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Just had to share with you that your favs...Oreos...are okay these days:

Up Close & Edible: Oreos
A weekly look at the nutritional value, or lack thereof, of some of our favorite foods.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Katie Connolly
Newsweek
Updated: 5:31 p.m. ET Aug 17, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20324125...week/?from=rss

Aug. 17, 2007 - Oreo cookies are about as American as apple pie. Since hitting the market in 1912, more than 450 billion Oreos have been gobbled worldwide. They are America’s cookie of choice, but they’re not exactly known as a health food. So how bad for you can the two little chocolate wafers and cream filling be?

Not as bad as they used to be, now that they have been stripped of artificial trans fats, the ingredient that was used to make the cookies crunchier and the filling creamier. Trans fats are worse for the heart than regular fats, boosting bad cholesterol and inhibiting good cholesterol. Last year New York City banned the use of these fats in restaurants, and in 2003, California-based lawyer Stephen Joseph tried to sue Oreo manufacturer Kraft for marketing the trans fat-containing snack to children. Joseph, whose father died of heart disease, dropped the suit after learning that Kraft planned to change its recipe to a trans fat-free variety.

And change it they did: after 30,000 hours and 125 trials, a new, improved Oreo was released in January 2006. Trans fats were replaced with canola and palm oils. While Oreos still aren’t great for you—one cookie has 53 calories and 2.5 grams of fat—nutritionist Elisa Zied, author of “Feed Your Family Right!,” says that a couple of cookies won’t hurt. “Oreos, like any cookies, can fit into a healthy diet,” she says. “It’s all about the dietary pattern, not individual foods. Just limit yourself to one or two.” In a healthy diet, calories from Oreos can be counted as “discretionary calories” or calories that come from nutritionally dubious foods. In a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, you can allow yourself up to 260 discretionary calories, or about five Oreos. But if you do eat those five cookies, you can’t have any other slip-ups that day. That means only lean meat and fat-free dairy, and no other cookies, candies or even wine.

Like most cookies, Oreos are high in sugar and saturated fat. But the biggest problem Zied sees from sweet foods like Oreos is overeating. She says that many of her clients have problems with portion control, and giant-sized Oreo packages don’t help. Cookie lovers should learn to ration, taking only one or two at a time rather than eating mindlessly from the pack.

How you eat an Oreo matters too: “Taking a whole pack and smashing it over a big bowl of ice cream—that’s death on a plate,” she says. If you are going to eat an Oreo, you might as well enjoy it with a glass of milk. Zied says that most Americans are not drinking enough milk, and so are missing out on vital calcium and vitamin D in their diets. And when you dunk, make sure it’s fat-free or skim milk.

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UP CLOSE AND EDIBLE
A weekly look at the nutritional value, or lack thereof, of some of our favorite foods.

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