Last week, PETA tweeted out a stat that plant-based eaters have long held over their carnivorous counterparts: "It's true, Oreos are vegan!," they wrote.
Any vegan you've encountered in the past decade has probably told you as much. Because finding a mass-market baked good — one of America's favorites, at that — that's free of animal byproducts is no easy task. But as soon as PETA pulled out the one-liner, Twitter users did what they do best: picked a fight. There was a short back-and-forth before PETA went radio silent, maybe because they'd finally seen the error of their ways.
The issue isn't so black-and-white. The back of a package of Oreos lists the following as ingredients: sugar, unbleached enriched flour, high oleic canola and/or palm and/or canola oil, cocoa, high fructose corn syrup, leavening, cornstarch, salt, soy lecithin, vanillin, and chocolate. It's not the healthiest collection, but there's nothing glaringly offensive to vegans. Palm oil can be a hot-button topic — some people argue palm plantations hurt animals — but the stuff's not off-limits.
So to get an answer to the question, you have to dig even deeper. Recently, an FAQ from Oreo's U.K. site started circulating. It asks "Is Oreo suitable for Vegans?" and answers "No, Oreo have milk as cross contact and therefore are not suitable for vegans." Push past the British grammar and vocabulary, and focus: Cross contact means that a food might come into contact with another food during production — maybe two different products are made on the same machine — so Oreos can't be quality-controlled for traces of milk.
But that's in the U.K., and best practices for production can differ across the pond. We emailed Oreo for comment, and received this response from the brand's U.S. PR team: "Similar to the info shared by the U.K., we do not promote Oreo cookies as being vegan." Redditors have shared comparable stories on the site's vegan message boards. Seven months ago, Reddit user @beepitymeep reached out to Mondalez, Oreo's parent company, and got a letter stressing that Oreos are not vegan. User @angrykittydad was given the same answer two years ago.
Knock-offs — Newman-O's, Trader Joe's Jo-Jos, Annie's Organic Grabbits Sandwich Cookies, and Back To Nature Classic Cream Cookies — have warnings declaring that the cookies are made in factories that process dairy products, too. But it's not like eating those or Oreos is the same as chugging a glass of milk. The concern is more ethical than anything else: You can take a staunchly anti-Oreo stance — or keep dunking, drowning out the noise in a hearty glass of almond milk.
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