Back a few years ago, I remember about writing about Twinkies — if I remember, there was a big uproar back then because the company that made them was going out of business or something like that. But some other company started making them, so all was good again.
But today there was some nutritionist on one of the morning shows and was going on about how unhealthy the Twinkie is — and he made the, I guess, now famous claim that a Twinkie would stay fresh for 50 years or more.
Well, I’m not sure where this all started, but I think it may have been during the cold war when people stocked survival foods in their household bomb shelters. For some reason a lot of people included Twinkies.
The truth is, a Twinkie’s shelf life is about 25 days. Actually, even that amount of time does seem like a lot of “stay fresh” time. But Twinkies are a processed food and contain no dairy products that can go bad in a hurry. If you check the label, you’ll find such ingredients as vegetable and/or animal shortening and partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed, or canola oil. These are all artificially produced fats and are more solid than clear liquid oils — and — are less likely to spoil. They are what supposedly help twinkles stay soft and tasty — but not for 50 years.
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