Stuff You Should Know - How Twinkies Work

Episode Date: July 9, 2009

Twinkies have a reputation for being so processed that they can last for years and years, but they're not as hardy as you'd expect. Uncover the sweet story of Twinkies in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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to wander. Plan your next dining adventure at visitmississippi.org slash dining. Mississippi, Wanderers, Welcome. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to arguably the most important podcast Chuck Bryant and I will ever record. I'm Josh Clark. This is Stuff You Should Know and, brother, I am jacked up. Me three. You ready? Yeah, I'm speaking for Jerry since she's the Marcel Marceau of our group. Yeah, she always wears the white gloves. It's weird. I hate mimes. I actually don't hate mimes, it's just a cliche to say you hate mimes. Mimes are cool. It says who? That mimes are cool?

Yeah, I just said it, jerk. Chuck and I have clearly been eating far too many twinkies in preparation of this. Yes, we have. Yeah. Chuck, yes. What do you know about the twinkie? Let's talk about twinkies. Let's talk about twinkies. Everyone knows that twinkie is a popular junk food snack cake. Yes. Legendary junk food snack cake, I would say. I would say legendary as well. I'm glad we're doing something light like this. Yeah, light and spongy. Yeah, very nice. Thanks. And creamy. Yeah. Cream filled. Chuck, how long is a twinkie? A twinkie is four inches long. How wide is a twinkie? An inch and a half. Did you know that originally it was first invented? It was made with banana cream filling? Indeed. Let's get into this, buddy. Okay,

those are just some teasers. All right, so the twinkie was first invented in the 1930s. Yes, continental bakeries. Yeah, the vice president of continental bakeries, which is already doing business as hostess, which we know and love as the maker of twinkies, and what I consider to be the greatest snack food of all time, the crumb cake. Oh, really? You a fan? Oh, my God. I like the nutty bar, the little Debbie nutty bars. We're talking hostess here, buddy. Okay. Yeah. They will assassinate you. What are those? They're like Mattel. Pink balls. What are those? Snowballs. Chucks on a tirade. All right, so back in 1930, the vice president of continental bakeries, a guy named James, what is it? James Dewar. James Dewar. Not a Scotch maker. His brother

could have been. Sure. He decided that the company's idle machinery that was used to make strawberry filled little shortbread fingers was the brand name, could be put to better use. Right. Well, the machines were idle because it was seasonal. Yeah. Seasonal because strawberries only grow certain times of the year. Right. So the rest of the year, they would just sit there. Sure. And this bug Dewar, and he decided to do something about it. So he came up with a little yellow cake filled with creamy filling. Right. Creamy frosting, if you were, that could be made year round. And apparently on his way to a marketing meeting for this snack cake, he passed a billboard for twinkle toes shoes, which I got to tell you, I would never buy shoes called twinkle toes shoes.

Oh, sure. You would. You'd dream sailor. Totally would. And that was it. He had the name right there and Twinkies were born. Yeah. There's always a cute story behind names like that. Anytime the words twinkle and toes are put together, it's a cute story. Sure. Yeah. So Twinkies were born. And as I said, they were made with banana cream filling. Right. For a while. Yeah. Until World War II. Yeah. I didn't this. I thought this is pretty interesting. They quit doing that because there was a shortfall of bananas during the war. Yeah. I had no idea. No, I can see rubber and, and, you know, iron, steel. Yeah, I know. Men. Maybe some of the banana bombs we were dropping. Confetti missiles. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

that they replaced the banana with vanilla frosting, right? And it stuck. Yeah. It definitely stuck. Although, um, every once in a while, Hostess released the banana flavored Twinkie in like a limited run. And every time they did, they noticed sales increased 20%, which is pretty substantial. And now it's permanent as of 2007. It is a permanent picture. Yeah. It's good. Let's talk about the early Twinkie and the pure goodness that was the early Twinkie. Yeah. It was in the early days, Josh, it was made with eggs, milk, butter, as you would expect it to be. Because it was cake. Right. And it had a shelf life. The problem there was it had a shelf life of what, like two days? Two days. So the salesman had to rotate the stock every two days.

