One Dumb Cookie

This is getting crazy: first marshmallows, now Oreos. Can't they leave perfection alone? Feast your eyes on the brand-new Neapolitan Triple Double Oreo (Nabisco needs some grammatical help in the naming department, clearly). Ersatz chocolate and strawberry "creme" sandwiched between three vanilla Oreo wafers (vanilla Oreos??), stamped with one of the most recognizable patterns in American food history. I call it a totally unnecessary knock-off of one of the finest old brands in the country. Oreos were introduced in 1912, and are widely reported to be the best-selling cookie in the U.S.—for good reason. All they require, really, is milk.

But where you and I might see crispy-creamy quintessence, Nabisco sees untapped potential. And like every other recent do-over of a food classic, the new triple-decker Oreo comes in heavy: 110 calories per cookie, more than twice the heft of the original. So, just as with the similarly superfluous super-sizing of the marshmallow this summer, you can eat the same number of treats—and take in two or three times the calories. If anyone ever asks why more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, I think you have your answer.

You've Been Served

Trigger-happy? Get ready for sticker-shock.

I'm crushed. All these years I was feeling so virtuous, spraying my pans with Pam or its generic knock-offs, dreaming of all those cumulative thousands of calories I was saving. But those lying liars at ConAgra Foods (oh, and Campbell's, Nestle, Haagen-Dazs...) were, quite simply, lying about calories.


Zero calories, zero fat in a "serving" of Pam? Sure, if your definition of "serving" is a spray that lasts a quarter of a second. If, like most sentient humans, you hold that spray button down for, say, six seconds--long enough to actually get a non-stick coating onto the surface of the pan--you'll be taking in 50 calories and 6 grams of fat. And I'm saying, Hell, I coulda used butter (literally: a half-tablespoon of butter is 50 calories) and added some actual flavor--not ersatz "butter flavor," as Pam puts it.


The Center for Science in the Public Interest is serving papers to the FDA demanding that the agency start doing its job and policing the avaricious food companies that persist in telling dangerous untruths--life-threatening untruths. Because obesity and high blood pressure are killing millions of people who read the label on a can of Campbell's soup and think they're eating a serving that contains 790 milligrams of sodium, when in fact they're taking in twice as many. When was the last time you considered a half-cup of soup a "serving"? That is--I kid you not--8 tablespoons. Please. That's lunch?

Emotional eating just got more fattening.

And, be honest, when was the last time you considered a half-cup a serving of ice cream? Haagen-Dazs measures it that way. But if you eat a cup instead, you've just ingested a full day's recommended limit of saturated fat. And if you were on the Dumped-Again Diet and stood in front of the fridge until you finished a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (yes, people, it does happen!) that's two full days of sat fat. And fat is what you will be. Much like the wallets of the food-company CEOs.