Oreos: The Disappearing Cookie

You see them in the grocery store. Maybe they’re the holiday variety (which, to be honest, taste better anyway, even if the taste isn’t really different at all). You decide you need a treat and throw them in the cart. You get home, you open them up. You have one. Then, two. The next day, you go back and discover the entire package is gone, leaving you with a crumb-littered countertop and no cookies. Has a cookie-loving thief broken into your home? No, you’re just surprised to learn that you have, in fact, eaten every one of the 36 Oreos that comes in a standard pack, all in under 24 hours.

The Oreo is the best-selling cookie to grace store shelves in the past century. Whether you prefer it dipped in milk, straight from the package, mixed into ice cream, just the cookies, just the creme or enveloped by globs of pudding in the all-American dessert known as the dirt cake, there’s no denying its popularity. But why are they so irresistible? What makes them stand apart from other sweet snacks, such as chocolate chip cookies or any run-of-the-mill sandwich cookie with some kind of flavored creme in the middle. The fact is, the Oreo has been specially designed to keep you coming back for more, and we’re all more than happy to do so.

There are two things that make the brain light up during studies in which brains are scanned while someone is eating a yummy food. These are fat and sugar. Almost 40 percent of all the calories in Oreos comes from fat and sugar, and a huge amount of the fat and sugar comes from the cookie center. In other words, the Oreo is nothing without the creme. Sorry, cookie-lovers. Time to jump on the boat with the rest of us. In fact, the very first listed ingredient in Oreos is…sugar.

Another thing our brains love is contrast. Sweet, salty; light, dark; hot, cold. It’s why we like chocolate-covered pretzels, or cold ice-cream on a warm slice of apple pie. Oreos have tons of contrast, and not only where taste is concerned. There’s visual contrasts, olfactory contrasts and textural contrasts as well. The dark cookie and the white icing, with the rough cookie top and the smooth creme is visually pleasing. We love the smells of the chocolate mixing with the vanilla scent. The textural pleasure comes from the hard cookie versus the soft creme. Additionally, because of the many ways that we all eat our Oreos differently, there’s an endless amount of contrasts that we can come up with as we add variety to the Oreo-eating experience. Throw in the many different options Oreo keeps coming up with (holiday editions, double stuffed, peanut butter filling, mint filling, white fudge filling, the golden cookie, etc.), and you’ll never run out of contrast and variety.

One side note: while you may think that the ways we prefer to eat our Oreos is totally random, it’s actually not. Men’s brains prefer heavy dynamic contrasts, and so are more likely to bite straight through the cookie. Women, on the other hand, are evolutionarily wired to go for the most valuable goods first, so they’re more apt to eat the creme, then the cookies, making sure they get all the fat- and carb-rich perfection before anything else.

Lastly, Oreos have a very high energy density. More calorie-dense than chocolate chip cookies, they offer a lot of caloric energy in one tiny package. The only cookie that comes remotely close is the Nestle Tollhouse Freshly Baked Chocolate Chip cookie sold specially at select Burger Kings, not in stores. In fact, some studies have been trying to prove that researchers at Kraft have been using this high energy density and psychological dependency on energy-rich foods against consumers, finding ways to make us more addicted to Oreos than we already are. However, this claim has been denied by company officials.

Regardless, the next time your Oreos “mysteriously” disappear, don’t go blaming your roommate, the kids or even the dog. Own up to it and blame your brain — the Oreo just has too many perks to pass up.