Oreos

So I kind of fell of the wagon in May. On my way down, I took with me a few Double Stuf Oreos and a few of their generic counterparts. They tasted good. Really good.

But, I knew that Michelle had her limits on how many packages I could appropriately buy and work my way through -- at least without getting some indicting looks, if not an outright lectures. I figured that if I was going to get beyond two bags, I needed an excuse.

Enter family home evening.* Every fourth Monday night, I am responsible for selecting and securing the treats for our family get together. I knew that just buying Oreos for the treat wouldn't be enough: for one, Michelle wouldn't be happy that I'd spent money to get the treats; and two, I was concerned that, having to share the bag, there wouldn't be enough for me.

So, in the name of research, I decided that we needed to do an Oreo taste test. The blind taste test would help determine if Oreos were worth the premium, or if we weren't just as well off with the cheaper generic brands. I was also interested in testing the seemingly inflated claims of some who swore that Newman O's -- an organic Oreo-like cookie -- are markedly superior to the Oreo.

This gave me license to buy five bags of Oreos and Oreo look alikes:** Oreos, Newman O's, Ralph's brand, Target brand, and Walmart brand. The Oreos cost the most at $3.19 for 18 ounces. Newman O's were the costliest cookie per ounce at $2.99 a bag on sale for 16 ounces (18.6 cents an ounce as compared to the Oreos at 17.7 cents an ounce). The Walmart brand were far and away the cheapest: $1.35 for 18 ounces. The other two brands fell somewhere in between.

We invited some friends over for the tasting, and I tried earnestly to keep to keep the methodology clean. The cookies were all on numbered plates 1-5, but were otherwise unmarked.

We let the kids first sample a few from the numbered trays. I didn't bother to blindfold them, but just asked them which they'd like the best. There was no clear consensus among, except that they all liked eating cookies.

For the adults, I had each blindfolded and seated at the table. I gave them a glass of milk and then gave them cookies from the five different plates in succession. They were allowed to eat as many or as few as they cared to. Their task, aside from a sugar fix, was to tell me which they liked best and which they liked least.

The Oreos did very well, coming in either 1st or 2nd on just about everyone's list. Newman O's also were among the 1st or 2nd selection of three of the adults (including me -- for as much as I wanted that not to be the case). They were also, however, considered the worst of the cookies by the two remaining adults. One particularly insightful participant described the Newman O's as tasting like chlorophyl -- though this was apparently a compliment (since he liked them the most).

The generic brands were, almost without exception, discernably inferior.

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A few other thoughts and observations from my research:

• One of the reasons I determined the Oreos and Newman O's were superior was because they had noticeably more filling per cookie sandwich. Walmart's cookies had about 1/2 the amount of filling as a regular Oreo.
• I should have varied the order of the cookies I gave participants, since the taste of each cookie seemed to get muddled by the time I got to numbers 4 and 5. I didn't have the time or the means to allow the participants to perfectly clean their pallets before each tasting. For me this meant that I started making decisions less on taste (as they all started run together) and more based on texture and amount of filling.
• The way in which the cookies are eaten/tested seems to matter. For instance, my perceptions seemed to change a bit when eating an Oreo straight vs. dunking them in milk.
• Finally, I would have vastly preferred to use Double Stuf Oreos. I couldn't, though because Newman O's and most generic brands only make regular stuffed. I can't be sure what doubling the filling on the cookie does to the overall quality of the cookie.***

All this is to say, of course, that further tests are needed.

* For the uninitiated, Family Home Evening is a night each week -- usually Monday night -- when our family gets together, sings songs, has a spiritual lesson, and then an activity and a treat. It would be hard to overstate how important the treat component is to making such activities a success.

** It was actually six bags, since Michelle and I accidentally ate a bag of Oreos the Friday and Saturday before the Monday tasting.

*** As it is I'm always separating the Double Stuff cookies to make them into Quadruple Stuf cookies.