I Should Be Dead

From childhood through my early adult years, I was infamous for my Twinkie consumption. The crinkle of a Twinkie wrapper would cause my childhood cat to wake from her vegetative state to chomp on the other end. The cat lost all of her teeth by age four. After swimming my worst time at a high school meet, my male swim coach stormed into the girls' locker room after receiving a not-so anonymous tip. Five boxes of Twinkies fell out of my locker on his head. I was threatened with getting kicked off the team and banned from the Hostess factory across the street. Shabby Chic, who was the president of our college's Hillel, had misgivings about keeping an unopened box of Twinkies in our shared room after debating whether they were kosher for Passover. Instead of flowers or chocolates, I was much happier to receive a box of Twinkies for Valentine's Day that was inscribed, "To the sweetest cake I know."

Of course, when the Alpha Male and I started seriously dating, eating Twinkies as if they were a major food group was a potential deal breaker. Although he gave me a White Trash Cookbook earlier, our discussion eventually became analogous to a relationship conversation between a smoker and non-smoker.

"I can't really see myself spending the rest of my life inhaling Twinkies," said Alpha Male.

Obviously, I chose the Alpha Male, which was a wise choice for many reasons. In Tara Parker Pope's New York Times article with Steve Ettlinger, author of the book “Twinkie, Deconstructed,” here's direct evidence that Twinkies are probably more hazardous to human health than any nuclear meltdown or living in North Korea:

Question: What ingredients used in Twinkies most surprised you?
Answer: Vitamins. I didn’t have a clue where they came from, but I suspect that, like me, many people think that they are squeezed from seeds or extracted from bark or something like that. I found they were, by and large, made from petroleum and fermented in enormous industrial plants mostly in China. To find out that a lot of my vitamins, and in particular the B vitamins in enriched flour that are in a Twinkie, were made from Chinese petroleum just blew my mind.

Vitamins extracted from Chinese petroleum? How am I still alive? Somehow, the Alpha Male saves me again.