns, Like one of the last surviving executives is
Speaker 2: like crush jocks. This is so fascinating to me. This guy,
Speaker 2: Joe Regenstein, professor of food science at Cornell and director
Speaker 2: of the Cornell Kosher and Lull Food Initiative, called this
Speaker 2: process probably the most expensive conversion of a company from
Speaker 2: non kosher to kosher in in two thousand and eight interview.
Speaker 2: And this apparently started when a number of ice cream
Speaker 2: companies wanted to start using oreos in their products which
Speaker 2: were kosher and couldn't because of the lar so. Nibisco
Speaker 2: owned approximately one hundred baking ovens, each about three hundred
Speaker 2: feet in length, and they all had to be converted
Speaker 2: to kosher, the process that literally involved a rabbi crawling
Speaker 2: through them with a blow torch. Because the ovens were
Speaker 2: not kosher and baking is a dry, high heat process,
Speaker 2: each one of these units had to be heated to
Speaker 2: red hot temperatures. Regenstein said, you need to use a
Speaker 2: blow torch to clean away the forbidden materials, so I
Speaker 2: tell my therapist. Additionally, each oven contained a soft plastic
Speaker 2: belt that cost upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars at a time, and each of these needed to
Speaker 2: be replaced. This process took three and a half years,
Speaker 2: wound up in nineteen ninety seven, after which I guess
Speaker 2: they got Zelda Reubinstein from the Poltergeist movie to come
Speaker 2: in and be like, this house is clean.
Speaker 1: This all brings us to a larger question, how do
Speaker 1: you make an oreo? Well, obviously, the official ingredient list
Speaker 1: is a closely guarded secret, and if we told you,
Speaker 1: we'd have to kill you. But there are eleven major ingredients.
Speaker 1: The hours follows sugar, unbleached flour, canola oil, high fructose
Speaker 1: corn syrup, baking soda, corn start, soile, liketin, vanillin, and chocolate.
Speaker 1: And in an article celebrating the seventy fifth birthday of
Speaker 1: oreos from back in nineteen eighty six, this piece describes
Speaker 1: five hundred degree gas ovens as long as football fields,
Speaker 1: capable of cranking out two thousand cookies a minute, and
Speaker 1: to quote the piece an oreo takes less than an
Speaker 1: hour to make a half hour of mixing in bins
Speaker 1: the size of Volkswagen beetles, and another twenty minutes on
Speaker 1: the conveyor belts being pressed into shape and then bobbing
Speaker 1: along from the third floor to the first, through ovens
Speaker 1: and cooling tunnels, under the icing drum, and into machines
Speaker 1: that stack and deal oreos like cards into cellophane packages.
Speaker 1: But the five folks at Nabisco have a rigid approach
Speaker 1: to quality control, and there are quote bins the size
Speaker 1: of hot tubs filled with broken oreo wafers, and some
Speaker 1: of these are ground up and reused in the batter,
Speaker 1: while others are sold to ice cream companies to be
Speaker 1: crumbled and mixed into their ice cream. But about five
Speaker 1: percent of the cookies wind up b and R or
Speaker 1: broken and rejected and thrown away, And says haven't we
Speaker 1: all been b and R at one time or another?
Speaker 4: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 4: more too much information after these messages. Next step we
Speaker 4: have a little section called Karma commer Comma, Karma, karma
Speaker 4: cavig Nope.
Speaker 2: That was terrible. Don't I swear to God if you
Speaker 2: don't cut that. They replaced the lard with partially hydrogenated
Speaker 2: vegetable oil, and then they subsequently replace that in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six with healthier and more expensive non hydrogenated
Speaker 2: vegetable oil. Folks, if you're waiting for an explanation for
Speaker 2: what those terms are, wait longer, because I don't have it.
Speaker 2: This came after the FDA in two thousand and three
Speaker 2: had announced new labeling requirements that required manufacturers to list
Speaker 2: transfats on their packaging.
Speaker 1: Which are closely linked to heart disease. Especially They're fine
Speaker 1: with doing it until they're being ordered to actually, well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing it, yeah, every single company in the world.
