It's Time for Twinkies to Die

Hostess' bankruptcy filing probably won't mean the death of the Twinkie—rather, a restructuring of the company—but even if it did, it would be a death we should celebrate, writes Mark Bittman in the New York Times. The food columnist admits he ate his fair share of Twinkies as a kid in the '60s, when no one questioned the "mysteriously moist" treat with its "'creamy'—not 'cream,' of course—filling" and 39 ingredients. Of course, those were also the days when doctors had only recently stopped endorsing cigarettes, and "few people could yet conceive of the government lying to us or allowing food manufacturers to do us any harm."

But times changed, and Hostess failed to change with them. The company "never even pretended to provide 'healthier' snacks," and lost market share when parents started switching to still-unhealthy, but seemingly healthier snacks like granola bars. Regardless of how it emerges from bankruptcy, "the days when Hostess ruled the 3pm snack world as well as the lunchtime-sandwich world are over," Bittman writes, and that's a good thing. "The companies that deserve to survive are the ones that produce things we need and provide gainful employment. We could probably manage without those that do neither, and Hostess, which produces junk and is about to 'restructure' its relationship to its employees, may well be one of them." Click to read the full column, or here for Wendy Williams' campaign to save the Twinkie. (More Hostess stories.)