.Every six seconds, someone in the United States eats a Twinkie, the creme-filled sponge cake, seen here, that has climbed to iconic status since its inception 75 years ago(AFP/Getty Images/File/Justin Sullivan)
Posted on 04/30/2005 6:30:44 PM PDT by kingattax
CHICAGO (AFP) - Every six seconds, someone in the United States eats a Twinkie, the creme-filled sponge cake that has climbed to iconic status since its inception 75 years ago.
To fuel this passion, Hostess factories pump out 500 million of the sweet, yellow cakes at speeds of up to 1,000 Twinkies a minute.
"It's such a simple treat. It's comfort food," explained Hostess brand manager Anne Drozda.
The Twinkie was invented in a Chicago bakery in April 1930 by a baker who wanted to make better use of shortcake pans when strawberries were out of season.
"It was the best darn tootin' idea I ever had," inventor Jimmy Dewar once said.
The creme-filled cakes sold two for a nickel in the 1930s and soon became a national favorite. Their iconic status was sealed in 1999 when the White House included Twinkies in the millennium time capsule because they represented "an object of enduring American symbolism."
The treat has played a role in a number of movies, including a scene in Ghostbusters where it is used to illustrate a spike in ghostly appearances. Twinkies were also a favorite treat of Pink Lady Jan in the musical and film "Grease."
The Twinkie has also made appearances in court.
One man managed to get off a first-degree murder charge by arguing that excessive consumption of junk food had diminished his capacities. Dan White was convicted on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter after he used the "Twinkie defense" to explain why he killed the mayor of San Francisco and the first openly-gay elected city official in 1978.
A man running for city council in Minneapolis was indicted in 1986 for breaching the Fair Campaign Practices Act after he served coffee, Twinkies and Ho-Hos to senior citizens at campaign stops. George Belair was eventually cleared of the allegations, but lost the election.
Over the years, the cake has become the victim of urban legends. Packed with sugar and made with a lot of hard-to-pronounce ingredients, Twinkies have an official shelf life of 25 days. The key to their longevity is the lack of dairy products, Hostess says, but the surprisingly springy texture of the cellophane-wrapped treats has led many to think that they are indestructible.
In one episode of the popular cartoon The Simpsons, convenience store owner tells Homer: "Silly customer. You cannot harm a Twinkie."
Many have tried to test the properties of the cakes, the most famous a pair of engineering students at Rice University in Houston who set up a website detailing a series of experiments they performed on the snack, dubbed the Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations.
The Twinkie was also the subject of an academic paper examining the hidden costs of every day things.
"If we added the subsidized labor cost for sugar, and do a rough estimate of the environmental and health costs involved in production and distribution, a 10-dollar Twinkie might not be out-of-line," wrote Distinguished Teaching Professor Richard Robbins of the State University of New York in a paper entitled The Political Economy of Twinkies.
Weighing in at 150 calories and 5 grams of fat per Twinkie, the snack is not very popular with people watching their waistlines.
The low-carbohydrate fad was cited by Hostess's parent company, Interstate Bakeries, as one of the reasons behind its decision to file for bankruptcy protection last fall.
Despite these troubles, Hostess's Drozda says sales have actually been increasing and insists Twinkies will be found on grocery and gas station shelves for years to come.
"There's no such thing as bad food, there's just bad quantities," she said
.Every six seconds, someone in the United States eats a Twinkie, the creme-filled sponge cake, seen here, that has climbed to iconic status since its inception 75 years ago(AFP/Getty Images/File/Justin Sullivan)
And they're so good with milk, too!
Anyone got one of the first made??? You could make a killing on eBay with that one.
...and since they have a 75 year shelf-life, Hostess is due to make a new batch soon.
especially if you have a twinkie that you can see the virgin mary on.
Wow, he must really be fat.
I can't believe he doesn't choke!
Best way to do that is to get together with 15 or 20 of your best friends (also diabetics) and slice it into sufficient pieces so that you all get one small piece.
Do this no more than once a year.
Hmmmmmmmmmm!. Might have to make a quick run to the store. Be right back ;-)
. Bud Humpsnaggle spots a Twinkie that someone dropped on the sidewalk
They are still selling the first batch. Stuff never spoils!
Spongecake Roundpants.
lol!
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Legitimate science? or Twinkie torture!!! You be the judge, see the Twinkies Project.
Hmm...that means Twinkies are eaten at a rate of 10/minute, but produced at up to 1000/minute.
Where do the other 990 Twinkies a minute go?
Back in the early 1970s, I used to eat Twinkies and they just tasted so much better than they do today. They seemed much fresher, tastier and spongier. Twinkies of today leave a nasty aftertaste and they aren't as soft. Evidently, some chemical tampering has been done to the Twinkies.
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