# Tag Archives: al sicherman

## I was wrong…(Oreos, cont.)

This Oreo thing has gotten out of hand. Here is where we stand (with surprise dénouement at the end):

@JWDixonizer observed via Twitter that it must be volume that is doubled. I tried to refute that, but could not. Here are five manufactured Double Stuf Oreos next to five made the old-fashioned way.

The Double Stuf come out a tad shorter, but within any reasonable margin of error. Ergo, Double Stuf has double the volume of stuf. In an appearance that delights me no end, Al Sicherman himself confirms this:

My best evidence [that Double Stuf is in fact double stuf] follows not from all that pointless weighing but from noting that a stack of nine Double Stufs is approximately the same height as 11 originals: about 5 3/16 inches.

Sicherman then establishes his own system of equations and finds the stuf in a regular Oreo to measure approx. 0.1 inches and the stuf in a Double Stuf Oreo to measure approx. 0.2 inches.

But double volume doesn’t mean it’s Double Stuf.

Consider the case of whipped cream. Or popcorn.

Then Chris Lusto did an analysis. He argued that Nutrition Facts constitute imprecise data, and that we shouldn’t be surprised by conflicting results from two imprecise systems.

But Lusto didn’t touch any cookies in his first go. He didn’t measure mass and he didn’t run computations on fat grams.

Al Sicherman did. Not only that, he thought to measure the diameters of the wafers. I paired them up and they looked fine to me. But he lined up 10 regular wafers and 10 Double Stuf wafers. He claims to have photographic evidence that Double Stuf wafers have a larger diameter.

I have yet to run the numbers on this observation.

# Hold the presses!

In a late development, Lusto has cracked the case.

After taking grief for his hands-off approach to Oreo research, Lusto busted out a scale and honed his stuf-scraping techniques. He has now demonstrated definitively that Double Stuf is doubly stuffed.

I am humbled and chagrined. It turns out the Triple-Double really is a different beast. That chocolate stuf is deceptive.

On the plus side, if you solve the system of mass equations,

$\begin{cases} 10w+10s=113 \\ 20w+20s=145 \end{cases}$

the solution matches Lusto’s finding: One stuf weighs a bit more than 3 grams.

So there’s that.

## My Oreo manifesto, part 2

So you read my previous blog entry in which I paid homage to the culinary sleuthing of Al Sicherman and alleged that Double Stuf isn’t really double stuf.

When we left off, we had been working with the assumption (soon to be demonstrated false) that Double Stuf is double stuf. We had learned that a single unit of stuf has about 17 calories and a single wafer has about 19 calories.

Enter the Triple-Double.

Again, we use Nabisco’s own data. One serving Triple Double Oreos has 1 cookie and 100 calories.

Translation: One serving of Triple-Double Oreos is 3 wafers (that’s the triple part), 2 stufs (that’s the double) and 100 calories (that’s the OMG! part).

Comparing the Triple Double to the Double Stuf, we can see that the only difference between one Double Stuf cookie and one Triple-Double cookie is 1 wafer and 30 calories.

What can we conclude? That a wafer has 30 calories. But wait! That’s over 50% more calories than we got under the assumption that a Double Stuf has double stuf. We have reached a contradiction, which means we need to reject our initial assumption.

Double Stuf ain’t double stuf.

QED.

## My Oreo manifesto

Math is powerful.

No one has demonstrated this more frequently and more convincingly than Al Sicherman of the StarTribune. In his Tidbits column, Sicherman keeps tabs on prices and variations of processed foods. A favorite category for him recently has been Oreos. Writing recently on the topic of the new Peppermint Creme Oreos (which he describes as toothpastey), Sicherman says:

All of that is not to say that there is no significant difference between Cool Mint Creme Oreos and Peppermint Creme Oreos: They are the same price on the shelf, but the package of Cool mint Oreos is 15.25 ounces (30 cookies), and that of Peppermint Creme Oreos is 10.5 ounces (20 cookies). So Peppermint Creme Oreos cost 45 percent more per ounce — or 50 percent more per cookie.

Whoomp! There it is! Math, baby!

Gotta love this guy. (But seriously, would it kill the Strib to dispatch a photographer with a camera that has more than 1 megapixel?)

Inspired by his example, I’m prepared to turn up the heat on Nabisco’s Oreo division. Are you ready?

Double Stuf isn’t double stuf.

Let me say that again…DOUBLE STUF IS NOT DOUBLE STUF!

How do I know? Math.

How should we do this? Reductio ad absurdum? Let’s assume it is double stuf. Then, according to Nabisco’s own data (found on the Nutrition Facts), one serving of Oreos is 3 cookies and 160 calories. Double Stuf is 2 cookies and 140 calories.

Let me translate that for you. One serving of regular Oreos has 6 wafers, 3 stufs and 160 calories. Meanwhile one serving of Double Stuf Oreos has 4 wafers, 4 stufs and 140 calories.

That’s hard to compare. So let’s consider two servings of regular Oreos (6 cookies, 12 wafers, 6 stufs, 320 calories) and three servings of Double Stuf (6 cookies, 12 wafers, 12 stufs and 420 calories).

Those Double Stuf Oreos account for 6 additional stufs and 100 additional calories (same number of wafers, remember). We conclude that each stuf is approx. 17 calories. And from this we can conclude that each wafer has approx. 19 calories.

What, you prefer the formal mathematical solution? Fair enough:

Let w be the number calories in a wafer and f be the number of calories in a unit of stuf. Then Nabisco’s calorie claims yield this system of equations:

$\begin{cases} 6w+3f=160 \\ 4w+4f=140 \end{cases}$

We can rewrite this equivalently as:

$\begin{cases} 12w+6f=320 \\ 12w+12f=420 \end{cases}$

And then solving by combination, we get:

$6f=100$ or $f=16 \frac{2}{3}$

You’re comfortable with that. No problem, right?

Tune in tomorrow for the dénouement.