Thursday, 30 September 2004
Bye, bye Twinkies
The big news of the past week in America was not the impending live Presidential debates or the tightening of Immigration controls at airports but the demise of the famous snack cake Hostess Twinkies. Manufacturer Interstate Bakeries who employ 33,000 and whose shares have lost 90% (more) of its value since March filed for bankruptcy last week.
For those of you that have never experienced a Twinkie, they are cream-filled sponge cakes shaped like ladyfingers which pack 160 calories per cake and are loaded with all kinds of 'goodies' like shed loads of trans fats, despite this you won't be surprised to hear that they are mighty popular in the USA, with 500 million baked each year.
There is a popular urban myth that Twinkies are made entirely out of artificial ingredients, and contain no food products whatsoever, therefore they have a very long shelf life (possibly decades). At some point many years ago Hostess over produced Twinkies by the billions (possibly due to an error in market research), and could not sell all their stock. So Hostess stored the billions of excess Twinkies in a giant warehouse and have been distributing them ever since. Nasty.
Twinkies have been around for almost 75 years and Americans eat them in all kinds of ways, mostly three at a time and preferably deep fried. Yuk.
¶ 10:50
The big news of the past week in America was not the impending live Presidential debates or the tightening of Immigration controls at airports but the demise of the famous snack cake Hostess Twinkies. Manufacturer Interstate Bakeries who employ 33,000 and whose shares have lost 90% (more) of its value since March filed for bankruptcy last week.
For those of you that have never experienced a Twinkie, they are cream-filled sponge cakes shaped like ladyfingers which pack 160 calories per cake and are loaded with all kinds of 'goodies' like shed loads of trans fats, despite this you won't be surprised to hear that they are mighty popular in the USA, with 500 million baked each year.
There is a popular urban myth that Twinkies are made entirely out of artificial ingredients, and contain no food products whatsoever, therefore they have a very long shelf life (possibly decades). At some point many years ago Hostess over produced Twinkies by the billions (possibly due to an error in market research), and could not sell all their stock. So Hostess stored the billions of excess Twinkies in a giant warehouse and have been distributing them ever since. Nasty.
Twinkies have been around for almost 75 years and Americans eat them in all kinds of ways, mostly three at a time and preferably deep fried. Yuk.
¶ 10:50
