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With the news that Hostess Bakeries is to be liquidated and its famous brands — Twinkies®, Hostess CupCakes®, DingDongs®, Ho Ho’s®, Sno Balls®, Donettes® and Wonder® bread — might disappear is big news for all of us. A world without Twinkies is a world with a big hole in it.
Ever since I started writing about how Twinkies are made and where all the ingredients come from, or more importantly, speaking in public about this fascinating topic, loads of people have come up to me to “confess” that they loved Twinkies as kids. Or that they still ate them, or that they truly loved the cupcakes — and is that okay? Or (shudder) that they never actually did like them.
Why do they feel they must confess? Pride? Guilt? These snack cakes hold immense sway over us. I have heard confessions from complete strangers, from scientists, from college kids (who, along with a tone of defiance, seem most proud of their continued devotion to the cakes) and even nationally-known journalists, confiding in me confidentially before interviews. Strange how pervasive the Twinkie influence is.
We Americans seem to be totally in love with those little blond sweet cakes, and we’ll thus be despondent if they go away. Not too long ago, Hostess sold an impressive 500 million of them each year.
How to explain our infatuation with Twinkies? It might be the vanilla taste/blond color. Simply put, Americans love blonds. Of course we also love sweet, fatty treats. When you examine our popular snack foods you find potent blends of sweetness, fat, and salt. Twinkies excel with the first two. And they are cheap and ubiquitous.
But then there’s that name. I sometimes think Twinkies are in our psyche to such a great extent because of the cute name. You have to admit, the word “Twinkies” does not scare or intimidate. And the packaging is loud and cartoonish, with red, white and blue tugging at our heartstrings while a little cowboy, “Twinkie the Kid,” sits happily astride the cake. You can’t get more nostalgic-American than that. It hits all the right notes.
On the other hand, something named “DingDongs” could never earn a similar place in our culture. No way. Saying you love DingDongs just sounds plain stupid, but saying you love Twinkies sounds cute and fun. So that must be it.
People are also fascinated with Twinkies’ legendary shelf life. Twinkies are about half sugar and half flour (no surprise there — this is cake we’re talking about) and loaded with oil to simulate moisture, so they taste moist during their 26-day shelf life.
I investigated all 39 of Twinkies’ ingredients. A big surprise was that there’s only one preservative in Twinkies, sorbic acid, and only a minute touch of it at that. The sugar, salt and oil keep things stable. A lot of the artificial stuff is naturally non-spoiling, from Chinese-made vitamins to modified cornstarch and soy lecithin.
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