Mike Moser "I Say" Published Aug. 2, 2002

For being 90, the cookie
doesn't look a day over 2

Lost in all the hubbub of political rhetoric, campaign commercials and the clamor for votes in yesterday's election was the celebration of a landmark birthday by an old friend. In fact, a friend to all of us who grew up as members of the milk and cookies brigade.

Who remembers the first time they firmly grasped the edges of the black sandwich, slowly twisted in opposite directions, and then dived tongue first into the creamy middle? I don't remember the first time; it just seems like that is the way our relationship always was ... twist, turn, eat the middle and dip the remainder in an ice-cold glass of milk.

Hard to believe that Oreos, the delicious black and white treats, are marking their 90th birthday this month, with more than 490 billion Oreos consumed to date, according to Nabisco, the daddy of the Oreo. I wonder, how many of those were ones I dipped in a glass of milk?

To keep up with the demand, the Oreo recipe calls for 22 million pounds of cocoa and 64.1 million pounds of creme filling and each Oreo takes 90 minutes to make, according to the Nabisco Web site. Those folks proudly estimate that an average of 4.3 billion cookies have been eaten each year over the last 90 years. That's a lot of twisting and shouting.

The Oreo folks claim that if all the Oreo cookies sold to date were stacked on each other, the pile would reach to the moon and back more than six times. Might even pause in the big dipper while passing through the Milky Way.

OK, a stretch maybe, but I would bet if you took all the Oreo cookies I have eaten over the years, they would reach to downtown Isoline and back.

The mother of all statistics the Oreo folks have put out reports that if all the Oreo cookies eaten in a given year were dunked, cows would have to work overtime to produce the extra 42.2 million gallons of milk needed to accommodate the extra dunkers.

The Oreo has not changed much over the years and being a purist, I appreciate that fact. In the past couple of years Nabisco has experimented with subtle changes, like orange filling for Halloween and green for St. Patrick's Day. I can tolerate that, but refuse to budge on the change in flavors.

To me, an Oreo that tastes like anything but an iced chocolate cookie would only be a pretender and not the real thing. I will continue to take my traditional bites with cold milk, thank you. I will confess to enjoying an Oreo-laced ice cream treat. And there are Dream Oreo creme pies and chocolate creme Oreo cheesecake.

But when the sun goes down and the late night news comes on, there is nothing that tops a cold glass of milk and dipping cookies. And Oreos have been the big dippers for a large number of years.

Happy birthday, Oreo cookie!

· · ·
Mike Moser is the editor of the Crossville Chronicle. His column is published periodically on Fridays.