Speaker 2: So at some point this change in formula gave rise
Speaker 2: to the claim that Oreos are vegan, which is like
Speaker 2: one of the most commonly recited talking points about them.
Speaker 2: But according to at least one check of their UK website,
Speaker 2: there's just the possibility of cross contaminations with dairy products
Speaker 2: at their facilities, and one extremely hard line vegan blog
Speaker 2: that I found they contacted the OREO directly in twenty
Speaker 2: ten and got the answer that, unfortunately for the militant
Speaker 2: vegans among us. Some of the enzymes used to condition
Speaker 2: dough in processed goods are animal derived, so you've got
Speaker 2: the blood of microscopic organisms on your hands. And some
Speaker 2: sugar suppliers use the animal derived natural charcoal bone jar
Speaker 2: in their sugar cane refining process. So depending on your
Speaker 2: tolerance for animal products, and we are literally talking parts
Speaker 2: per million. But if you're nothing, no shame. If you're
Speaker 2: one of those people who's like, I want everything, I
Speaker 2: need to be completely free of the blood of animals,
Speaker 2: I don't think Oreos your ticket there. Speaking of enormous
Speaker 2: multinational corporations, there is an entertaining story of some corporate
Speaker 2: subterfuge that entangled Oreo recently. Recently ish in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: two California men were sentenced to prison time after stealing
Speaker 2: the formula for a chemical whitening agent called typ titanium
Speaker 2: dioxide from American chemical company du Pont. So this titanium
Speaker 2: oxide dioxide from DuPont specifically is like the purest, like
Speaker 2: most sought after white pigment in the world, and it's
Speaker 2: jealously guarded, and so these guys broke in there and
Speaker 2: sold the formula to Pengang Group, a Chinese company that
Speaker 2: had been unsuccessfully trying to buy this formula for over
Speaker 2: twenty million dollars. The conviction of these men in the
Speaker 2: court documents subsequently leaked to the fact that Oreo used
Speaker 2: this chemical to whiten their filling and had hit it
Speaker 2: from the ingredients list, which caused some concern because recent
Speaker 2: studies have flagged it as a carcinogen. So all is
Speaker 2: not as pure white as the driven filling.
Speaker 1: And speaking of oreos and countries with communist ties with
Speaker 1: whom we have a troubled relationship, did you know that
Speaker 1: oreos apparently weren't officially available in Russia until twenty fifteen?
Speaker 1: Did you?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you.
Speaker 2: Look at me when I'm talking to you?
Speaker 1: China got them a little earlier in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: but they tanked when they were first released, to the
Speaker 1: point that they actually considered withdrawing Oreos from Chinese stores
Speaker 1: all together, but instead in the Bisco parent company at
Speaker 1: the time, Kraft decided to take a very ironically democratic
Speaker 1: approach and ask the Chinese consumers what they didn't like
Speaker 1: about Oreos so they could adapt them for that market,
Speaker 1: And after receiving feedback, they invented a new kind of
Speaker 1: Oreo to appeal to China, and it's more like a wafer.
Speaker 1: It's four layers of a crispy cookie with a vanilla
Speaker 1: or chocolate cream center in the middle, not unlike a pirouette.
Speaker 1: You know, those kind of long cigar shaped things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that. It's very, very, very different from the
Speaker 1: Oreo we know in love. By two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: this Oreo wafer had become the best selling biscuit in China,
Speaker 1: just after a decade after they were considering withdrawing from
Speaker 1: the market altogether. They were now number one and Kraft
Speaker 1: expanded the production of this adapted cookie into other parts
Speaker 1: of Asia, Australia and even Canada. And they were all
Speaker 1: sorts of interesting international flavors of oreos. There is blueberry
Speaker 1: ice cream and coconut delight in Indonesia, Argentina has a
Speaker 1: duo flavor Dulce de leche and banana, and China has
Speaker 1: green tea flavored and mango. And in August of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: they released two savory flavored Oreo fillings, hot chicken wing
Speaker 1: and wasabi, which Jesus Christ. This leads us to our
Speaker 1: patented section on gross Oreo flavors.
