Hey! Thanks for pointing this out. I bought a bag of Oreo's over a month ago and I thought it was my taste buds. They tasted HORRIBLE! I haven't had any in several years, and they looked good, so I bought a bag.
Well, I ate a couple and threw the damn things out. So, that's what happened to our Oreo's! :(
That filling started out as lard and sugar.
Sometime during the '70s, Nabisco switched to hydrogenated vegetable oil to make the product kosher and appeal to the lofat-vegi-yogurt-sandal crowd (vegetable fat must be better than animal fat. Right?). So for the last 25 years, the "creme" filling has been made with Crisco and sugar.
After being beaten over the head with studies, the National Institutes of Health finally agreed that hydrogenated oils are a major factor in coronary heart disease and people should eliminate them from their diet (good luck, approx 40% of manufactured foods contain hydrogenated oils!).
The FDA will require that trans-fats have to be listed on the nutrition label next year.
Oreos, Hydrox, Thin Mints, Twinkies, JIF peanut butter, etc. will all change taste & texture in the coming years as they find substitutes for the trans fat ingredients.