And that was cool because it tasted good. But Dewer said, you know, this isn't, I'm not making as much money as I could. Chuck, can you imagine how divine a Twinkie made with like real butter and milk and eggs would be? It's called, it's called cake. Well, yeah, but cake with like a real vanilla frosting in that shape too. Yeah. That would be great. I would love to, for someone to make and send me a real original Twinkie. Sure. That would be awesome. Yeah. I just zoned out for a second thinking about that. I know. Seriously. You just glazed over. Okay. So these days it's actually up to 39 ingredients and most of them come out of labs, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, there's a lot of chemicals going on. You've got like yellow number

five. There's still sugar in it. Plenty of sugar. Yeah. Of course, our old friend. Boo. And there's also bleached wheat flour. Bleached wheat flour. I think sugar and flour are the two biggest ingredients in it, right? Right. Monoglycerides and diglycerides have replaced the eggs. Yeah, which act as emulsifiers. Emulsifiers. They stabilize the cake batter and enhance the flavor apparently. Yeah. For the filling, they use to achieve the same in polysorbate 60, which does much. It emulsifies the frosting. Same thing. Yeah. And there's hydrogenated shortening instead of butter. Yeah. Although there is artificial butter flavor and artificial vanilla flavor and both of those are actually made from petroleum. I know. Yeah. When I read

that, I was a little taken aback to be honest. Yeah. I'm not a big, I mean, do we Twinkies now anymore? Well, you know, I don't eat at all, but I do occasionally enjoy a Twinkie for sure. I haven't had a Twinkie in a long time. Dude, you treat yourself. And I'm not opposed. I mean, I'll down the Ben and Jerry's and I'm not opposed to eating fattening goodness. I know. I think part of it is Twinkies are associated with youth. Yeah, I'd agree with that. I'm telling you, go back and eat a Twinkie. Yeah. You'll love yourself. I will. You know, my mom used to make strawberry shortcake with Twinkies. Nice. Yeah. It's a good move. I'll bet. Very nice 70s dessert too. Yeah. You know, before the key party, load the kids up with the Twinkie strawberry shortcake.

Apparently, she's not the only one to experiment with Twinkies. I have a Twinkies cookbook at home, actually. Oh, really? There's sorts of crazy stuff in there. Yeah. You should have brought that in. I should have. I don't have the kind of foresight that you expect me to. Have you had the deep fried Twinkie? I used to make them and sell them at this beer festival last couple of years. Oh, dude, I can make a fried Twinkie like you would not believe. How do you do that? It's incredibly simple. So you have like a vat of oil, I think peanut oil, maybe peanut oil is the best. It's the worst for you, but it tastes the best. And you just take like pancake batter or fried batter, right? And you make the batter up, batter up, and you just dip the Twinkie in the batter,

throw it in the deep fryer until it turns a golden brown. I just throw it in there. Wow, man, that sounds good. Pull it out, throw some powdered sugar on there. Oh my God. So sort of like you'll see God. It's like a funnel cake. Turbo funnel cake is what it really is. No, not at all. Not at all. No, it's like it's like a funnel cake with a Twinkie inside. Oh, well, there it is. It's the greatest thing you'll ever have. And I can make a good fried Oreo too. Really? Uh-huh. You never cook for me. I will sometime. You'll have to come over. We'll shave some years off our life, seriously. Uh, excuse me. Should we talk about the process of how they make it in the factory? It's kind of cool. A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in

Mississippi with family friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo, and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, wanderers welcome. Has your household been hit with COVID-19? Learn about a research study from the comfort of home. We are looking at ways to help people with COVID-19 feel better faster. Learn more at active6study.org slash radio. That's activ6study.org slash radio. Yeah. So Josh, we're in the Twinkie factory. This is Jerry's big chance to add some sound to that. Okay. We're in the, we're in the Twinkie factory. You look good in a hair net, by the way. I appreciate that. What they do is they have these metal pans in the shape of Twinkie shape molds.

