Here’s Exactly How Long To Dunk Your OREOs, According To Science

If you clicked on this, I’m just going to assume you’ve dunked your cookies in milk before. If you’ve never dunked before, get your ass to the grocery store, buy some Oreos, your milk of choice, and listen up.

There is actually a specific scientific amount of time that you should be dunking for. If you dip the cookie in milk for too long, it falls apart and ruins your plans. If you don’t dip long enough, you just wasted your time with a mildly moist cookie.

According to Mental Floss, the was a study conducted by Utah State University, and they concluded that the sweet spot for Oreo cookie dunking is about 3.5 to 4 seconds.

Within the study, they found that at one second inside 2-percent milk, the Oreo absorbed 50 percent of it’s potential liquid weight. At two seconds in, the Oreo absorbed 80 percent of of possible liquid weight. After 4 seconds, the cookie stopped absorbing milk. So if you keep it in any longer than 4 seconds, nothing’s really happening in there and you’re basically playing yourself.

Of course, this study was done with 2-percent milk, and the time does change when using other milk, but only by a few split seconds, at most. So even if you’re doing it with skim, or 1-percent milk, dunking it no more than 4 seconds is ideal.

If you’re wondering how long to dunk non-Oreo cookies, there was a study conducted in the ’90s, by a scientist named E.W. Washburn, with fairly similar results. Washburn used a British biscuit (cookie) in his testing and found that you should keep the dunk between 3 to 5 seconds.

So next time you indulge in an Oreo cookie, and are dunking for any longer than 4 seconds, you’re not really doing anything but keeping yourself from eating it. Enjoy this newfound knowledge.