Speaker 2: All right, so the original failure was a lemon I
Speaker 2: think they made lemon moringe. They call it lemon morine
Speaker 2: Oreo in nineteen twenties, which discontinued.
Speaker 1: I think that was released alongside like the chocolate Oreo
Speaker 1: when they first dropped in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Satists Golden Oreos are vanilla cookies with the same vanilla
Speaker 2: cream as the original Oreos. Golden chocolate cream oreos, known
Speaker 2: as the quote uh oh Oreo until two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: are the reverse of the original cookie vanilla cookies chocolate
Speaker 2: cream frosting. But here's what you folks have been waiting for.
Speaker 2: A semi complete list of other Oreo flavors, running the
Speaker 2: gamut from mildly offbeat to fully disgusting. There's the famous
Speaker 2: birthday cake oreos good, Swedish fish, bad cream, sickle, banana
Speaker 2: split cream, really bad, Neapolitan.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what triple double means. I guess
Speaker 2: that's triple stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good, good best so far. Candy corn No,
Speaker 1: I don't like candy corn as a standalone thing. Oreo
Speaker 1: as a subpar cookie coconut fudge. Sure, aren't those just
Speaker 1: hop lungs or dosy does or whatever from the growth
Speaker 1: cut cookies? Oh no, those are samoas and those are
Speaker 1: way better. But that's fine.
Speaker 2: Gingerbread, sure, candy cane, white fudge covered Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't even know how you do this. Cookies and cream oreos.
Speaker 1: I don't either, because that's cookies and cream is Oreo flavored,
Speaker 1: so it's an Oreo flavored oreo.
Speaker 2: I know a cursive oreo. No, I've gone across side
Speaker 2: root for your float. No watermelon, terrible, marshmallow crisp.
Speaker 1: I don't understand that.
Speaker 2: No caramel, apple, no lime aide. God, there's definitely Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean pumpkin spice. You have to That was good?
Speaker 1: That was good? Yeah, okay, it goes very good.
Speaker 2: Cookie dough, Yeah, it's fine. Red velvet cotton candy.
Speaker 1: Sure, s'mores cinnamon bone, which is not on here was
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 2: Oh have you had the churro shaped oreos? No, I
Speaker 2: think they're just those. The flavors are the same, they're
Speaker 2: just shaped like churros.
Speaker 1: Oh I have seen those? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, No, I
Speaker 1: haven't had those yet. Actually, I haven't had most of these.
Speaker 1: I'm just judging from the name. If you missed out
Speaker 1: on the chance to see these these limited edition Oreo
Speaker 1: flavors on store shelves, you're in luck. There was an
Speaker 1: exhibit at the Museum of Failure in Los Angeles which
Speaker 1: has most of these flavors, although the exhibit might have
Speaker 1: closed by now. It's also Coca Cola flavored Oreo, which
Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing that a synergy thing. Yeah, somebody
Speaker 1: got paid.
Speaker 2: Drunk John Draper right.
Speaker 1: And hit the table. And you know, I've often wondered
Speaker 1: in those twilight hours when I can't sleep and I'm
Speaker 1: pondering all the things that are going wrong in my life,
Speaker 1: and to try to make it so that I can't
Speaker 1: actually have a few moments of blissful slumber before I
Speaker 1: have to wake up and face another day of compiling
Speaker 1: these insanely researched episodes. I think about, why, why with
Speaker 1: the good folks at Nibisco flood the market with these
Speaker 1: truly grotesque flavors Oreos more than fifty at this point,
Speaker 1: more often than not disgusting. Well, apparently there's a method
Speaker 1: to their madness. GQ interviewed a Coronell University behavioral economist
Speaker 1: named David just to explain this phenomenon. The key is
Speaker 1: that Nabisco's not trying to introduce the flavors for long
Speaker 1: term consumption. He says, you build in this idea of
Speaker 1: really tacky flavors, and that sort of builds this relationship
Speaker 1: to the consumer who likes to sort of check out
Speaker 1: these kitchy Oreos, he explained, and as an added bonus,
Speaker 1: many younger consumers basically give the company free pr by
Speaker 1: posting these new flavor reviews on social media. So David
Speaker 1: just describes this approach by Oreos as quote, building a
Speaker 1: personality behind its brand.
