Interfacial Fracture of Oreo Cookie Filling

Aug 9, 2007

While reading the Wikipeidia page on adhesive I came across this nugget of wisdom on food decomposition:

Another example is when someone tries to pull apart Oreo cookies and all the filling remains on one side. The goal in this case is an adhesive failure, rather than a cohesive failure.

Apparently, when you’re trying to break apart an Oreo and get all the filling to stay on one side, say, to make a quad-stuf (yep, only one ‘f’) Oreo, you are hoping for an adhesive or interfacial failure, that is, a failure of the adhesive (white, corn-syrupy goodness) where it meets the adherent (black cookie piece).

Also, for another barely-related angle is this page from a UFC forum discussing the caloric content of foods someone mentions their method of making Oreos less bad for you:

i just want everyone to know this lil diet trick i use to cut calories out of my double stuff oreos, if you take 2 of them apart and make 1 quad stuff oreo you eliminate 2 of the chocholat cookies there for cutting out calories while you enjoy a nice diet quad stuff oreo

Though I’d say the perfect ratio of filling to cookie is somewhere between 2 and 3 to one, I often make quad-stuf monsters.