Americans love their comfort foods. Even with the current fad of health foods and kale, sugary snacks have crept back into popularity. This is the first time I have a research subject I could really get my teeth into — the legendary Twinkie. The increased sales of Twinkies have been attributed to people staying home during the COVID confinements. We fell back on stress inhibitors like watching cartoons and eating Twinkies without witnesses.
At one low point in its 92-year-old history, the Twinkie was discontinued in American market. For four long years (2012-2016), we had to travel to Canada to buy Twinkies. Twinkies were still being made under license in Montreal by Grupo Bimbo Vachon. I wonder if there are any French-Canadian Twinkie smugglers? The announcement by Hostess that the factory was closing in bankruptcy caused widespread panic. People began hoarding Twinkies. Products disappeared off shelves and were offered on eBay and Craigslist at exorbitant prices. Some of those hoarded Twinkies wound up in a basement for eight years. The magazine Food and Wine ran an article on these expired Twinkies. The article inspired two scientists at West Virginia University to acquire them for analysis. The testing on one showed the household mold Cladosporium growing on it. The other Twinkie had shriveled up and showed no active spores. The report conclusion, “if you find 8-year-old baked goods in your basement, examine them carefully under bright lights before eating them, I don’t care how hungry you are!” Another fine example of our tax dollars at work. My other comment is, why is a fancy food magazine writing about Twinkies?
The original Twinkie was made in 1930 and had a shelf life of two days. Of course, we have all heard the urban legend of the teacher who had a packaged Twinkie above his blackboard for decades. He claimed it was still edible. I am not sure what subject he taught, but I am pretty sure it was not home economics. There is even a book titled, “Twinkie, Deconstructed.” There are 37 ingredients in today’s Twinkie, including iron, vitamin B and B2. Someone please explain why a snack voted by Time Magazine as one of the top 10 American junk foods with 290 calories, would bother to add vitamins? Twinkie inventor James Dewar was trying to think of another use for a machine that made little cakes for strawberry shortcakes. The machine laid idle for months while strawberries were not in season. He adapted the machine to produce tubular cakes which were then filled with banana cream filling. When WWII came along with banana shortages, the filling was switched to a “creamy filling.” Twinkies have been made with vanilla crème, banana, tropical crème, chocolate, chocolate/peanut butter, mixed berry, peppermint, and of course pumpkin spice. There is even a Post Twinkie cereal. Call me old-fashioned. I prefer the plain old vanilla crème one I ate for research. I am, however open to trying a deep-fat fried Twinkie.
By ED PECK – Special to the Herald times