Speaker 2: I love them. Do you buy that? Sounds like corporate
Speaker 2: portions to me?
Speaker 1: I mean I buy it. I think it's a cheap
Speaker 1: and easy ole, relatively cheap and easy way of market
Speaker 1: testing new flavors that they can maybe enter into the mainstream.
Speaker 1: And also, yeah, that's actually I thought I hell of
Speaker 1: a lot more about Oreos when they introduced some bizarre
Speaker 1: new flavor that more often than not I was curious
Speaker 1: about trying than I would have It was just the
Speaker 1: same old thing that had been around for one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten years.
Speaker 2: So yeah, maybe, yeah, true all right, KGI good for them. Uh. Then,
Speaker 2: of course Oreos oreo O's cereal launched in teen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: discontinued in two thousand and seven everywhere other than South Korea,
Speaker 2: and relaunched ten years later. And speaking of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Virginia based the Veil Brewing Company released a version of
Speaker 2: their chocolate milk stout called a horn Swoggler that was
Speaker 2: infused with actual Oreo cookies. I haven't tried it, don't
Speaker 2: know how I feel about it, don't care. Uh, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to Virginia for chocolate stuff, even if it
Speaker 2: does have I can't believe it's taken us as long
Speaker 2: to get to double stuff. Yeah, but like many things
Speaker 2: at the heart of America, it is a lot featuring
Speaker 2: not actually double but closer to one point eight six
Speaker 2: times as much stuff. Those date back to nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: Apparently it was like a high school class that actually
Speaker 1: crunched the numbers on that and figured out that it
Speaker 1: wasn't actually double stuffed. It was like a big story.
Speaker 2: A couple of years ago we mentioned the triple stuff,
Speaker 2: but that was not the biggest Oreo nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: Oreo introduced the Big Stuff varietal, which is about ten
Speaker 2: times the size of regular Oreo Wow. Sold individually. Each
Speaker 2: Big Stuff contained two hundred and fifty calories, which that's
Speaker 2: actually which I thought thirteen grams of fat had tracks.
Speaker 2: I saw an anecdote earlier that it took someone like
Speaker 2: twenty minutes to eat one at a sustainable pace.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because it's like it's probably like saltines your
Speaker 1: mouth from a cookie, it's gets so dry. It's probably
Speaker 1: hard to.
Speaker 2: Eat three inches in diameter. That can possibly be right?
Speaker 1: How thick is it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I guess that's true.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say six on top, six on the bottom,
Speaker 1: or five on top. Okay, I can see that how
Speaker 1: that would work. The ad for the Big Stuff is
Speaker 1: on YouTube and it's pretty great, and naturally the jingle
Speaker 1: is a riff on Gen Nights Mister Big Stuff, because
Speaker 1: of course, and hell Oreo could afford it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier at the top of the episode that
Speaker 1: the classic Oreo twist behavior has been part of the
Speaker 1: brand's identity from very early on, back in the twenties.
Speaker 1: But what does your preference for Oreo consumption patterns say
Speaker 1: about you? Well, according to one widely disseminated study, and
Speaker 1: we use that term loosely done by craft. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, they studied the habits of two thousand
Speaker 1: oreo eaters. Dunkers are supposed to be quote energetic, adventurous,
Speaker 1: and social, while twisters are quote sensitive, emotional, artistic, and trendy.
Speaker 1: And finally, biers are quote easygoing, self confident and optimistic.
Speaker 1: That this is probably a bad time to ask which
Speaker 1: one are you?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Is there a pithy phrase for when you just reach
Speaker 2: your hand into a bag of loose, crumbled ones and
Speaker 2: just kind of shove a fist full in your mouth.
Speaker 2: Your bag is balanced on your stomach and you're watching
Speaker 2: Northern Exposure on a laptop instead of going on to
Speaker 2: work because you can't raise your head that day? Is
Speaker 2: there a word for that?
