and then ran it into the ground and blamed their workers.

they are based here in Portland so we hit the outlet shop every few weeks

but those were messy

chocolate because it was too waxy. but:

Does anyone who eats them actually believe they are anything but crap? I prefer a local bakery where baked goods are actually baked and can't survive nuclear holocaust.

No one in their right mind will miss Twinkies.

upscale foods. what is the latest these days? gluten-free bread or some such crap? free range goat yogurt?

hard to keep up with "healthy"

it's a moving target because it's about market driven corporate research and status anxiety

I believe the gluten free bread is about some kind of allergy or intolerance so I'm not sure why you pick that out. No one should eat processed flour. There's nothing "moving" about that or about lard.

Actually if you're going to eat bread it should be sprouted wheat. I am not a health nut by any means but I did buy the sprouted wheat and I like it. Zero preservatives so you have to eat it frozen.

Twinkies are gross. I'm certainly not going to miss them.

I grew up on the poor side of middle-class and I'm just middle, middle-class now and I think I'd rather eat the sprouted wheat bread over a Twinkie, any day.

Subsidies on less nutritious or ecologically sustainable agricultural products is also a class thing. Ask unemployed, indigenous corn farmers in Mexico.

Deflated prices for luxury items such as sugar and chocolate, based on exploitative labor practices, is also a class thing. Ask child slaves on cocoa plantations in the Cote d'Ivoire.

People should not be held in contempt for their preferences or food choices IMO. But calling attention to the structures that enforce those choices, and the consequences of those choices on health, human rights, and ecology, is entirely appropriate.

I eat that way, and I am definitely not rich, and no even middle class.

Lots of so-called uber rednecks go to Starbucks, lots of "hippies" and hipsters don't.

thus formerly upper-class habits, such as smoking...come to be the province of the absolutely impoverished.

food 'faddism' is a class-based phenomenon.

I eat real food and it doesn't need to be anything fancy.

Same as ever.

It's a little silly to suggest that Twinkie's are the wheat bread of the working class. If you enjoy it more than your health, fine-- but let's not pretend it's anything but garbage.

Emu meatballs? Give me a break!

And why do chefs seem to think we need to kill and eat anything that moves? FGS leave the poor emus alone!

could be written about the middle-upper-middle class fetishization of food as a marker of status anxiety.

I suspect they use a crisco type product. I agree about not missing them. That stuff s foul.

It doesn't fit the narrative.

I'm not fat, and I'm a little bummed because every now and then I want one, and when I want one I want one, but I'm certain some other company will buy the trademark and they'll be back on the shelf again. A smart CEO will make sure that when they go back into the stores they'll be made and advertised as "New and Improved and More Healthy!". Or something like that...

The anti-Bush war peace marches in my town were well attended by every single kind of person you can imagine: every ethnicity, age, and manner of dress. Grandmas. WW II veterans. Young moms pushing baby carriages. Dads holding their kids' hands.

Who got their pictures on the 5pm news most often? (almost exclusively)

You guessed it: the very few scruffy guys in the tie-dye T-shirts. Narrative: pay no attention to those hippie retreads from the time-warp.

The overweight people fit the media narrative about Twinkies.

Twinkies are comfort food associated with deepest childhood by massive numbers of people of all sizes. The world is a changing and uncertain place. What's next on the deprivation list? Mac and cheese? Of course they're upset.

Hekate
Who actually doesn't like Twinkies but sympathizes

I was an incredibly picky eater as a child and had to have every single thing plain. As far as candy bars went, I wouldn't even eat a Snickers because it had peanuts in it. I would insist on a Milky Way bar instead.

