More-eo About Oreos
What is the single most popular commercially made cookie in the U.S? The Oreo, of course, with over 345 billion stuck together with icing, since their invention in 1912.
The Oreo is a trademarked invention of the Nabisco Company, a conglomerate that formed from several smaller biscuit makers in 1898. Their first famous product was Barnum's Animal cookies, which were sold in a little cardboard container that resembled a cage on a circus train. It came with a string on the end, as they were originally designed to be hung on the Christmas tree.
Then years later, someone came up with the idea to use two chocolate cookies and make a "sandwich" with white icing. The cookie was an instant hit, and is basically the very same cookie today, that it was back then, with the exception of small design changes in the cookie surface, and the addition of special versions/occasion Oreos, including Double Stuff, and those with colored icing for Halloween and Christmas.
The public's fascination with Oreos has led to some unusual, but entertaining theories and calculations. For example, based on an average cookie size of 1 3/4" diameter, and .314" thick, the St. Louis Arch is 15,120 Oreos high. The Golden Gate bridge is 28,800 Oreos long. If every Oreo ever sold, were stacked on top of each other, they would reach a height equal to 9.8 million Sears Towers, which is 1454' tall.
The Oreo cookie is big. In lots of ways. The recipe for a "batch", uses 18 million pounds of cocoa, and 47 million pounds of crème filling. It works out to a cookie that is 71% biscuit, and 29% crème.
The largest cookie factory around, is the Nabisco facility in Chicago, where over 4.6 billion Oreos were made in 1997, alone.
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