The Rise And Fall Of America's Favorite Junk Foods | Rise and Fall | Insider Business

I always thought that Twinkies were good tasting because I saw them always in movies. I finally tested Twinkies on my US trip. Holy hell, it was just horrible! The same was true on most other processed food products. This made me appreciate most of my local food products.

Twinkies, Ring Dings, Devil Dogs all used to be creme filled. Now Twinkies' white filling isn't made up of cream but a sugar and vegetable shortening mix that has been blended with corn syrup, water, salt, and cellulose gum. Shortening, by definition, is any fat that is solid at room temperature and used in baking. This actually includes a few things that you may have thought were definitely not shortening before–like lard, and margarine, and hydrogenated vegetable oils, for instance. Now you know why they aren't as popular. Creme filling to doctored lard, to be blunt it doesn't taste the same not even close.

I had vanilla roll cake in Japan yesterday. It was so good...like a gourmet twinkie. Not like anything twinkies are today,closer to a 70s twinkie. It was amazing.

Its great to see more, and more people moving away from junk food. If they knew how many junk food businesses held shares in the pharma industry no one would ever buy it again. They earn on both ends! They make you sick, and then they try to cure you.

People educated themselves and learned about processed crap thats what happened

“What went wrong, and can they recover” Should they recover? 😂

My dad was a truck mechanic for Hostess back in the 70's. Everytime a truck broke down he would go out to repair it and the driver would give him a case of twinkies. We gave them to anyone that wanted them!

I remember when the reformulated Hostess snack cake line hit shelves again in 2013. The products are terrible compared to what they used to be. They're smaller, more chemical-tasting, blander, and made with taste-ably cheaper ingredients. I used to LOVE Ding Dongs, but the "new" version is tiny, wrapped in plastic instead of foil, has cake that's identical to the chocolate cake in their Cupcakes instead of a denser cake, a tiny jot of frothy cream in the middle, and has the world's thinnest chocolate coating that tastes way too sweet instead of the thick, darker outer shell they used to have. They likely could've fixed most of Hostess's problems just by fixing the supply chain and automating a lot of the manufacturing, but by cheaping out on every step for the sake of the bottom line they ruined what they had. Now instead of buying an occasional box I buy zero boxes.

A friend’s cat loved cheese. But she wouldn’t touch a piece of a Kraft Single…

As with many products these products seem to start with real ingredients like the twinkie with banana cream filling which probably had whole milk. But once you start selling to the masses and not just your neighbors you cut all good things out. Now their products have barely anything real in them to cut costs. And like the video states delivery is a huge cost as well so that's another thing that eats up the budget leaving you with a piece of sugar wrapped in plastic essentially. They've stripped all nutrients from their items and its all artificial so that they can make more. Nothing but greed.

As a kid, my mom was very strict about us not getting junk food cakes like snowballs, Dingdongs, etc. Every once in a while, though, she’d let us get one as a treat if we needed a sack lunch for a school field trip. I remember loving them. I tried one as an adult and was completely underwhelmed. What was I thinking? lol

i find that all these "foods" don't taste the same as they once did. a great example is coca-cola, the closest you'll get to that O.G taste is Mexican coke in a glass bottle made with cane sugar not corn syrup they've substituted one ingredient for a cheaper variant, thinking people wouldn't notice, and while they boost their profits for a short time their dedicated customers move on to something else

I think it is a shame and a disaster these food processing companies DIDN’T go out of business. The more of them that go bankrupt, the healthier Americans and America will be…

When I was a child and my father would visit America, when he came back to Jamaica he would bring Twinkies, bubba gum and Pringles. Those are the days I remember most.

As a kid I loved all this crap. As an adult, trying them again after so many years….it ruined what I remember from my childhood. As much as processed foods disgust me, I still crave these horrible treats when I’m feeling nostalgic. It’s a shame that our government is so wrapped up in taking money and power, that they’re in bed with the industries (medical, pharmaceutical, insurance, veterinary, meat, dairy, etc.) that they push for the citizens and pets to consume foods and beverages that are wholly unhealthy.

Last year I went on a 2 week holiday to the US & Canada, and found myself making sure to not eat too much, because all the food I did have was so powerful especially in the US, it made me glad that here in the Netherlands and EU our food isn’t too artificial and less sugary

Lets be real the ad against healthy food wasn't targeted at children. They dont care about ads. It was targeted at the parents of picky children.

Another casualty of the Hostess bankruptcy was the longtime chain of Hostess Thrift Stores where you could buy expired or close to expired Hostess products (but still tasted fine) for dirt cheap. Now even "fresh" Hostess products don't taste good.

I'm European, and always wanted to try Twinkies because they were so ubiquitous in American media. Finally a store close to me started selling them... Literally one of the worst snacks I've tried. I'm not a picky eater, and usually eat things I don't like just so it doesn't go to waste, but I was only able to eat 2 of them and then gave up and threw the rest in the trash... Not only is the taste bad, but the consistency is horrible as well. The cake part was really dry, and the cream part coated my mouth in what felt like margerine or something.

Another fun fact: Kraft makes lunchables in the same building that used to make cool whip and pudding pops, and is in the same town as Barilla noodles and is only a couple miles away from Leroy, NY where the Jello factory is and the next town is the old factory that made Fisher-price toys❤