I guess about the time I turned 12 or 13, I began to develop a more mature palette and can probably trace some comfort foods back to my teen years. But there's nothing comforting about what I ate when I was 6 or 7. Just incredibly bland food.

and not because of my teeth. While all the other kids ate their Twinkies and Frui piest, I ate carrots, celery, and raw potatoes. I like things that crunched, were cold, and juicy. The only sweets I ate were fresh fruits (cold and juicy!).

my pet peeve.

and they always put on the inarticulate stoner who can't string two words together or the raving lunatic talking about irrelevant crap instead of the many people who can discuss the issues clearly and concisely.

i swear to god some of those people they put on are plants.

it's the chocolate covered donuts and the creme filled chocolate cakes that I will miss.

Context is a funny thing, I guess.

If the point was not their weight, why mention it? That's like when my father tells a story and he mentions the skin color but the skin color has nothing to do with the story I always ask him why he mentioned it.

Unless he's denigrating them by slurs or implication, let him tell the story. Imo.

That's why I mentioned them.

you could understand why they were striking
It was the last attempt to keep their jobs in a form that was acceptable
the company had taken too much already too many times
the company had other financial issues besides payroll it seems..................

http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/11/16/fox-ignores-hostess-array-of-troubles-to-scapeg/191440
Fox News placed the blame for the planned liquidation of Hostess Brands squarely on a labor dispute with one of the company's unions. In fact, Hostess' unions had previously made significant concessions when the company went through a failed bankruptcy, and Hostess had many problems beyond labor costs, including an inability to adjust to changes in consumer tastes, which contributed to its bankruptcy.

Love that e card

I have probably had one of each of the following - Hostess Twinkies, Ding-Dongs, Chocolate Cupcakes, and a Fruit Pie or two. Mainly late at night after coming off an entertaining job and to see if they tasted as good as they did as a kid. They didn't. I feel bad for the workers, especially since I think it's the CEOs driving the company into the ground, but I would say that I won't miss the products. I would say that but last week when visiting Mom, she gave me a strawberry cupcake, and I really kind of liked it.

TlalocW

Has anyone ever thought comments like these being publicly accepted helps contribute to obesity lots of people become overweight and turn to eating to release the endorphins they need

The majority of people in the world seem to focus on easy targets to assure themselves of their own superiority. It's a sad fact of human nature that should not be condoned. If everyone would teach their children it is absolutely unacceptable, the practice might end. I think the discription of the people mourning the demise of Hostess as being fat was unnecessary. Maybe the poster used it as a shock factor to encourage controversy, who knows?

who deliberately interviewed fat people - one was very obese - about Twinkies. And they were crying. Tears.

Hence, the reason for my OP.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

I may have misunderstood your point in the post but I do find this hostess thing is being used by a lot of people to bash those that are overweight

This meme of justifying obesity is out of control.

eat this stuff. When I was a teen I ate that kind of thing, and I was thin. When I gained weight, I stopped eating candy and sweets like this.

It's metabolism more than anything. Fat people don't want to gain even more weight. Teens don't have to worry about it yet.

People eat garbage because it tastes good and it's easy. Let's not put the blame on everyone else.

wafer full of preservatives) and eat them one by one.

it's my favorite mass produced treat, because of the crispy layers.

I'm not surprised to hear this reaction. There is no joy in fatville right now.

Yeah a lot of my friends are trying to be psychic about it by saying, "Goodbye Hostess" either over the phone or facebook or both.

Republicans love to be self appointed soothsayers. They just scatter-shoot with 50 different sooth attempts, 49 which end up being wrong and twist the one they can twist by responding with, "Didn't I say that? I said that a long time ago! Been saying it all along!"

I'm guessing it's a self-delusion remedy for the ownage they received from last week.

American values. Why do some always have to jump to the worst conclusion about their fellow Americans. After all last week Americans gave Obama and the Democrats a mandate.

the subtext of a lot of our media is how disgusting the proles are. haven't you noticed?

i bet there were some fat people crying about the lost jobs, and some skinny people crying about the lost twinkies. but those things don't fit the ruling class narrative.

which incidentally teaches us to despise ourselves and others

I may have eaten some wonderbread in some sandwich decades ago.

