This Blog, if nothing else, has its fingers on the thready pulse of current affairs, and has taken notice of the Hostess saga with some degree of interest and amusement. The Blog (or, more precisely, the Blogger) can’t recall the last time it has ever eaten a Twinkie, never really having particularly liked the product, even in childhood. The Blogger as a youth was partial to Ring Dings, Yodels, and Devil Dogs, which is probably why the Blogger had a weight problem until the late 1990s—these days, if the Blogger is going to eat something unhealthy, it is not going to be a mass-produced tube of dubious chemicals, but something fresh from a local bakery. In the media, fingers of blame are flying around like something out of Yellow Submarine (which a Twinkie kind of resembles), but I think at heart the issue is something we in the printing industry can sympathize with: the market changed faster than management’s ability (or willingness) to react—and react appropriately. But more for our purposes here (sort of), I was curious as to the oft-repeated claim that there is no actual organic material in a Twinkie, that it is all chemistry (well, everything is chemistry, really), and thus the Twinkie has a shelf life of 25 or 50 years—or, indeed, will last forever, perhaps to be unearthed—and perhaps eaten—by future archaeologists. But, actually, no. As Snopes explains, Twinkies do lack dairy-based ingredients, which as we all know too well are the fastest things to spoil, and as a result don’t go bad as quickly as similar confectionaries. But that only slightly prolongs a Twinkie’s shelf-life, but not all that long: a Twinkie will last about 25 days. It may interest the interested reader to know that, as originally conceived and produced, the Twinkie—which was invented in 1930 by James Alexander Dewar, a baker for Schiller Park, Ill.’s Continental Baking Company—was filled with banana cream. During World War II, bananas were in short supply, so the switch was made to vanilla cream. Interestingly, during a promotion for the 2005 movie King Kong, the banana-cream Twinkie was revived (monkeys, bananas...get it?) and sales rose 20%. Go figure. Wikipedia helpfully gives us a complete list of the ingredients in a Twinkie. Don’t try this at home!

Enriched wheat flour, sugar, corn syrup, niacin, water, high fructose corn syrup, vegetable and/or animal shortening – containing one or more of partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed and canola oil, and beef fat, dextrose, whole eggs, modified corn starch, cellulose gum, whey, leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), salt, cornstarch, corn flour, corn syrup, solids, mono and diglycerides, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, dextrin, calcium caseinate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, wheat gluten, calcium sulphate, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, yellow No. 5, red #40.

By the way, more information that you would ever require about processed foods can be found in the book Twinkie, Deconstructed. And for those keen on regurgitation: the deep-fried Twinkie. The news has been filled (as if with cream) with stories of people going out and hording a “lifetime supply” of Twinkies. My guess is, a lifetime supply wouldn’t be all that many...