Twinkies are a
cake-like snack food produced by
Hostess. Though they are delicious and produce a lot of revenue for Hostess, they have an infamous reputation. Twinkies also have one of the longest and most eventful histories of any
snack food.
A man by the name of Jim Dewar came up with a tasty new idea in the 1930's. It was a golden brown baked treat with banana cream in the middle. Having seen a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes, Dewar christened it the "Twinkie", a name which sticks to this day. Twinkies became an instant hit, earning tons of money for Dewar's bakery, the Continental Baking Company in Chicago. The original Twinkies did contain a banana cream filling, but a banana shortage due to World War II forced a change to the current vanilla cream.
Twinkies celebrated their 50th birthday in style. A huge twinkie, ten feet long, was baked to commemorate this occasion. It took nearly a week to make the whole thing, but when it was completed, it was impressive.
Twinkies have an official mascot: Twinkie the Kid. A "Twinkified" version of Billy the Kid, Twinkie the Kid came about in the 1970's. He wears a bandanna, cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon hat with his name proudly displayed on it.
The reason people make so much fun of Twinkies is because of the amount and nature of the ingredients. Since there are so many different suspicious-sounding chemicals that go into Twinkies, people have made a number of stories about them. There are rumors that the shelf life of a Twinkie is over a century. It has also been said that in the event of nuclear war, only two things will survive: cockroaches and Twinkies. The full ingredients list of a Twinkie contains a slew of strange-sounding chemicals, but they are not that much different from the chemicals found in other similar snack foods.
The following data have been copied from the outside of a Twinkies package:
Main Ingredients: (not listing ingredients of negligible amounts):