Speaker 1: That's the depression technique of eating oreos. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't understand the when you twist it apart. Are you
Speaker 1: supposed to lick the center because you can't lick the
Speaker 1: cream because it's solid?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we have mister sam Porcello to think
Speaker 2: for that, right, But if you hold your tongue, yeah,
Speaker 2: like an art show exactly, you just hold it up
Speaker 2: to your tongue until the body temperature heats it up
Speaker 2: in a slide it off that I have no idea
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about. I think honestly, like in all
Speaker 2: of my lockdown Bodega snack runs, I think they got
Speaker 2: nutter butters like everything. I'm not at like a do
Speaker 2: both of us not like cornes? Weird thing to come
Speaker 2: up an hour eight into this podcast.
Speaker 1: They're fine.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: To me, it's like the sprite of cookies. It's like
Speaker 1: that's what you have at the party when there's nothing
Speaker 1: else there, and.
Speaker 2: You'll have it, but like, just feel something anything.
Speaker 1: Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the love that people have for oreos,
Speaker 1: science has gotten involved more than once. In the late nineties,
Speaker 1: Len Fisher, physics professor at the University of Bristol, claimed
Speaker 1: decades old mathematical formula describing capillary action, which is the
Speaker 1: phenomenon that describes how liquids cling to dry surfaces, could
Speaker 1: predict the perfect dunk time for a cookie, and using
Speaker 1: a formula from American scientist E. W. You wash burn
Speaker 1: and testing with ink blots first, he described the perfect
Speaker 1: amount of time for dipping quote regular British biscuits at
Speaker 1: three and a half to five seconds. Crucially, though, he
Speaker 1: did not test oreos, and so in twenty sixteen, members
Speaker 1: of the Utah State University's Splash Lab stepped up to
Speaker 1: the plate and corrected this grievous error in a test
Speaker 1: of Oreos chips, ahoy nut or butters, and gram crackers.
Speaker 1: They dipped the cookies halfway in two percent milk for
Speaker 1: half a second to seven seconds, and after dunking, the
Speaker 1: team weighed the treats and measured how much milk had
Speaker 1: been absorbed. The results, I know you're dying to know.
Speaker 1: Oreos absorbed fifty percent of their potential liquid weight in
Speaker 1: just one second. After two seconds they absorbed eighty percent,
Speaker 1: and the number flat line briefly for a second, and
Speaker 1: after the fourth second the cookie maxed out. It absorbed
Speaker 1: all its possible milk. So if you were a dunk
Speaker 1: your oreos for more than four seconds, you're wasting your
Speaker 1: precious time on this planet. So do with that what
Speaker 1: you will. But for those taking their dipping seriously, which
Speaker 1: if you listen this far you probably do, there is
Speaker 1: a tool for dipping called the dipper DPR, which began
Speaker 1: with the kickstarter in twenty eleven, and it's been hailed
Speaker 1: as the latest and greatest in cookie spoons. It exists
Speaker 1: that your oreo will be dipped evenly and you won't
Speaker 1: accidentally drop it in your milk, because, again, as you
Speaker 1: just said earlier, if your oreo is suspended in milk
Speaker 1: for more than five seconds, it's worthless. Carry on.
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna rend battled that all of these institutions
Speaker 5: are higher learning have put so much money and time
Speaker 5: towards oreos. Instead of a desalemization or cancer cloud bursting
Speaker 5: any of these things, you could actually save the world.
Speaker 1: While we're on the extremely academic studies of oreos, there
Speaker 1: was a study published by researchers at Connecticut College in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen which states that oreos activate the same pleasure
Speaker 1: center in the brains of lab rats that was activated
Speaker 1: by cocaine and morphine. The high fat and high sugar
Speaker 1: triggers the addiction hotspot in the brain, and one student
Speaker 1: also observed that the rats would quote break the oreos
Speaker 1: open and eat the middle first, one of the many
Speaker 1: ways that I am like a rat. In a less
Speaker 1: behavioral study that has to do with oreos, I would
Speaker 1: like to discuss a little thing called the Oreo Run,
Speaker 1: which we've been teasing this the whole episode. This was
Speaker 1: a hazing ritual that took place at an Illinois high
Speaker 1: school that made national headlines in October twenty eighteen, and,
Speaker 1: according to a piece in the registrar Star, ten football
Speaker 1: players were suspended for taking part in this event, the
Speaker 1: Oreo Run, which entailed running across the school's football field
Speaker 1: naked with an oreo wedged an oreo, shall we say,
Speaker 1: up there there were cram and oreos up there, left
Speaker 1: and right, left, right, and center, mostly center. The offending
Speaker 1: parties were required to quote sit out three football games,
Speaker 1: although given the crime, I'm guessing that they probably stood. No,
Speaker 1: not even a titter.
