The What? Why? and Really?: Inside the Twinkie

Photo: Credit: Baltimore Sun

The Twinkie.  
An American Icon.  
The Ultimate Childhood Snack.  

I have a little Twinkie history for you today.  It's good to gain knowledge from all areas of life, ehhh?  

Birth date: 1933 (Twinkie is an old man)

Father: The Continental Baking Company (The same company that made Wonder Bread)

Mother: Hostess ("carried" by this snack line).  Haha! Everyone has a few cornball moments that they relish.

It originally began as a strawberry shortcake but soon folk realized that strawberry bushes don't bear fruit all year round so they decided to fill the off-season with banana cream-filled Twinkies.  Next, the Great Depression sadly yanked away all the bananas and they ended up with a vanilla cream filling that they never changed again until this day.  I'm really pulling a fast one with the history.  Reminds me of 5th grade research papers.  My info source: Twinkies.  Judge me and I smack you.   

Jay Kay.  No damaging my people! :)

The most interesting fact is that the Twinkie was MOST popular during the 1960's when there was widespread fear of nuclear attacks by Russia and China.  Twinkies were said to "stay fresh forever" so people bought a ton of them for their bomb shelters.  Now that is an interesting thought. Why exactly do Twinkies stay fresh forever?  If we employ a conditional claim here, we may be able to figure this out.  We know that food and other living things do not stay fresh forever.  We humans don't even stay fresh forever because we get less fresh every year.  That means that non-living material stays fresh forever because it does not change.  So if Twinkies "stay fresh forever", then Twinkies must not change.  Thus, they must be non-living material and should probably be classified more as an inanimate object than food.  Boom. Bam. Done.  Swarthmore taught me well  :)

Let's take a peak at what's really inside:

Photo Credit: Dwight Eschliman

  

I got this photo from The Daily Beast.  It looks more like a chemistry poster.  For real.  Truth is, it isn't much different than what's in all the other junk food out there.

I see you High-Fructose.  Don't even try to hide in the fine print.  Talking about some "regular" corn syrup.  You are not regular.  You cause people to gain weight at an extremely accelerated rate.  Trifling.

My people, I want you all to live the good life, so why eat this when you can eat THIS:

I would gladly spend 10 minutes whipping this up for you instead of giving you a $1 for old man Twinkle Toes.  He's croak-ready, so let him be!

Thank you for reading!  My people, I appreciate you all so much. Be healthy and happy.  Ciao!