Upside down, Twinkies are baked up what you would consider upside down. The golden brown bottom is actually the top side, which is like it's brown. There's a lot, I actually used to hear that they weren't in fact baked brown and that was added color. Not true. They are baked brown on the bottom indeed. Yeah. You talked to the widow of James Dewar about that, didn't you? I did. I spoke to her personally. So they throw the batter in there. It's baked at a cool 350 Fahrenheit for nine to 12 minutes. Cool 350? Cool 350. The, after, after it cools, they, you know, the famous three holes in the bottom of the Twinkie, those are from the manufacturing process. They're cream filling injectors. Yeah. They stick those three things in there and squirt in the cream, which

I wish they'd just squirt that in my mouth. So you just want to lay down on the conveyor belt and go down the Twinkie line, have that stuff squirted in your mouth? Straight from the, the tri injection? Yeah. That sounds good. It does. So that's pretty much it, man. They seal it air tight in the package and apparently the sealing process is really where the preservation comes in. Right. Because Chuck, if there's anything that everyone agrees on with Twinkies, it's that they will last indefinitely. Not true. No, it isn't. And actually there's only one ingredient in the Twinkie that's added specifically to preserve it. And that's sorbic acid, right? There are, there are some preservative properties of some of the other ingredients, but ultimately there's

only one added ingredient that's meant to preserve it. And it's actually, like you said, the airtight package that makes a Twinkie last. Yeah. And there are all sorts of urban myths about the, the one I like best is that, that they're still selling the original run of Twinkies. Yeah. Which actually is, is clearly a lie because they would be banana flavored. Yeah, true. But the hostess company says that Twinkies have a shelf life of 25 days. Yeah. Not 25 years, no, some say. No, but yeah, there, there have been some experiments that indicate to the contrary. Right. There was actually these kids who very recently, this last school year out in, what is it, Wallowa County, Oregon, two little kids, Logan Waldron and CJ Horn. We're talking about

whether or not Twinkies could last indefinitely, how long they could last. And they have a very encouraging bus driver who I must say based on this picture is the arguably the best looking and most stylish bus driver on the planet. And her name is Lisa Morse. And she said, you know what, why don't you guys do a scientific experiment that that's a bus driver? I know. It's quite a babe. I know. I must say. I know. She encouraged them to, to, to conduct their own experiment. So they put a double pack, my favorite kind of Twinkies, in a mayonnaise jar, closed it and put it in a rock crib, which I'm not sure what that is. Right. But they basically buried it. And the kids were planning on doing it until they were 18. Oh, really? But they just, you know,

they're like nine. Yeah, so they're attention span. Exactly. But she kept encouraging them to wait at least until the end of the school year. And they did. So nine months later, they popped it open, ate the Twinkies, one each. Were they fine? They both said they were fine. One kid said he got a bellyache from it. The other kid said he was fine. So they are now encouraging teachers around the country, science teachers to conduct similar experiments. But yeah, so as far as these two are concerned, a Twinkies shelf life is at least nine months greater than 25 days. Yeah. Well, I know you just mentioned the double pack. I know I like the double pack because there's two of them. No, because of the little cardboard in there. And you can scrape the little cakey goodness off

the cardboard and eat it. I just lick it off the cardboard. It's like the cheese paper on a cheese burger. Do you really eat all that stuff? Oh, dude, who doesn't take the paper from a McDonald's cheeseburger and scrape the cheese off of it and eat it? People who want to live? Oh, shut up. You've had McDonald's in your day, pal. Twinkie man. Twinkie the kid. Let's talk about Twinkie the kid. I just totally shocked you with that. Yeah, I had a Twinkie the kid t-shirt when I was 13 or 14. Oh my God, I killed for one of those. It was awesome. I wish I still had it. Yeah, I'm sure they're still out there. Yeah, I wonder why Twinkie the kid. It's famous. If you've never seen it, and I'm sure everyone has. It was a cowboy motif. You had a lasso and a hat and boots. Yeah,

