Christelle Joy C.

Cadalzo Grade 12-

Journal
Parks,S.(2018) “Book of Food Non-Fiction”. The Story of Oreo.
https://www.foodnonfiction.com/episodes/item/27-69-the-oreo-story

#69 The Oreo Story

WRITTEN BY FOOD NON-FICTION  AUGUST 24, 2018
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The Oreo cookie is the only cookie that I, as an adult, still buy from the snack foods aisle.
Shockingly, this cookie is over a hundred years old!

In 1912, the National Biscuit Company announced the

release of 3 high end cookies - they referred to them as
the “Trio”. The 3 high end cookies were 1. The Mother
Goose Biscuit, 2. The Veronese Biscuit, and 3. The
Oreo Biscuit.

The Oreo, of course, became a very successful cookie

that we are still eating over a hundred years later. And,
of course, it has changed over time. Everything from the
design on the Oreo, to the ingredients used to make the
Oreo, and the Oreo packaging have changed. When it
was first sold, Oreo came in really boxy tins. People
have described the original Oreo tins as being yellow or
gold colored, with the lettering being gold. This is
important to mention because this description has led
people to theorize that the name “Oreo” came from the
French word for gold, which is “or”. That’s just one of
several theories on where the name “Oreo” came from,
and we discussed these theories with Stella Parks who
wrote the book “BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts”.
This book won the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award.

The French-word-for-gold theory is a bit of a stretch. As Stella explains it, if Oreo's name was
related to the French word for gold then this would have likely been a reference we would have
seen in advertisements, but the ads did not refer to gold at all. Many other theories are just as
unlikely to be true. Some people have said that the name "Oreo" was derived from the word
"orexigenic" - an orexigenic is something that stimulates the appetite. Another theory is that the
name Oreo represents the construction of the cookie. So imagine that the two O’s are meant to be
the two cookies sandwiching the cream, and the “re” in the middle of the spelling O-r-e-O is
meant to be the cream, because “r, e” are the 2 letters in the middle of the word “cream”. There's
also the theory that Oreo comes from the Greek word for “hill” because some early version of
the Oreo was supposedly dome-shaped like a hill.
Christelle Joy C. Cadalzo Grade 12-

Stella Parks has her own theory. This one makes perfect sense. Stella
recognized that companies tend to name their products using a common
theme, so she looked for a theme in The National Biscuit Company's product
names. She took a look at the names of the National Biscuit Company's
products from around Oreo's time. She noted that many of the products were
given names related to plants. For example, one biscuit was named Lotus - the
lovely flower that grows in water gardens. Another biscuit was named Avena,
after oats. Another biscuit was named Zaytona, which could have come from
the Arabic word for olive. There was also a biscuit called Anola, likely
because one of its ingredients was canola. You get the picture. Following that
trend, it makes sense that the name Oreo came from the word “Oreodaphne”
which is a genus of flowering plants. So the wreath design on the original Oreo could very well
have been made up of a plant from the genus Oreodaphne.

So the name "Oreo" likely comes from the word Oreodaphne - a genus of plants that includes
evergreen trees which are sometimes called Mountain Laurels. So now the question is - why
name the Oreo after, basically, mountain laurels? Well, a few years before the Oreo came out,
there was already a cookie on the market with a wreath design pressed into a dark cookie,
sandwiching a cream filling. This cookie was called Hydrox. So the Oreo cookie was The
National Biscuit Company’s copy of the Hydrox cookie, which was sold by the Loose-Wiles
Biscuit Company...later renamed as Sunshine Biscuits.

So, let’s summarize what we’ve learned. The Oreo cookie is likely named after the Oreodaphne
in relation to the decoration on the original Oreo cookie, which was likely a mountain laurel
wreath, which was the same type of plant decorating the original Hydrox cookie, which was the
cookie Oreo was copying.

The Hydrox cookie was visually stunning for its time. The level of detail of the image pressed
onto the cookie was amazing for a time when bakeries were still changing from being small
businesses to large factories. For the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, the Hydrox was an all-star
cookie, and Oreo copied it.

And there’s a lot more to the story than that. Let's go back in time a bit to talk about the creation
of the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company. The National Biscuit Company (now known as the
shortened name, Nabisco, Na (for national) bis (for biscuit) co (for company)) - was formed from
a merger between 3 huge companies - The New York Biscuit Company, The United States
Baking Company, and The American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company. That last one was
run by 2 brothers - Jacob and Joseph Loose. When the merger happened, Jacob Loose did not
agree with it, and left the company to start the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company (which he founded
with John Wiles).

That means that Jacob’s brother, Joseph Loose was still at The National Biscuit Company when
Jacob went off to form another company - the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company. Two brothers at
two competing companies. (Note that at some later point, Joseph Loose eventually joined with
his brother Jacob's company.) Imagine Jacob Loose, once again starting a biscuit company,
competing with a company led by his own brother, as well as many of the people he used to
Christelle Joy C. Cadalzo Grade 12-

work with - you can imagine that he had a lot to prove. So Jacob's company launched the Hydrox
cookie and it was a great success.

But a few years later, The National Biscuit Company came out with practically the same cookie -
this was the Oreo. They very similarly adorned the Oreo with a fancy design in a wreath pattern
around the company name, they advertised with a similar slogan, and as the author Stella Parks
noted, they launched it on the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company’s 10th anniversary.

When Oreo launched, Hydrox was still the ruler of its cookie category. But the National Biscuit
Company was a very overwhelming competitor to go against - it was a behemoth. So while the
Hydrox was beloved, there were a few things going against it. The National Biscuit Company
had many marketing dollars to throw at Oreos, and the name Hydrox eventually became
associated with chemicals because it was a word also used by chemical companies. (The name
Hydrox was just the words hydrogen and oxygen mashed together - it was meant to make people
think of purity, pure like water, H2O). They tried changing the name Hydrox to Droxies to move
away from the chemical association, but that didn't help.

Oreo design

Even though Oreo was the copycat cookie, over time people
started to believe that Hydrox was the copycat cookie.
Eventually, Hydrox was discontinued. However, it was
brought back by Leaf Brands in 2015 and today it continues
to struggle against Oreo. We spoke to the CEO of Leaf
Brands - Ellia Kassoff - and he explained to us how he worked to recreate the recipe of the
original Hydrox cookie. Hydrox still has its fans and when they learned about its revival, many
people contacted Ellia to help out. Some people had been suppliers to the company that made
Hydrox, some people had worked in factories that had made Hydrox, and some people had eaten
Hydrox cookies as customers. With all the knowledge from different people that had known the
Hydrox cookie, Leaf Brands was able to recreate the cookie.

We also spoke to Bill Turnier, the son of William Turnier who is credited by many as the
designer of the current Oreo design. Although the first Oreo cookie was a copy of Hydrox, the
latest design of the Oreo has its very own story to tell. As Bill Turnier told us, his dad worked his
way up from the mail room at Nabisco to being the assistant to the chief cookie designer -
William Turnier worked at Nabisco for 49 years before retiring at age 65.

Special Thanks To Our Interviewees:

Stella Parks - author of "BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts"
Ellia Kassoff - CEO of Leaf Brands
Bill Turnier - son of William Turnier (widely credited as the designer of the latest Oreo cookie)