I used to dunk Oreo cookies or graham crackers in milk; either would do.

It’s a simple comfort I’ve not experienced for some time — calorie considerations.

But, as recent developments demonstrate, pounds are not the most significant thing a person can lose.

Things being what they are, I need to start dunking again. Dunking Oreo cookies would offer the most comfort, but, at my age, their pervasiveness could cause a backlash. Dunking graham crackers is the more prudent choice; I’ll go with them.

It’s a prudence that causes memories to roll, memories of sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and a stack of pre-sectioned Nabisco Grahams, anticipating the dunk and the ingestion of the crackers’ absorption of milk’s smoothness.

Those dunked crackers would circumvent my consumption limit until my stomach reached its distention limit.

I’ll be setting a more moderate dunking course.

Sylvester Graham developed the graham cracker in the mid-19th century, motivated by a search for nutritional value and biblical correctness.

Biblical correctness?

Sylvester preached that simple, bland food would control his and others’ carnal desires. His cracker recipe used water and coarsely ground, unleavened, whole wheat flour. He would roll the dough, bake it without yeast or salt, and then bake it again. The result was no cookie.

It failed to attract young people to the kitchen table.

Sylvester also avoided meat and alcohol, eschewed warm baths, slept with an open window on a rock-hard mattress, and sanctioned sexual engagement for reproduction purposes only.

Given the opportunity, our county Board of Commissioners may have considered Sylvester for a seat on the library board.

Commercial bakers got their hands on Graham’s recipe and changed it.

Whole wheat flour is still used, but enhanced with shortening, sugar, and salt. By 1898, the National Biscuit Co. (Nabisco) produced a line of graham crackers that triggered runs on kitchen tables, resulting in multiple abdominal distentions.

However, the relevancy of Sylvester’s boxed-in approach to life and crackers persists, having received vindication from those enhanced grahams that, when unboxed, were led astray by cheesecakes and seduced by s’mores.

And that’s not all that has gone astray.

In 1981, Nabisco merged with Standard Brands to form Nabisco Brands.

In 1985, Nabisco Brands merged with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to form RJR Nabisco.

In 1988, RJR Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a private equity holding company, purchased Nabisco and spun off the tobacco business, leaving Nabisco holdings.

In 2000, Phillip Morris acquired Nabisco Holdings and merged it with Kraft Foods.

In 2012, Kraft Foods split, and the portion that assumed Nabisco was renamed Mondelez International. Nabisco developed Oreo cookies, so, when Mondelez acquired Nabisco, it acquired both graham crackers and Oreo cookies.

By gaining control of both grahams and Oreos, Mondelez fully immersed the dunking community, comporting with the post-election inquiry: Who is getting dunked?

Mondelez International also owns Ritz crackers. Developed by one of our own — the Jackson Cracker Co., of Jackson, Michigan — they marketed them as Jaxon Crackers.

Nabisco acquired the Jackson Cracker Co. in 1919 and changed the Jaxon name to Ritz in 1934.

Why?

Well, it was a name they believed would appeal to folks living through the Great Depression by offering them a high-end “Ritzy” product, using an upscale promotional assurance: “A bite of the good life.”

A marketing technique no longer limited to crackers.

According to a Wikipedia article on Ritz crackers, “A Bite of the Good Life” recently became more expensive. In May of this year, Nabisco (Mondelez) replaced the 200-gram box of Ritz crackers with a 150-gram box.

But the price remained the same.

The annual inflation rate in May this year was 3.3%. If the above price increase is accurate, a bite of the good life costs 25% more than it did in April.

They likely blamed it on inflation.

But that’s crackers.

Doug Pugh’s “Vignettes” runs monthly. He can be reached at pughda@gmail.com.