and I saw a dude online today that had a Twinkie the kid tattoo. That's a pretty cool tattoo, my friend. Yeah. That definitely beats Taz or a dolphin or a turtle. Sunburst. Barbed wire around your arm. Good night. Yeah, so Twinkie the kid, cool tattoo. Yeah. Even cooler t-shirt. I remember seeing Twinkie the kid ads in between acts of Thundar the Barbarian. Right. And Hanka for a hunk of cheese. Remember that? What was that? Jerry Doe House Rock? No, it was like the nutrition people. Yeah, exactly. I got a Hanka for a hunk of pocketful of something. Yeah, because a hunk of cheese is really healthy for you. That was clearly the dairy association. Yeah. So Chuck, let's talk about Twinkies in pop culture. Yeah, this is good stuff. Well,

no, not pop culture, real culture. Yeah, history. Yeah, my friend. Have you heard of Twinkie Gate? Yeah, go ahead and break that one down. That's good. So there was a guy who was 71 back in 1985, was running for a place on the Minneapolis City Council. His name was George Belair. And he was actually indicted for bribery. Yeah. Because at a, I guess a candidate for him, he was the lone candidate for it. I guess he hosted it. He provided. He provided coffee, Kool-Aid and Twinkies for these senior groups that were there. Right. And he was indicted for bribery, trying to bribe the constituency. They didn't call it Kool-Aid Gate. No. And I was thinking about that too. There, I think Kool-Aid had its run one pop with Jonestown. Oh, sure. Yeah, well,

forever being shriined with, I mean, think about drinking the Kool-Aid. That's in the lexicon now. Drink the Kool-Aid. Definitely. It's got its own thing. Sure. Twinkies are much more versatile. Sure. You know, it's such an ironic twist to crime. It is. You know, but that's not the only crime that they've been associated with. Well, can I cover this one, please? In 1979, Dan White of San Francisco famously shot and killed Harvey Milk, who was, was he a city councilman? He was, and a supervisor. And the first, yeah, supervisor. The first openly homosexual public office holder in the country was Harvey Milk. And the mayor also got capped too. Mayor also got capped. And Dan White is who did the deed. And the famous Twinkie defense was used in his case because

they said he was under severe depression at the time. And as evidence, they used the fact that he, uncharacteristically, was wolfing down Twinkies in junk food. Junk food. Apparently, Twinkies was mentioned. It does show up in the, in the court transcripts, but it was one witness who used it in passing. And actually Ding Dongs and Ho Ho's were mentioned way more. But yeah, the guy was apparently homicidal or depression brought on by a poor diet. Yeah. And it actually worked rather than first, this was premeditated murder. Oh yeah. He got manslaughter and eight years. That was it. Yep. And that the media ran with it and the Twinkie defense, but again, why not the Ding Dong defense? It's even funnier. Ding Dong, the Ho Ho defense. Sure. That would be

confused with Santa Claus probably. You know why? Because Twinkies are an American icon. Absolutely. You know who says so? Me and you. And former president Bill the Lady Killer Clinton. Really? Yeah. He actually selected a Twinkie to be placed in the Millennium Time Capsule in 1999, alongside the complete works of Louis Armstrong. Nice. The works of William Faulkner, the state flag of Hawaii. There's a Twinkie in there too. So in a hundred years, people will really be able to find out just how long the shelf life is for Twinkies. How about half a Twinkie? Nice. That was my Clinton. That was perfect. Yeah. You got the thumb out, your teeth. So that is the Twinkie defense and Harvey Melvies. No, that was the Millennium capsule.

