Ore-ooooohhh no

For the last few weeks, news stories have been popping up about possible shortages on Nabisco products at grocery stores. How some stores are stocking up to withstand the decreased production from the Nabisco bakeries around the US as workers have gone on strike after changes were made to their healthcare and overtime. While reading these stories, I had a horrible realization of just how many Nabisco snacks my kids and I eat. Reading the list of items started off bad:

• Ritz? (Those are my favorite crackers!)
• Wheat thins? Triscuits? Premium Saltines? (Are there any other crackers left on the cracker aisle?)
• Belvita crackers (nooooo those are the only sandwich crackers without peanuts/tree nuts!)

And just got worse and worse.

• Teddy grahams? (but those graham bunnies may contain milk!)
• OREOS?! (Nooooooooooooooo, not Oreos! ANYTHING BUT OREOS!)

Okay, okay, okay. Surely there are some other safe alternatives, right? Plain crackers are usually safe from eggs and milk so we can probably find another brand. But Teddy Grahams and Oreos are the only reliable desserts I’ve found in the store that don’t have milk or eggs in them.

Finding a readily available, not prohibitively expensive, dessert snack safe for my kid to eat was a huge win for us. I have played around with vegan baking and have made desserts with varying levels of success. But, they take time and effort to bake, not to mention tracking down the special grape seed oil or ground flax organic whatnot to make the recipe. In the end, it's never going to be the same as the real thing. Oreos are already the real thing! I don't need to adjust anything!

At get togethers or birthday parties or “year of life celebrations” at my kid’s school, I want to have a safe dessert alternative ready to go in the pantry so my kid doesn’t feel left out of the deadly birthday cake sprinkle ice cream extravaganza that she can’t have. Oreos are great for this. Do I eat them everyday? No, of course, I don't. Do I wish I did? Yes, of course I do.

The rest of the cookie aisle is packed with cookies made with dairy milk. Or eggs. Or both. There’s just something magical about the Oreo. What could possibly be in the cream filling? Is it just sugar? How do they make the chocolate cookies without butter or eggs? They’ve made it so shelf stable, so super processed, that they accidentally made it vegan. I assume it was on accident. “Milk’s Favorite Cookie” is stamped on the package and there’s pictures of milk splashing everywhere so it seems unlikely that they set out to make a vegan cookie. Whatever the reason, finding out that Oreos don’t have milk in them was such a happy revelation.

Which is why the prospect of an Oreo shortage was so sad. And, it’s not just that there may be a shortage due to the workers on strike. Danny Devito is asking for a boycott of all Nabisco treats to support the workers on strike: No Contracts, No Snacks! This boycott is not to be confused with the 2016 boycott of Oreos when Nabisco closed a US factory and opened one in Mexico. Or earlier this year when Nabisco’s parent company was accused of being complicit with child slave labor to get their chocolate. That's right, I said CHILD SLAVE LABOR. (To be fair, all of the big chocolate companies in the US were involved so this may be more of a chocolate in general problem than a Mondelez problem, but YOWZER.) That Oreo isn't looking so sweet now.

I haven’t checked out the packages of the other chocolate and cream sandwich cookies, but a lot of times store bands have extra allergen warnings on the ingredient lists. Even if they don’t have some of the Top 9 allergens, it’s more likely they have been processed in the same factory as other allergens. So, wish me luck this weekend at the grocery store as I look for an allergy friendly, worker friendly, (oat) milk’s favorite cookie alternative.