Spin or pull? Scientists reveal the best way to eat Oreo cookies

Dip them in milk, lick off the filling, or eat them in one bite – the best way to enjoy chocolate chip cookies can be the subject of heated debate.

Since the slogan “twist, lick, dunk” came from advertising for Oreos, this particular treat could be seen as the face of a campaign by non-traditional cookie lovers.

Consumers were asked to split the sandwich biscuits in half, lick off the cream that came out, and then dip the remaining wafers in milk before eating them.

But this method can lead to horrendous results; where one waffle is completely devoid of cream and must be eaten as such.

Luckily, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found the best way to split Oreos so that the filling is evenly divided.

“It always annoyed me that I had to twist them and then shift the cream from one side to the other,” said mechanical engineering graduate student Crystal Owens. Wall Street Magazine.

Her team developed their own equipment for the task, dubbed the “rudometer”, using pennies and rubber bands.

This twisted both Oreo waffles in opposite directions at different speeds until the cookie broke in half down the middle.

The researchers could then check by eye how much cream was left on each plate.

The device was inspired by a “rheometer”, a true laboratory instrument that measures how liquids deform under torsional forces by placing them between two rotating surfaces.

Their study, published in Physics of fluidssacrificed over 1,000 Oreos of various flavors and filling levels to the oreometer.

These include regular, dark chocolate, and “golden” flavors, as well as regular filling levels, Double Stuf, Mega Stuf, and Triple Stuf Team USA.

But regardless of these factors, they found that most of the stuffing would stick to one side about 80% of the time.

“I thought that if you roll the Oreos perfectly, you should split the cream perfectly in the middle,” Ms. Owens said.

“But what actually happens is that the cream almost always comes off on one side.”

The speed of twisting also did not matter: in the slowest version, the cookies separated for five minutes, and most of the cream still ended up on one wafer.

When spun to maximum speed, about 100 times faster than a human can spin, the stuffing came off on both sides.

“We also tested the cookies with our hands—twisting, peeling, pressing, sliding, and doing other basic motions to tear the Oreo apart,” Ms. Owens told the Wall Street Journal.

“There was no combination of anything that we could do by hand or in a rheometer that made any difference to our results.”

It has also been found that dipping the biscuit in milk before rolling makes things worse, as it breaks into pieces after only a minute of force.

However, they managed to draw some conclusions; the minimum force required to crack an Oreo by twisting it is about the same as turning a doorknob.

There was also a relationship between twisting speed and the force required for a clean break.

“If you try to twist the Oreos faster, it actually takes more tension and tension to break them,” Ms. Owens said.

“So maybe this is a lesson for people who are under stress and desperate to open a cookie. It will be easier if you do it a little slower.

The team did find that more often than not, the cream stuck to the wafer facing the inside of the box it was placed in, rather than to the nearest edge of the box.

“This may indicate that environmental influences (ambient heat or mechanical influences) are affecting cookies in individual boxes, with the greatest impact on cookies around the perimeter,” they wrote in their article.

These factors can cause the filling to peel off slightly from the wafer to which it is less firmly adhered, which can be addressed during cookie making.

Ms Owens said: “Videos of the production process show them putting the first wafer in, then pouring a ball of cream over it before putting the second wafer on top.

“Obviously this slight delay can help the cream adhere better to the first plate.”

This is supported by the fact that when a physicist at the University of Groningen repeated his experiment, he found that the cream tended to separate evenly.

This suggests that either the filling formula or the manufacturing process in Europe is different.

The researchers conclude their study by suggesting how Oreos’ parent company, Mondelēz International, can solve the separation problem.

They wrote: “If biscuit manufacturers would like to influence the distribution of cream themselves, providing wafers with through holes or texture on the inner surfaces should promote adhesion of cream and wafers on both halves.

“Our results and research methods may also have broad applications for understanding other twisting processes in the kitchen, from braided bread and dough kneading to the perfect kinematics of opening stubborn jam jar lids.”