Oh yeah. Sorry. We've moved on. The Millennium Falcon. Thanks for coming, Chuck. Should we talk about the TWINKIES project? Yeah. I can't wait. Pretty cool. These guys, and this is the Rice University, right? Yeah. Rice University in 1995. So it was kind of a while ago. These students as college students are so fun. It was called the Test with Inorganic Noxious Cakes with a K in Extreme Situations, which spells out Twinkies. And let's go over a couple of things that they did with Twinkies. You tell them yours first. It's been said that a day of traveling will bring a basket full of learning. Fill your basket to the brim in Mississippi with family friendly experiences like the new Mississippi Aquarium, the recently expanded Hattiesburg Zoo,

the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo, and sports and literary attractions too. Expand your sense of wander today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi. Wanderers, welcome. COVID-19 research has come a long way, but there's still more to understand about how to treat COVID-19 effectively. The Active Six Study is researching existing medications to find out if they may help people with COVID feel better and get back to the things they love faster. The best part? It can all be done from the comfort of home. We'll send medications to your door, and you'll take surveys completely online. Learn more at activesixstudy.org slash radio. That's activ6study.org slash radio. Okay, let me, I want to do the water test. What they wanted to do

was see what happened when you put a Twinkie in water. Straightforward enough. Let's sit there. And they said this, and this is on their website. As soon as the Twinkie was placed in the water, it swelled to approximately twice its normal size. A quick tactile observation indicated that the Twinkie immediately began to lose its structural integrity. The color of the Twinkie paled to an off-white color while the water below the Twinkie turned a dark yellow-brown while the water above the Twinkie remained clear, which is interesting. And they showed pictures. So basically, they left it in there for 48 hours. They said the creamy filling somehow oozed out of the center and collected on the surface of the water. And basically, it turned into a lump of goo by the

end of it. So what was their conclusion? The conclusion, actually, I don't have the observation. I think the observation was it turned into a lumpy goo of mess in the water. Gotcha. You got my other favorite one. My second favorite. Dropping off the building. Did you print that out? No, you do that one. I got another one. Okay. Yeah, they did the gravity test on two Twinkies. Yeah, to find out whether or not Twinkies were subject to gravity. I think they would float up when that went cool. Yeah. So they released Twinkies off the sixth floor. And I like the picture of the Twinkie circle and circle drop. And they said that upon impact, there was a loud splut sound, a small crack opened on one side of the Twinkie. There was no noticeable change in

the control. So they dropped the Twinkie again. The same splut sound was heard. Then they dropped the same Twinkie. Yeah. Yeah. And this is that love this line, the fissure in the side of the Twinkie widened again, no noticeable change. And basically the Twinkie and the control Twinkie didn't really completely split open. It just kind of some of this stuff oozed out. Nice. But they are affected by gravity. I did have the conclusion in this one. However, the reaction on impact is much smaller than expected. And they maintain maintain a good deal of structural integrity from such a lofty fall. Yeah, six stories. Yeah, it's not bad. My favorite actually was that they wanted to find out whether Twinkies were sentient or not.

And they decided to run this test last because they had killed a lot of Twinkies as they put it. And they didn't want to know that they were sentient while they were dropping them off six, you know, story buildings or drowning them. So they actually administered the Turing test, which is normally used to test whether or not a computer is developed in artificial intelligence, right? If you put a person and a computer in another room or whatever, and you direct questions to both of them simultaneously and both answer, if you can't tell the difference, then the computer is developed artificial intelligence. So they conducted a Turing test on a sophomore at the college and a Twinkie. And they put them behind a sheet so you couldn't

see who was who. And they asked certain questions like they asked to the Twinkie and the student. Yes. Okay. So question one was, what would you describe as the purpose of your existence? And subject B, which was the guy, the answer was to woo women. Okay. And subject A, in parentheses, no answer. Okay. And it just kind of goes on like that. Like, they wanted to know how the both of them felt about their mother. Right. They did some free association. Like the word health prompted the answer sex for free association from subject B. The word spam prompted no answer from subject A and so on. So they determined that Twinkies are not in fact sentient. They do not have intelligence. That is a relief. Wouldn't that be unnerving?

