Cookie lovers should sleep better these days. A frivolous lawsuit to ban Oreo cookies in California has been dropped like a ton of lard. Stephen Joseph, the British-born attorney who filed the suit against Kraft Foods Inc. last month, said he only wanted to make people more aware of trans fats in our foods. What he didn’t take into consideration is that, for many of us, our love for Oreos transcends any fears we might have of hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Fats happen and we must swallow that fact. Oreos, tasty chocolate wafer cookies lovingly bonded together with creamy frosting, have become a comfort food for many of us. From our early childhoods to the present, we have been fully aware of the benefits of the little sandwich cookies. For example, the makers of Oreos have enhanced our holidays with exciting varieties of festive frosting colors. We expect to see orange-colored frosting fillings for Halloween and red frosting for Christmas. All of the many other frosting colors have enriched our appreciation for the holidays and seasons more than we can possibly imagine. Oreos are better coffee or milk dippers than doughnuts, pieces of pie or chunks of cake. While those other Oreo wannabes become soggy, break apart and plummet like space debris into our beverages, Oreos both soak up well and maintain their original shapes. In this sense they are a perfect food. Another advantage of Oreos is that they teach children everything they should know about sharing. They learn quickly that sharing isn’t necessarily a synonym for equal. It’s not always fair. Just ask any younger sibling who was always stuck with the unfrosted sides when Oreos were divided in halves. (In self defense I would suggest that as older siblings kind enough to do the sharing in the first place, we more or less deserved to be rewarded with the frosted halves.) Oreos have taught most of us to save the best for last. Eat the plain half of the Oreo before the frosted side. This also ties in perfectly with the Calvinist idea of suffering before you can enjoy. When compared to other questionable foods such as fried liver with onions, boiled beef tongues or lima beans, Oreos provide the best culinary way to celebrate the pursuit of happiness, one of our basic freedoms. Now that the lawsuit in California has been dropped, our country no longer faces the possibility of being torn into two groups — Oreo dunkers and Oreo debunkers. The dropped lawsuit should also serve to remind us that so-called junk foods shouldn’t be treated like much-maligned cigarettes in our courtrooms. After all, no innocent bystander has become sick from second-hand exposure to chocolate wafers or creamy frosting fillings. They may wish they had Oreos and drool a bit, but it’s only temporary. The Oreo lawsuit in California raises one important question. Who appointed Stephen Joseph to be head of our cookie police, anyway? We like our Oreos and we don’t want people to mess with them. That’s the truth and that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
