Oreo Unveils Four New Vegan Varieties, Including Espresso Creme Thins

Great news for cookie lovers: Oreo has rolled out four new vegan varieties, VegNews reports, just in time for the holidays. The lineup is Salted Caramel Shortbread Creme, Dark Chocolate Zero Sugar, Gluten Free Lemon Creme and an ultra-rare, limited-edition Espresso Creme Oreo Thins.

The three everyday flavors started showing up at Walmart in late October, Sporked reports. Salted Caramel Shortbread puts a salted caramel shortbread-flavored creme with crunchy sugar crystals between two Golden Oreo wafers. Gluten Free Lemon Creme sandwiches lemon creme between vanilla cookies made from white rice flour, tapioca starch, oat flour and corn starch. Dark Chocolate Zero Sugar skips the sugar and is sweetened with maltitol, sorbitol and sucralose instead.

We checked the official ingredient lists on oreo.com for Salted Caramel Shortbread Creme and Gluten Free Lemon Creme: no milk, no eggs, no animal ingredients at all.

Then there's the one everybody wants. Oreo made a single batch of just 1,000 packs of Espresso Creme Thins, with coffee-flavored creme between its slim chocolate wafers. US fans signed up on the Oreo website between October 20 and November 3, codes went out by email on November 4, and the first 1,000 to redeem got a pack for the $2.99 shipping fee, FoodBev reports. The flavor is only available online, not in stores. Juliette Whitten, marketing director for Oreo Platforms, said in comments quoted by FoodBev:

With Oreo Thins Espresso Creme, we're bringing fans a new way to enjoy that moment: the beloved Oreo cookie experience, now with delicious espresso flavour and smooth creme, gives fans something delicious to look forward to, whatever their evening plans may be.

(If you missed out, we feel your pain.)

Why does a cookie launch matter? Because every treat that skips the dairy makes the plant-based choice the easy one. A landmark analysis of food's environmental footprint, covering 38,700 farms and published in Science by an Oxford-led team, found that "impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes." When the cookie Oreo calls America's favorite keeps its new flavors free of animal ingredients, millions of shoppers get a dessert that's kinder by default.

Big brands keep making it easier. Cadbury launched its first-ever vegan chocolate bar after 197 years, Caribou Coffee ditched its dairy-free milk surcharge across nearly 500 US stores, and this year a vegan Thanksgiving has never been easier. Now there are four more cookies for the holiday table.

Pass the Oreos.