Yeah. Yeah. As a vegetarian, I think, or a vegan, you would have to stop eating Twinkies. Oh, I'm not a vegan. No, of course not. Okay. You're a beef eater. Yeah, I am. So Chuck, most Twinkies ever eaten by a person. You want to guess who it is? Jerry, our producer. She's close. Okay. She's very close. Actually, there is a guy who is 89. And I believe he lives in Indiana. And his name is Lewis Browning. He's been eating Twinkie a day since 1941. Really? He's up to 20,000. Wow. Dwarfed by the creator of the Twinkie, James Dewar. Oh, really? He lived to be 88. And he ate an estimated 40,000 Twinkies in his lifetime. Wow. Yep. Not bad. Not bad at all. So hats off to both of those men. And I actually,

I was thinking maybe I should start eating a Twinkie a day and see what happens. You know what they say, Josh, a Twinkie a day keeps a doctor away. That's not true. That's not true. Because they're really not great for you. But I think if you, in anything in moderation, you don't go nuts with the Twinkies, you're probably be all right. But there's Chuck's final thought on Twinkies, which means Twinkies are done. Right? I'm done. Okay. I'm done too. So we'll be done with Twinkies now. I'm really actually, I want to go eat a Twinkie. Yeah, we should have brought some up here. Agreed. I told you to and you're too cheap to go buy them for us. I could have expensed it too. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe afterward. Yeah, sure. Okay. So Chuck, Twinkies

is done, which means it's listener mail time. Josh, I'm going to call this listener mail from Amsterdam. All right. One of my favorite places, as you know. I do know. This comes from Robin in Portland, Oregon. And Robin was recently in Amsterdam. Actually, the funny thing is, Robin's friend Steph, Stephanie wrote in and told us the story and said, you know, my friend Robin's to chicken to write in for some reason. Weird. And I said, you know what, tell Robin to write in. She'll make listener mail the story. Chuck delivers on his promises. So she did. I was recently in Amsterdam for a combination work holiday trip staying in a fabulous top floor apartment. I took a break from work one day and wanted to the patio for some fresh air. And I

realized I closed the patio door and locked myself out and stuck no phone, no keys, no jacket, no way down. And it was pouring down rain. Awesome. The neighbors heard my cries for help. They were able to log into my email account, find local apartment contacts, phone number and throw me their cell phone to make the call. Luckily, the contact had a spare key and was able to let her out in five hours after she gets off work. So I hunkered down in a small corner of the patio. Apparently she had a little space like a two foot by two foot space where she wasn't getting rained on for five hours waiting to be rescued. And did I mentioned that by stroke of luck, I had my iPod with me and it just downloaded several months worth of stuff you should know. Silver lining

exclamation. All caps. In between learning all about face transplants, exploding legs, deja vu, flirting, rigging mornus. I spent time stretching, doing jumping jacks, weeding the plants and taking short naps. It was one of the best five hours spent doing absolutely nothing. Rarely do I take a step back and just have the time to do that. Josh and Chuck, you both keep me informed, kept me informed, entertained, insane. And thanks to our day together, I was able to flex my intellectual muscle by holding my own on who owns the ocean debate with other international travelers. So she says her friend Steph turned us on to turn her on to the show. And thanks a lot. Keep up the good work. And she has a loyal listener. So she was stuck out on a porch in Amsterdam and

we got her through. That's excellent. Pretty cool. Excellent. What's her name? Pretty cool. Robin of Portland, Oregon. Robin. All right. Thanks for writing in, Robin. And if anyone else out there wants to share your story about an interventionist God forcing you into a situation where you have to listen to us, you can send us that in an email to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi with family-friendly places like

the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo, and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi. Wanderers welcome. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. I'm walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.