Standing in a folding lawn chair on the front lawn of Nabisco headquarters, Lansing author Cat Clark entered her third consecutive day Tuesday of reading the Oreo ingredient panel into a bullhorn, pausing only to sip electrolytes and ask whether anyone inside could pronounce the seventh one.
Clark arrived Sunday morning with a cooler, three sets of D-cell batteries and a single sheet of paper. She has not finished the sheet.
“Soy lecithin,” she announced at 6:14 AM, as employees arrived for the workday and walked quickly. “Interesting. That one’s for texture. Who decided we needed help with texture?”
Company security initially expected the reading to end Sunday afternoon. By Monday it became clear Clark was reading each ingredient, then its function, then the year it was added, then who held the patent.
“We thought she’d get bored,” said a guard, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Then she got to the emulsifiers and brought out a second binder.”
Sources inside the building describe a growing unease on the third floor, where the sensory lab is located, after Clark read aloud a 1986 patent abstract describing a cookie “optimized to minimize oral residence time.” Several staff reportedly looked at the cookie on their desk differently.
At press time Clark had reached ingredient eleven and informed the parking lot that she would be taking questions after, but not before, the artificial flavor.