I grew up in the sixties but my mother was a firm hater of all prepared foods and anything with additives. I don't think I had pizzeria pizza until I was 12. She never had soda in the house or cake mixes or store bought cookies or cakes or anything like that.

It got more space than the deficit talks and the Israel-Palestinian soon-to-be war put together. I didn't read it, so I don't know if there was a bunch of moaning and wailing involved.

Only that people are stocking up so they can sell it on ebay.

I used to eat Ho Hos and those creme-filled things, maybe 15 years ago.

I eat real meals now.

We ate Little Debbie's and some Tastykake and Entenmenn's (sic) for our junk stuff.

...and then they just started disappearing around the house, so they're now a rare treat. I confess I kind of got hooked on their Oatmeal Cremes, but I can't eat that kind of stuff anymore.

Entenmann's is the best. Every so often the coffee cakes and a nice pot of coffee is our Sunday breakfast.

Seriously, I can't remember eating a lot of Twinkies. My town used to have a Hostess bakery, and I went through it on a tour with either a school class or a Scout group. At the end, as I recall, the adults got a loaf of Wonder Bread (just out of the oven) and the kids got a pack of Twinkies. For all I know, that may have been the last time I had one. That bakery has been closed for decades.

So, when I do, I want something that tastes pretty good, like something from Starbucks or something similar.

Over twinkies?! We're screwn.

...running out the door of the local Hostess shop, as if they had just robbed Fort Knox or something.

If it was the last water on earth I could understand the mania. Its twinkies ffs! What the hell!

of a pea but boy will they be good.

Packing is going to be a problem, I'm thinking of putting them in gel caps for now. If they catch on they could become the size of a bean but no promises there.

Really though, if there is a demand someone will fill it.

I'm not thin, but they don't appeal to me any way. In fact, they are so unhealthy that I would think their going out of business is due to lack of demand.

that stuff is bad for you anyway.

They are so nutrition and food-free that they set you up for cravings, almost like an addiction. Seriously, eat one bite of a really well prepared desert cake (I'm thinking Concord Teacakes at the moment, from my more well-off days) and you will have fully satisfied your craving for comfort food, they are that rich.

Personally, I tried Hostess when I moved to NE and couldn't get the occasional TastyKake. Bleah! If you try them after having developed even a bit of 'flavor discrimination,' or after taking a lot of time off from them, you will not like them.

So I feel bad for the people who were fed them as kids, before they knew better, and who now fill up on them. They are among the worst of the worst junk. But I frankly think this is for the best, since they are setting themselves up for diabetes and all the health issues that go with it.

It's not a class issue. I grew up upper-middle class with Dr. Lawyers and Chiefs as my neighbors. But I was outside Philly and we had an alternative packaged cake treat in the form of the vastly superior TastyCakes which were made with real ingredients -- real chocolate, not artificial, real cream in the fillings, etc. And I only fell back on those when we ran out of fruit. As long as I can get enough apples, oranges, berries, etc. I don't crave junk.

Now I'm poor, making around $15K/year, and you couldn't pay me to eat a Hostess sorta-cake-like product. Really, the taste is disgusting.

I can't really afford junk, so very rarely indulge. When I do I end up regretting it anyway (the popcorn I got to celebrate the election broke a tooth!).

But just in case, if I really, really, really need comfort chocolate, I now make a quick and easy fudge, with brown sugar, baker's cocoa, either a little soy milk or half&half, and a bit of butter. A couple spoonfuls goes a million miles further than those Hostess things ever did, and costs considerably less to boot.

I feel bad for the people losing their jobs. The twinkie eaters will find a substitute. Tastycakes is going national and a much better quality treat. Still junk food, but less junky and more satisfying than Hostess.

I'd like to the see the union or some wealthy progressive buy Hostess, re-tool their menu bigtime and keep the bakers working, and on a product they can be proud of. Not one that contributes to obesity and diabetes.

them once and a great while. The quality isn't as good as it use to be.