The fast food of a generation on its way out?

Twinkie man
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - The news this morning was disturbing. The two bakeries in San Francisco that still make Twinkies (and the Twinkies high-caloric cousin, the Ho-Ho) are closing up shop, taking their white flour with them somewhere undisclosed.

Have they been outsourced? Has the baking of one of America's favorite fat-inducing foods gone to India, too?

It would make sense, what will all the programmers leaving Silicon Valley, the best customers of those spongy, flavored, cream-filled, intestine-busting bombshells. But what's next? Might Jolt Cola be made offshore and sold in unmarked containers in the back alleys of Oakland?

The fellow in the photo with today's blog, is kind a special Twinkie guy. Since 1941, he's eaten a Twinkie a day.

Since 1941. No shit. It was in the Washington Post so it must be truth, si?

The Twinkie Story

He's alive, perhaps a testament to the preservatives put in Twinkies, or perhaps it keeps his diabetes in check when his sugar runs wild in the afternoon before slams his first Grey Goose or swills merlot.

In a low-carb, low-cal world, the Twinkie stands as a symbol American indulgence. But it's also a pillar of the food group that keeps places like Jenny Craig and the entire Atkins Empire churning out books and recipes and programs for former (and current) Twinkie addicts.

For that reason alone, the Twinkie will survive (maybe the Hostess Company is owned by Jenny Craig) well into the 22nd century.

We'll miss the bread that the same San Francisco bakeries made each day, but I'm sure the fellow in the photo will have no trouble finding the little yellow fuzzballs forever. He lives not too far from Chicago, where Twinkies are, for all intent and purposes, the official city snack.

And if I read correctly, the company produces 1,000 Twinkies per minute, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, all year long. At 150 calories per Twinkie, times 1,000 per minute, times 60 minutes, times 24 hours a day, I estimate that's 24 million calories in a single day.

In a single day.

I think we may have solved the problem of hunger in India, if that's where the San Francisco bakeries have gone.