Confessions of an Oreo Cookie

Oreos are a delicious and dangerous cookie. Dangerous in the sense that they test people's self-control on a regular basis. Throwing down half of a package in one sitting is the norm for many people including myself. Hello, my name is Mike and I'm a cookieholic. But this blog post isn't about the health aspects or people's aptitude for consuming large quantities in one-sitting, but rather is what they say on the package what you get?

'Double Stuf' Oreos aren't actually doubled stuffed. The black and white confectionary was called out in August of 2013 by Dan Anderson, a high school math teacher and his class. In their analysis, regular, Double Stuf, and Mega Stuf (implied as three times the filling) were weighed with the filling and without. The result: Double Stuf Oreos had 1.86 times more filling than regular, not 2 as the package would indicate. That's a 7 percent reduction in the advertised amount of stuffing, so even with a +/- error of 5 percent, that's a fail. The teacher's findings created quite the buzz around various media sources who picked up the story.

The Mega Stuf Oreos faired even worse. Instead of 3 times the filling, the cookies only had 2.68 the amount of stuffing compared to regular Oreos. That's over a 10 percent shortfall.

I'm willing to give the Mega Stuf Oreos the benefit of the doubt because nowhere on the package or website does it explicitly say 3x the filling. It's just kind of implied by some consumers. However, Double Stuf has no excuse.

This analysis by Anderson and his class was conducted about 18 months ago. A lot can change in 18 months. Perhaps Nabisco corrected the issue since then? Or maybe Anderson's sample was too small or flawed?

In order to draw my own conclusions, I bought three packages of Oreos  (purely for academic purposes ;)  ) - Original, Double Stuf, and Reduced Fat. I bought Reduced Fat because I let the Mega Stuf shortfall slide (3x filling wasn't explicit). However, I also wanted to test a new hypothesis about the Reduced Fat cookies. That hypothesis being that Reduced Fat often times means reduced quantity, not an actual change in the recipe/formula. Was Nabisco reducing the amount of filling in those cookies? To the experienced pallet or even eyeball, it sure seems like it.

So being a graduate student at a large university, I hopped over to one of the science buildings to access a digital scale to conduct my own analysis to answer those questions.

                                 

                                             Oreos being weighed

Oreo wafers and creme separated   

Weight of different lines Oreos 

My findings: Double Stufs were just slightly under-stuffed at a 1.95x multiple (2.5% below) vs his 1.86x (7% below). This is because the weight of the originals I weighed were on average .12 grams less than Anderson's (11.45g vs 11.57g). If my Originals weighed the same as his, the creme multiple would have been 1.88x, which would have been more in-line with his findings. Our measurements for the Double Stufs were on par with each other. Anderson also did a followup with larger sample sizes where he produced similar results. However, in both of his measurements, the original Oreo's weighed more than mine. Has Nabisco since reduced the volume of stuffing in their original cookies? This seems plausible, but not conclusive.

Reduced Fat Oreos were a different story. On average, they had 12% less filling than the originals. So it appears that Nabisco reduces the amount of filling (the fattier substance) in their "Reduced Fat" Oreos and do not necessarily change the recipe. This is an excellent example of how many CPG companies and brands use the Reduced Calories or Fat selling point on their package, but often times just reduce the volume.