Do Double Stuf Oreos Really Have Double The Stuff?

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Here at Spilling Coffee we like to tackle the controversial, complex questions that have plagued mankind for years. In the past we’ve answered such compelling questions such as “What the Heck Is Grain Berry?” and “How To Wash Your Keyboard in the Dishwasher“.

Today, we’re taking on our most important topic yet: Do Double Stuff Oreo cookies really contain double the stuff?

The question posed itself when two packages of Oreo cookies materialized in our kitchen pantry. We don’t usually have cookies like Oreos around the house very often because when we do they seem to magically disappear from the package just as magically as they appeared in the first place.

After testing a Double Stuff Oreo for freshness I simply couldn’t help falling into Old Fogey Mode and began ranting aloud, “Back in my day Double Stuff Oreos had 3 times the cream! No, 4 times the cream, of regular Oreos! The filling was like a sugar-filled pillow and they were three cubits high! Damn kids today and their shorty Double Stuff Oreos….”

It was at this point that my wife decided to test the regular Oreos for freshness. As I observed the two open packages of cookies I realized that I had the perfect opportunity to practice some science. So I did.

Oreo Observations

Part of the problem with easily discerning if Double Stuf Oreos really have “double” of anything is that not all Oreo cookies are created equally. An Oreo cookie essentially has three parts: a top cookie, a cream center, and a bottom cookie. The top and bottom cookies are obviously pretty standard, but the cream center provides some variety in what each cookie looks like. While the amount of cream is probably measured down to the hundredth of a gram during the manufacturing process, the way the cookies settle on top of the cream is not quite as regulated. Cookies look uneven and crooked when peering down at them in the package.

To really measure how much “stuff” is in these Oreos I couldn’t rely on sight alone. Instead, I settled on a consumer grade food scale with the smallest unit of measurement being grams.

Oreo Weights

First, I decided to weigh both a regular Oreo and a Double Stuf Oreo, just to make sure one did indeed weigh more than the other. The scale was only accurate down to grams, but that was good enough for my purposes. Here’s where I encountered my first surprise.

Not every Oreo weighs exactly the same. I ended up weighing five regular Oreos, randomly taken from the package in front of me. Three of the Oreos weighed in at a steady 11 grams while the other two Oreos made my scale waver between 11 and 12 grams for a little bit before mostly settling on 11 grams.

Next, I needed to weigh the Double Stuf Oreos. Again, the weights weren’t exactly the same each time, but most of the Double Stuff Oreos weighed in at about 14 grams, with one Double Stuff Oreo being 15 grams.

Looking at the results we can see that Double Stuf Oreos clearly weigh more than regular Oreos, but the implied claim that they contain double the cream was still in question.

It was time to take apart the Oreos and take measurements of each of the separate parts of each Oreo cookie. Again, the limits of my kitchen do not allow me to chemically separate all the Oreo cream molecules from all the Oreo cookie molecules, so I relied on the next best thing: a butter knife to scrape the cream off each cookie.

As it turns out, the single Oreo cookies without cream all weighed about the same in my experiments. They were all consistently weighed 4 grams, no matter if they came from regular or Double Stuf Oreos.

Now we could do some math, of course. If each cookie weighs 4 grams then each type of Oreo would have 8 grams of “cookie”, leaving only “stuf” to be weighed. This means that a regular Oreo would have about 3 grams of stuf (8g cookie + 3g stuf = 11g Oreo) and a Double Stuf Oreo would have about 6 grams of stuf (8g cookie + 6g stuf = 14g Double Stuf Oreo). So, in theory, everything works out. Actual measurements were needed to confirm this.

I decided to confirm this a couple ways: I would weigh one cookie with Stuf on it and I would also weigh the Stuf alone just as a double-check. Again, the accuracy of this entire experiment was largely dependent upon me taking clean scrapes of cream off cookies with a butter knife, so I wasn’t expecting exact numbers.

So, do Double Stuf Oreos really contain “double” the Stuf of regular Oreos? Check out the chart below and see for yourself!

Yes! The results are pretty clear: Double Stuf Oreos easily contain twice the amount of “Stuf” or cream as regular Oreos!

After properly disposing of all the materials used in this experiment, I was still struck by the fact that it didn’t “feel” as though Double Stuf Oreos had as much cream stuffing as they did when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find a 30-year package of Double Stuf Oreos to measure for sure.

Until that time, I’ll just build an Oreo with the sort of cream filling I remember as a kid:

The Quadruple Oreo – Four Times The Stuf!

This entry was posted on August 23, 2010 at 6:10 am and is filed under Humor, Wasting Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.