MIT tested 1,000 Oreo cookies to crack the mystery of the best way to eat one

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have revealed that they’ve tested over 1,000 Oreos to figure out the best way to eat the beloved cookie.

Crystal Owens, a PhD candidate in MIT’s mechanical engineering department, spoke about her and her team’s study, in which they examine the fan-favourite snack, during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. In their work, which was published in the Physics of Fluids journal last year, these scientists studied the equal distribution of an Oreo’s creme, in which it ends up on both side of the wafer when the cookie is broken apart.

Speaking to WSJ, Owens went on to explain her team’s method: putting the cookie between two counter-rotating plates, through a device called a rheometer. She said also said that when they glued different Oreo flavours to the rheometer, it would twist the cookie open at different speeds.

However, after placing over 1,000 Oreos on to that device, these MIT scientists still found that nearly 80 per cent of the creme stuck to only one side of the wafer. Owens went on to note that regardless of how fast or slow the rheometers opened the Oreo, the results didn’t change.

“We also tested the cookies by hand—twisting, peeling, pressing, sliding and doing other basic motions to get an Oreo apart,” she said. “There was no combination of anything that we could do by hand or in the rheometer that changed anything in our result.”

The team empahsised that even when the rheometer moved pretty slowly, results didn’t change. In fact, when the rheometer took about five minutes to open the cookie, most of the creme still stayed on one wafer.

As the results went on to suggest that an Oreo’s creme may be stronger than its two wafers, Max Fan, co-author of the study, recommended other ways for the brand to make changes to its cookie.