Is It Possible to Open an Oreo Evenly?

Oreos
Photo by Kristine Wook on Unsplash

Almost everyone remembers the Oreo commercial featuring the little girl and her dog. In the ad, she explains to the pup that the correct way to eat an Oreo is to twist it, lick it, and dunk it into milk. 

As it turns out, there is an actual scientific way to best twist apart milk’s favorite cookie so that you aren’t left with a crèmeless half. 

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) conducted a study to determine if and how people could evenly split the crème inside an Oreo when twisting it open.

“I preferred the taste of the cookies with the crème exposed. If I got a bite of wafer alone it was too dry for me, and if I dunked it in milk the wafer would fall apart too fast,” explained Crystal Owens as to why she co-authored the study. 

Using the theory of rheology, which states that everything breaks if you hit it hard enough, researchers printed a 3-D device called an Oreometer that uses both rubber bands and weighted coins to represent the force of twisting apart the cookies.

The findings, however, were not great.

Due to the manufacturing process of putting down the first wafer and dispensing a ball of crème before putting on the second, the crème adheres better to one side than the other. 

So, unfortunately, it is impossible to get an even distribution on an open Oreo unless you’re willing to do it manually.