Speaker 2: No. I just I don't know, man, Just this stuff
Speaker 2: is soon really high school team. So I just that's
Speaker 2: behaving at all, man, Like, Oh yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: used to put cigarette buds out of my arms for
Speaker 2: like a party trick. But I didn't put stuff up
Speaker 2: my ass, especially not food stuffs. You know, I was
Speaker 2: told they were starving children across the world. Yeah, your
Speaker 2: food is for your mouth. Your family sweated for that food.
Speaker 2: You don't put it in your ass.
Speaker 1: It's a PSA, there's no trace of humor your voice
Speaker 1: whatsoever right now? Genuine offense. I mean, I mean, God
Speaker 1: bless you, all power to you. I'm yes, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I agree with everything he was saying. I
Speaker 1: this is the hill that we're gonna tie on.
Speaker 2: Just bumps me out. I don't know. Weird. Find find
Speaker 2: better to do with your life, people, Getness. Book of
Speaker 2: World Records unsurprisingly has a lot of entries related to oreos.
Speaker 2: On January thirtieth, twenty twenty, it closest the Western world
Speaker 2: ever got to true happiness. Mondolaz employees from fifty five
Speaker 2: locations representing thirty two countries around the globe tuned in
Speaker 2: and set a new record for most dunked cookies simultaneously,
Speaker 2: five sixty six employees dunking at the same time, nearly
Speaker 2: two years earlier, in April twenty eighteen. In April twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Mandolaz celebrated the opening of a plant in Bahrain with
Speaker 2: the largest oreo ever. It was nearly one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty two pounds, and it was subsequently distributed among frant
Speaker 2: employees and the local village. Wow, so sorry, we don't
Speaker 2: I don't know I'm about to make it. I don't
Speaker 2: know if they how well they paid them, they get
Speaker 2: some Oreos.
Speaker 1: And lastly, per Guinness, oreos are officially the world's favorite cookie,
Speaker 1: available in more than one hundred countries around the globe.
Speaker 1: Approximately thirty four billion Oreo cookies are sold each year.
Speaker 1: That's ninety two million cookies per day, with ten billion
Speaker 1: of those cookies sold in the US annually, and an
Speaker 1: estimated five hundred billion Oreo cookies have been sold since
Speaker 1: they debuted in nineteen twelve. That is enough to wrap
Speaker 1: around the Earth three hundred and eighty one times, or
Speaker 1: reach the moon and back five times.
Speaker 2: Wow, this is where you're like, Yeah, send them to
Speaker 2: the moon, but not backs join run up.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, do something useful, use the ladder
Speaker 1: of the moon if I doesn't need them.
Speaker 2: Well, folks, I did not foresee being driven to the
Speaker 2: brink of madness and back by what you've convinced me
Speaker 2: is a garbage cookie for idiots who knew it was
Speaker 2: oreos that broke both of us. But looking back, the
Speaker 2: scribes will write of this evening, women will sing songs
Speaker 2: and lament, and our sons will mash their teeth and
Speaker 2: look skyward at all the oreos and circle in the
Speaker 2: globe and say, there's Papa. Thanks for listening. I'm Alex
Speaker 2: Cycle and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Runtag. And that's the way the cookie crumbled
Speaker 1: us both. Oh too much information was the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Mike Johns.
Speaker 2: The show was researched and written and by Jordan Rundgg
Speaker 2: and Alex Heigel.
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebomb and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts and iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.