Oreo Thins Promote Unrealistic Standards for Oreos

By Anna Merlan | July 6, 2015 | 10:10pm

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Oreo is debuting a thinner Oreo. It has a good chunk of the filling squeezed out, and a much more slender, crispier cookie aspect. The new, skinny Oreo! blare a thousand headlines. But why are we shaming ordinary, beautiful, perfectly delicious Oreos? We’re so serious about this. This is a serious post. Please share it like, “Those feminists have lost it!” Yum.

Oreo Thins are being debuted by Mondelez International next week. The company describes the new cookie as slimmer and “more sophisticated” than OG Oreos. A Thin is also slightly less caloric than a regular cookie, 35 calories apiece versus 42 for a regular Oreo. This concludes what could generously be construed as the “news” portion of this post.

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This momentous event of less cookie for the same amount of money has generated an avalanche of approving headlines, some of them from the same media organizations that get very excited about newly thin people:

Oreo Thins Are Here! See the Thinner – Just as Yummy – Sandwich Cookie – Us Weekly

Alert! Oreo Debuts New, Slimmer Cookie Called Oreo Thins – People

Oreos Get a Makeover: Meet the ‘Thinner’ Cookie – Time

New Oreo Thins are skinnier than a pencil– Mashable

The New Oreo is NOT What We Expected – Refinery 29

The new Oreos are so skinny, in fact, you apparently can’t easily pull apart and dunk them, according to an Associated Press interview with the People Whose Job it is to Market New Kinds of Oreo Formulations:

[S]ince they’re for adults, Oreo says they weren’t designed to be twisted open or dunked. That’s even though about half of customers pull apart regular Oreos before eating them, according to the company.

“If people want to do that, it’s clearly up to them,” said Janda Lukin, senior director of Oreo for North America at parent company Mondelez International.

In explaining what exactly made them more grown-up, she said that if regular Oreos are like pancakes, then Oreo Thins would be like crepes.

It’s all well and good to celebrate the “slender,” “delicate,” nature of these new Oreos. But come on: Thin! Sophisticated! “Crepe”! Every word of this campaign is clearly meant to make you feel bad—and make your existing cookies feel inferior—by making oblique references to the French, whose biscuits don’t get fat. Don’t fall for this slick marketing and zealous photoshopping; there’s nothing wrong with your existing, gorgeous cookie (unless that cookie is a horrifying homemade “paleo Oreo”).

On a practical note, this means you have to eat an extra half Thin to keep up, which is also complete bullshit.

Update and correction, 8:04 p.m.: An observant reader who’s also a dentist points out that actually, one regular Oreo has 53 calories, not 42:

Regarding your Oreo article. Regular Oreos have 160 calories for 3 Oreos (total 34grams), therefore it is 53.33 calories vs. 35 calories for the thins. Which is a little better. A 34% savings, I am not sure of the weight of the thins.

We regret the error. By my calculations you will have to eat 16 additional Thin Oreos to make up the difference. Pretty sure that’s right.

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Screengrab via ABC News