Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread may soon be back in stores after a bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday approved sales of several iconic brands that had been owned by the failed Hostess Brands Inc.

This has no effect on my plans or food buying, but just in case, anyone cares. 

If you bought Twinkies because they were rare, obsolete and unavailable, now you can eat them.

I dont even know what it is.

...(I'm on a vendetta against High Fructose Corn Syrup),  but I do feel nostalgic about them.  Glad to see such an iconic brand has been saved.  Maybe the new owners will take out the HFCS.

Not likely. You can blame our government - enforced governmental production quotas of domestic sugar, subsidies of U.S. corn, and an import tariff on foreign sugar, all of which combine to raise the price of sucrose to levels above those of the rest of the world, making HFCS cheaper for many sweetener applications. Those that buy twinkies probably don't want to pay more than the past prices so they will probably not change the recipe. I prefer the Hostess cupcakes.

I haven't eaten any of that stuff in years, and probably wouldn't (I'm on a vendetta against High Fructose Corn Syrup),  but I do feel nostalgic about them.  Glad to see such an iconic brand has been saved.  Maybe the new owners will take out the HFCS.

I probably would have gotten my hand slapped really hard if I had a Twinkie at home. Mom allowed us one of those 6 1/2 oz Cokes a day. (maybe) No canned vegetables ever, frozen or fresh only. Candy, sure, only on holidays. Sick, we'd get half an Aspirin.

And people wonder why I'm such a conservative? 

I'm not going to touch the politics of sweeteners, according to who you may read or believe they are ALL bad. Real sugar causes cancer, HFCS are toxic, all of the artificial are lumped together, even if they are very different chemically. Hmm, haven't seen anyone claim anything wrong with honey, but I'm sure they will? LOL

Honestly best sweets around here are oranges, apples and dried fruit. (and Dark Chocolate, I'm not totally deprived of all the good things in life)

Yes, the Twinkie (and the rest of the Hostess snack products) have survived again. Maybe the new company will do some intelligent marketing and spread out past the USA. Maybe get in tune with modern times, instead of some caught in the 50s junk food. There's always hope? And last I looked there were four or five buyers of different products divisions.

Now can someone do something about Candy Raisins going off the market? They didn't look or taste like raisins. And if anyone says they don't know what those were, it's part of the reason they aren't made anymore. Limited demand. I didn't even know they stopped making them. They stopped making Snirkels too, the brown and the black. Make outerspace noises here, and get my tin foil hat, this is outer space.


Candy Raisins  which are back as Candy Sunshine in limited places.

Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread may soon be back in stores after a bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday approved sales of several iconic brands that had been owned by the failed Hostess Brands Inc.

This has no effect on my plans or food buying, but just in case, anyone cares. 

If you bought Twinkies because they were rare, obsolete and unavailable, now you can eat them.

No you can not eat them!

These are the last of the originals from Hostess they will be worth a fortune one day somewhere down the road!

The new ones wont be Hostess.

You might all be interested in the book "Sugar Salt Fat"

all things in moderation including moderation....

You need to do more research Brian.

My wife is a PhD food scientist. I have direct access to an expert. 

As a layman, I want to get on the anti-HFCS bandwagon, but I never find any good, peer reviewed journal articles or experiments that convict HFCS.

There's a desire to want to find a "culprit" and I just don't think the answer is that simple. I do see a majority of people consuming more processed food than 30 years ago and leading more sedentary lifestyles. Packaged servings sizes and restaurant portions are always getting bigger too. ("King size" candy bars, etc. and remember when 16 oz sodas looked big at the convience store? But now they are 20 or 24oz? Cokes use to be 8oz way back and then 12 oz cans for a long time.) Processed food aims to be cheap, not necessarily healthful, so a diet primarily of them is likely less healthy than one centered around fresh fruits and vegetables.

The glucose and sucrose molecules in sugar are bonded together.

This is wrong. Sucrose is glucose and fructose bonded together. Glucose is never bonded to sucrose.

In a related phenomenon, when you overeat sugar, your body stores it in the top layers of fat, under the skin, for quick short term energy usage. When you eat HFCS it is stored in the long term fat storage under your abdominal muscle walls.

That is sounding really fringe. Your body doesn't look at the ingredients you ingest and file it into different locations. Any excess calories are converted into fat. It doesn't matter if they are excess calories from eating too much fruit, too many egg yolks, or too much HFCS. You need a certain amount of calories to supply your energy needs. Less than that and you loose weight. More than that, you store fat. This isn't to say that good nutrition isn't very important. You need to eat well to supply vitamins and nutrients your body needs as building blocks. But, from a fat storage point of view, it's just about calories.

