Blog for all health-conscious: Fooducate Blog - The Oreo Cookie Celebrates 100 Years

Thursday, 8 March 2012

Fooducate Blog - The Oreo Cookie Celebrates 100 Years

Posted: 08 Mar 2012 04:20 AM PST

This week marks the 100th birthday of the Oreo Cookie. Originally created and sold in New York by National Biscuit Company, the brand is now owned by mega-processed-food giant Kraft Foods. The brand tagline is “Milk’s Favorite Cookie,” and indeed Oreos have become an American icon.

Nutritionally, there are no benefits one would expect from a cookie, so the question usually boils down to what bad things are in it?

Here’s a look at the standard original version of the cookie.

What you need to know:

A serving size is 3 cookies and costs you 160 calories. That 3 cookie serving always seems conspicuously low. Even a 5 year old eats more than that!

Here is the ingredient list:

Sugar, Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, Riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, Folic Acid), High Oleic Canola Oil and/or Palm Oil and/or Canola Oil and/or Soybean Oil, Cocoa (Processed with Alkali), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cornstarch, Leavening (Baking Soda and/or Calcium Phosphate), Salt, Soy Lecithin, Vanillin – an Artificial Flavor, Chocolate.

It’s actually a pretty simple formula – the perfect combination of the cheapest most palatable ingredients to be found – sugars, oil, flour, and flavorings. The flour has been stripped of nutrients and fiber. The sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup add up to about a teaspoon of sugars per cookie. The list of vegetable oils is basically a reflection of commodity price fluctuations. Any oil goes, depends what was cheaper to buy on the day your batch was made. Vanillin is a cheap way to get the aroma and flavor of the real thing – vanilla.

By the way, a standard Oreo is 71% chocolate wafer, 29% creme.

Although an Oreo is not a health food, of the cookies out there, it is actually one of the less evil choices. Many other cookies still use partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats), contain artificial colors, and use questionable preservatives.

Bottom line: If you can manage to keep this to a once-in-a-while treat and stick to the 3 cookies serving size, don’t be so hard on yourself for breaking out of what is a normally healthy diet.

What to do at the supermarket:

When buying cookies and snacks, look at the ingredient list for unwanted stuff such as partially hydrogenated oil, artificial colors, or questionable preservatives. Look at the calorie count in conjunction with the serving size and try to assess if it equals the portion size you plan on eating.

Stick to classic Oreos to avoid artificial colors and avoid extra stuffing versions that pile on unneeded sugar. If you want to avoid HFCS or vanillin, try other branded O cookies.

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