This is the most bizarre thread. For the benefit of those of you that don't have access to Oreos, let me just state that there's nothing to go out of your way about. It's more of a mass delusion on the part of us Americans. Which is not to say that I can't eat an entire bag.

The cookie -- sorry, ``biscuit'' (what do you English types call what we Americans call biscuits?) -- is a sandwich cookie. It consists of two fairly crispy chocolate wafers with a ``creme'' filling. The filling is basically much stiffer weeding cake icing. That is, confectioner's sugar and lard. (I'm sure it's not really lard, but some sort of heavy shortening.) The consistency, which is sort of like very dried-out toothpaste, would imply that there's a fairly large sugar-to-shortening ratio. There is sort of a religious debate as to how to eat an Oreo. On one side is the camp that one must dunk the entire thing in milk, eating only the part that enters the milk, continuing this in a geometric pattern until you can't really dunk any more. On the other side are people, myself included, who insist that you must twist the two wafers against each other so that the filling is laid bare. Then one must scrape the filling off with the front teeth. What to do with the remaining wafers is undefined. Some people eat them ``raw''. Others dunk them in milk. Many folks, especially children, just throw them away, as if they were just the packaging. Assuming that you are going to eat the wafers, though, nearly frozen milk (I've never heard any Oreo-related debate as to the fat content) is the only acceptable drink. In fact, I almost never drink milk in any other context.

More denotatively, the Oreo is circular, about 1.75 inches (4.5cm) in diameter. The wafers have a fairly inticate design on the external side, including the Nabisco Thing, that is mutable depending on the precise species of Oreo. The wafer is a fairly dark chocolate, about the color of a dark, bittersweet, or baker's chocolate. (I don't know if any of those mean anything to you, so about like this: CHOCOLATE) The wafer is about 1/8" (3mm) thick. The filling is about the same thickness, but leaves about 1/8" border to the edge of the wafers. There's also the Double Stuf variety that approximately doubles the thickness of the filling. Probably a little less that that, really. There are also some other varieties, including one with chocolate filling and several coated ones. For more Oreo trivia, check out Nabisco's Oreo site.

PS: This all reminds me of an extended plot point in the Justice League America comic book in the early 90s where the leader of the JLA, J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, became physically addicted to Oreos, having crates of them shipped in. Funny stuff.