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The koshering of the Oreo cookie (2008)
- sunshinerag 9y agowith what did they replace the lard?
- vowelless 9y agoWhat did they replace the lard with? Edit: From wikipedia > In the early 1990s, health concerns prompted Nabisco to replace the lard in the filling with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.[13] Isn't partially hydrogenated vegetable oil much worse than lard?
- leeoniya 9y agodoesnt look like it's in there any more http://www.snackworks.com/products/product-detail.aspx?product=4400003202 http://www.snackworks.com/products/product-detail.aspx?produ...
- oh_sigh 9y agoYes, they removed it in 2006 and replaced it with a non hydrogenated vegetable oil when the harms of trans fats were becoming known.
- R_haterade 9y agoYup. This was back when it wasn't, though, back when fat was evil and we had to completely eliminate it from our diets. Lard tastes better too. You ever had pie crust that was made with lard instead of vegetable shortening? Makes you feel like you've been lied to your whole life.
- oh_sigh 9y agoThe article makes only one tiny mention of switching away from lard for health reasons - the main thing mentioned is basically that creameries(which were Kosher) wanted to put Oreos in their ice cream, but couldn't because Oreos were not kosher at that time. I'm not sure how much health played a factor, vs the economics of capturing a large swath of the ice-cream-additions market
- ars 9y agoRead it again. The timeline was the other way around. First they switched away from lard for health reasons. Later creameries saw that there was a possibility of putting in Oreos (since all the ingredients were kosher), so contacted them about getting the facility certified. If (other than eggs) your product has no animal products it's usually pretty easy to get it certified. It requires mainly a very very intensive cleaning, and then careful record keeping and quality controls on sourcing.
- koolba 9y agoDo you have to pay someone to regularly come check on it or is it a one time thing?
- ars 9y agoIt's always regularly, but the frequency depends on the complexity of the process - inspections range from once a year plus paperwork, to continuous on-site inspector. And cost varies according to how many visits are necessary, and how many ingredients, and how complex the production process. Also how remote - for example remote fishing vessels that cook and can fish on-site, or in small countries without much of a Jewish presence, so someone has to fly in. (There's plenty of competition BTW - there are several hundred certification agencies, and there is no central authority.)
- ars 9y ago> back when fat was evil Not fat (the replacement was also fat) but rather saturated fat was the evil one.
- markdown 9y agoIs it no longer so? Is saturated fat now considered OK?
- cowmoo728 9y agoThe tl;dr of it is that large amounts of saturated fat may not be exactly good for you, but the dangers were grossly over exaggerated. You should probably still eat mostly vegetables, but you can put some butter and lard on things and not feel guilty.
- tcoff91 9y agoIt's complicated. According to what I heard from Dr. Rhonda Patrick, it's not inherently bad on its own, but when eaten with sugar it causes the formation of small dense LDL particles, which contribute to the clogging of arteries.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Not fat (the replacement was also fat) but rather saturated fat was the evil one. Shortening is vegetable oil that's been treated to transform it into (in part) saturated fat. So it's not even about that, either.
- ars 9y agoNo, partially hydrogenated oil is not saturated, it's unsaturated. Today we give is a separate category of "trans", but back then it was listed with the unsaturated fats. They made sure not to let it run far enough that any of it was saturated. Which is exactly why it was made! Specifically to look good on food labels. (And because it was cheap.) Such a huge mistake. (Fully hydrogenated fat is saturated.)
- 9y ago
- bradleyjg 9y agoWhat about butter?
- legitster 9y agoButter doesn't provide the same texture as lard/shortening in pie dough (something to do with the balance of saturated fats), so butter usually only supplements for flavor.
- YZF 9y agoYou can make great pie dough with butter... We do that all the time.
- zwieback 9y agoAgree, I bought expensive leaf lard and tried it a few times in pie crusts. I much prefer all-butter crusts to lard, even 50% lard gives it a flavor I find unpleasant and the texture advantages are overstated as well.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago> Lard tastes better too. Toast a few slices of bread. Make sure the surface turns crunchy. Grab a clove of garlic and rub it on the toasted bread until it disappears. Repeat until the surface has imbibed enough garlic paste. Now spread some lard on it. Use a generous amount. Bonus points for using goose lard instead. Sprinkle salt. Enjoy.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoOr, of course, you could use olive oil instead of the lard. It tastes just as great but it's actually good for you and it's even kosher/halal. Actually, to be honest, I find the olive oil tastes _much_ better than the lard, but to each their own (my father makes olive oil).
