Monday, November 19, 2012

My Twinkie Rant


Our connections to foods of our childhood can be powerful, though not always healthy ones. I've written about my love of Jello, but honestly, it's not so much as a food source, but as a cultural mapping to my family and grandparents. I get it.

But the recent media attention around the closure of Hostess, leaving Ding Dongs, Ho Hos and Twinkies about ready for removal from production, is a little surprising. It's not like these are products that have stayed current with the times. Let's look at the content of a Twinkie:

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

I have a hard time accepting that something with the above ingredients is worth saving. That's a lot of crap. And so is the whole "blaming it on the unions" line. If there's anything to learn by this recent "news story" is that a really great way to increase sales of your crappy product is to threaten to close.

End of rant.   

7 comments:

PAgent said...

Let me just say this:

If you love food, never EVER read a food product patent.

Best Wishes, Marie said...

be interesting to see if mcDonald's threatens to stop making fries.

ricki said...

But if Twinkies disappear, what will be left to scoff at? Plenty, come to think of it.

GRACE PETERSON said...

I feel badly for the people who will lose their jobs but come on, who eats those things? I'm with you, LeAnn. They've had their day. Time to move on. If the Hostess CEOs had any business savvy they would have spent the last 10 years developing healthy alternatives.

1914house said...

But it has "natural" flavors! Hahaha! I've never liked those things. They just taste like flavorless fat.

danger garden said...

If half the folks that are freaking out and buying them by the case had bought even a dozen over the last couple of years then I don't think we'd be here now.

So why did't they? Because THEY SUCK! (the food product, not the people)

whimsy2 said...

Yay!