If you want to further educate yourself about this, I can ask my husband to provide the resources he used when studying HFCS. 

I would enjoy seeing quality scientific resources, please post or PM me.

Here are two good resources on HFCS -
http://sweetsurprise.com/   (Debunks some of the confusion around HFCS)

"Sugar, The Bitter Truth"

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

In the latter, Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, essentially points the finger at all sugary foods and says there's nothing special about HFCS.

I enjoy Twinkies on rare occasions! But usually only after a 50 mile bike ride or at the end of a century. After burning 5000 calories in full day workout, I feel fine about throwing some junk food in to make up that deficit! 

Quote from: BrianM on March 20, 2013, 14:01

http://sweetsurprise.com/   (Debunks some of the confusion around HFCS)

Seriously ? That first link is to a site run by the Corn Refiners Association.

They link to high quality references. Like I said, I used to think HCFS was the problem too, but the more I looked into it, and based decisions on the best science out there, I changed my mind and realized people just eat too much junk in general. It doesn't matter if your Big Gulp is sweetened with sugar or HFCS, drink water if you want to be healthy.

I bought some Twinkies when it was announced that they were ceasing production. Just had a weird idea that my kid should try a Twinkie once in his life before they are no longer around. He actually wasn't a fan. Probably the only kid in the world who doesn't like a Twinkie.

FYI, they also never lasted years. Shelf life on Twinkies has always been around a month. Just an urban legend that they last much longer.

If anyone was holding onto a box of them, I suspect that by now they're green.

Quote from: lisafx on March 20, 2013, 11:58

You need to do more research Brian.

That is sounding really fringe. Your body doesn't look at the ingredients you ingest and file it into different locations.

uh, i'm no scientist but I am a woman and I'm pretty sure eostrogen gets stored in certain locations (like in our tummy and bum fat cells, which is what makes some of us so delightfully curvy)

when my mum went through menopause she bored me to death educated me with her research on eostrogen rich foods to try to combat the sudden losses.

I thought the concept of "low GI" also supports the notion that your body does indeed look at the ingredients you ingest and deals with it in a particular manner.

There was a pretty controversial book published here a few years ago called Sweet Poison (written by a lawyer of all people) that has jumped on the "sugar is evil" bandwagon. Just adding that into the pile of references.

Quote from: BrianM on March 20, 2013, 14:01

Here are two good resources on HFCS -
http://sweetsurprise.com/   (Debunks some of the confusion around HFCS)

LOL!  Sweetsurprise.com.  The official website for the corn sweetener industry.  Classic.  I'm sure your PHD wife will tell you that you have to look beyond industry funded websites for accurate info.  (Incidentally, does your wife work for the corn refiners industry, or is she associated with it?) 

She doesn't tell me that at all Lisa. In fact, she says forget the source, DISPUTE THE SCIENCE! I agree, a corn lobby funded site will pull the most supportive links together, but they are, in fact, referencing high quality sources like the CDC, American Diabetes Association, the American Medical Association, etc. If you read their FAQs, they link to a lot of very good data from sources that are not biased.

One that jumped out at me was the graph in the FAQ question "Does High Fructose Corn Syrup Cause Diabetes?" It shows consumption of sugar and HFCS has grown from 70 pounds per year in 1970 to 90 pounds per year in 2000. 90 pounds of sugar and corn syrup per person per year! That is not a healthy diet and that's probably part of the obesity problem (combined with less exercise.) The same graph shows obesity and diabetes rates. The diabetes trend on the graph appears to grow, with some lag, somewhat similarly to the total sweetener consumption (sugar + HFSC). The diabetes trend line does not mirror HFCS alone very well.

My wife doesn't work for corn refiners at all, nor does she specialize in nutrition or HFCS. She's just one hell of a scientist, very smart, great at interpreting data, and views things impersonally to let facts shape her decisions. She works in food safety, improving supply chains to keep populations safer from outbreaks. But, I get it, food scientists are evil.  :-/

I can tell you, we try to eat very healthy. Lots of fruits and vegetables and we're members of our local CSA in the summertime. We try to instill good eating habits in our young daughter. At the same time, aware of the hubbub around HFCS, it's just not a concern in our household. We try to limit junk food without much care for whether it's sugar based or HFCS based.

The first two links you provided talked a lot about fructose consumption, less specifically about HFCS. Fructose is in fruit and in table sugar. I don't think it's disputed that diets loaded with sugar are unhealthy or likely to lead to obesity which leads to diabetes. What is harder to find would be a study that says you can eat all the sugar you want, as long as you avoid HFCS, and you'll be thin and a picture of health.

I've got bigger "fish to fry"   back to stock work...