By Marc Jampole
When I look back in fond nostalgia to childhood foods, I often
remember the Syrian and Eastern European delicacies that my mother made for us
at holidays. I can often almost taste the sweet fresh corn on the cob in the
summer and the tangy mussels that would come in a bucket. I sometimes conjure
steaming images of oversized potato knishes and hot pastrami sandwiches we used
to get at the neighborhood deli. Perhaps my most sentimental memories are
reserved for the turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes we had at Thanksgiving.
My food nostalgia never includes packaged baked goods like
Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs and Wonder Bread: They never were very good, and
certainly not as good as the corn rye we got at the bakery or the various
cakes and cookies my mother would make, sometimes without a package mix, or we
would occasionally buy in the bakery. I stopped eating Hostess-type packaged
junk sometime in my teens and never returned to them.
When I’m reminiscing about childhood foods with friends and
family, no one ever mentions these Hostess products either, even though,
regardless of their age, almost everyone I know ate them at one time or
another.
Nevertheless, it didn’t surprise me that the news that Hostess may
close down and that these baked concoctions of white flower, sugar or corn
syrup, food coloring and lots of preservatives instigated collective moaning
and hand-wringing by the mass media. Reporter after reporter have mourned the
loss of these products (and they are more product than food) as if we had
suddenly lost a part of our collective cultural heritage, akin to all the
monuments in Washington crumbling or misplacing all the episodes of “The Andy
Griffin Show” and “You Bet Your Life.”
Writer after writer has come forward with his or her own defense
of Twinkies and dirge for their possible demise. Here are some examples:
“Except that Twinkies
aren’t merely a snack cake, nor just junk food. They are iconic in ways that
transcend how Americans typically fetishize food. But ultimately, they fell
victim to the very fervor that created them.” (Associated
Press)
“When news broke Monday
that beloved treat-maker Hostess would not be forced to shut down after all,
Americans breathed a joint sigh of relief .” (Business Insider)
“If my insides are
particularly well-preserved, it’s not because of the steamed broccoli crowding
my dinner plate. No, it was the Twinkies. My longtime habit of consuming the
famously imperishable cakes — with a preservative no doubt passed down from
King Tut’s mummifiers — surely must have infused me with their elixir….Perhaps,
it’s for the best that I wouldn’t have one last bite. They couldn’t live up to
my gauzy memories of them. And maybe the Twinkie hoarders will pass them down
like heirlooms to their children.” (Chicago Tribune)
“I don’t want to live in a
world without Twinkies… The Austrians have their Strudel, the Italians their
tiramisu, the French created crepes. But the Twinkie is an American original.” (Fox
News)
“A world without Twinkies!
How can it be?! I haven’t eaten a Twinkie since the third grade. But, when the
demise of Hostess was announced last Friday, I, along with most of America, got
swept up in Twinkiestalgia. Watching the six o’clock news, it dawned on me that
my kids had never had and might never have a Twinkie in their young lives. What
kind of life is that? What kind of mother would I be if one of those
infinite-shelf-life treats never passed their lips?!” (The
“Today Show” website)
“The Twinkie is an
institution and a distinctly American one at that. It was the dessert that
Edith packed in Archie’s lunchbox. It became part of legal nomenclature (the
“Twinkies defense”). And its supposedly eternal shelf life only added to its
stature as a pop-culture icon…No one, it seemed, had eaten a Twinkie (or Sno
Ball) in years. Their affection for the brand was largely an exercise in
nostalgia. The Twinkie took them back to their childhood – and knowing it was
still there (and could be had at any time) meant there was always a comfortable
(and cheap) portal to a time when life was safer, simpler and more innocent.
It’s the Twinkie as, yes, Proust’s madeleine.” (The
Wall Street Journal)
“Consider the Zen of the
moment when you take a bite, that taste of something so simple yet decadent,
Godiva for the everyman, and, for many, the savory hint of childhood and
innocence. Can that small pleasure be had any longer without fear of
diet-busting self-loathing?” (Baltimore
Sun)
The common themes running through the commentaries are 1)
nostalgia for what are imagined were simpler, better times and 2) defiance of
what the reporters postulate are the food police who want to take away our
every culinary pleasure and replace them with good food.
The nostalgia aspect is just weird: there are so many good things
we can remember about the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and every other decade of the last
century that it seems absurd for pundits to give bad-tasting food that was also
bad for you a second thought. We all have individual memories and we also share
in collective memories, both happy and sad. For example, people my age can
reminisce about where we were when the first men landed on the moon (I am proud
to write that I watched the first moon walk sitting next to my uncle, who led
the team that engineered the fuel that propelled the rockets) or about the
first time we heard the Beatles. But Twinkies?
When the mass media tries to create a collective memory for all of
us, there is usually some ideological or business reason behind it, and that
brings us to the second common theme in the encomiums to Twinkies: the
assertion that there is a dichotomy between food that tastes good and food
that’s good for you. The mass media often asserts this dichotomy: when
discussing fast food, balanced diets, foods you can buy at state fairs, what to
make at holidays or for Superbowl parties and what to feed your children. It’s
a false dichotomy, but every time a writer makes it or assumes it, it helps to
sell more of the crap. It also undercuts efforts to address our growing
epidemic of unhealthy lifestyles.
I can see why someone might grab a package of Twinkies from the
food vending machine for a late afternoon snack, even though I wouldn’t do it.
And I can understand why parents might find it easy to slip a package of Ding
Dongs into their kids’ lunch bag, although I never did. And certainly there are
a number of people around who can’t distinguish between a Twinkie and a piece
of fruit, some home-made cookies or even cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on a
piece of buttered whole wheat toast.
But these instances do not make a case for elevating Twinkies, Ho
Ho’s and the other edible dreck from Hostess into the pantheon of American
culture. The very fact that these brands are threatened by poor sales suggests
that they brands do not hold any special place in our collective hearts, at
least not until the mass media starts to brainwash us with phrases about
“pop-culture icons” and “savory hints of childhood innocence and innocence.”
No comments:
Post a Comment