- basch 9y ago>actually good for you implying lard isnt or cant be?
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y agoImplying there's nobody who thinks polyunsaturated fats are bad for you.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoSounds like early memories tend to make deep imprints. That's definitely my case, at least. That was a childhood memory, from growing up in Eastern Europe.
- dragonwriter 9y agoConsumer health concerns (which were the motivating factor) are often either unrelated to or directly opposed to actual health.
- Teever 9y agoThis sounds incredibly expensive. What was the profit motive for this?
- rory096 9y ago>The process began, Regenstein recalled, when many of the country's major ice cream companies, most of them operating under kosher standards, wanted to make a product with authentic Oreos.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- R_haterade 9y agoSelling to jews and (probably moreso) Muslims. When you can't sell your HFCS confection to 25% of the world's population, you start to think about these things. Edit: confabulation->confection
- brianwawok 9y agoOreos still have HFCS and all kinds of unhealtly stuff. In fact more unhealthy than lard.
- R_haterade 9y agoThis is about selling ice cream, though. Most of which had HFCS in it, especially in '97.
- brianwawok 9y agoAnd so do oreos. I don't get the point.
- kbutler 9y agoHFCS and unhealthy was not the point. The non-kosher certification prevented sale to Jewish/Muslim populations, not degree of the unhealthiness.
- irrational 9y agoI've thought that Oreos don't taste as good as they did when I was a kid. I thought it was just faulty memory or taste buds going bad or seeing the past with rose colored glasses, but maybe they really don't taste as good ;-)
- stickfigure 9y agoI remember liking Oreos as a kid in the 80s, but I tried one recently and it was chalky and horrible. I just assumed it was a combination of lossy memory and undeveloped childhood tastes. But apparently I'm not crazy, and Oreos were more delicious back then! Curmudgeons everywhere must be feeling a little vindicated right now. I only wish I had a lawn to yell at kids on.
- carsongross 9y agoNassim Taleb has written on this phenomenon: https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- Animats 9y ago"Kosher" is no longer a set of objective standards. That ended when two Jewish groups fought it out in court over New York State's kosher inspection law in 1991. They were arguing over which rabbi got to declare that something was kosher.[1] A Federal judge ruled that government can't take a position on that issue, because it's an establishment of religion to do so. So New York State got out of the kosher-inspection business. There are many kosher inspection groups in the US, especially in Brooklyn, NY, which has at least sixteen.[2]. There's a whole "more kosher than you" thing going there. In Israel, where the government is heavily involved, it's used as a competitive weapon to stop some imports.[3] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/04/nyregion/judge-voids-law-certifying-kosher-food.html http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/04/nyregion/judge-voids-law-c... [2] http://www.crcweb.org/agency_list.php http://www.crcweb.org/agency_list.php [3] http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-how-food-importers-use-rabbis-to-block-competition-1001161785 http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-how-food-importers-use-ra...
- chimeracoder 9y ago> "Kosher" is no longer a set of objective standards. While it's true that there are different interpretations of what constitutes kosher food, it's not really relevant here, as none consider pork to be kosher.
- kbutler 9y agoHow about the blowtorching of existing ovens which have previously been used to cook pork products? Is that always "kosher"? That was the most interesting tidbit to me, and seems like requirements for that procedure could easily vary between certifying organizations.
- ars 9y ago> Is that always "kosher"? Yes, that is always required. The basic rule: The same type of heat that was used to cook the food, is the same type of heat needed on the vessel to clean out the food. The minimum heat is boiling water. Since an oven gets very hot, you need high heat to clean it. (Hot enough that a tissue pressed on the metal turns black - it doesn't need to glow red hot.) > and seems like requirements for that procedure could easily vary between certifying organizations. No, that's not one of the things that vary, that one's universal. To an outsider, the stuff that varies would seem very minor. It won't be anything large like this.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoNo mention of Hydrox cookies, which were a) kosher from the beginning and b) the original cookie of which Oreo is a knockoff. They were far better than Oreos, in my memory, but sadly they went off the market some time ago. They've recently been revived, but I haven't tried the new ones. No animal fats. No HFCS.