The internet is full of fabulous facts about everything from current events to the history basket weaving. As we research for our daily content on food trucks, food carts and street food, we stumble upon some items of knowledge that we just did not know.

We have decided when these fun facts pop up, that we would share them with our readers in our section titled “Did You Know?”.

For today’s Did You Know we will look at Twinkie fun facts.

Twinkie Fun Facts: Hostess Twinkies were invented in 1931 by James Dewar, manager of Continental Bakeries’ Chicago factory. He envisioned the product as a way of using the company’s thousands of shortcake pans which were otherwise employed only during the strawberry season.

  • Originally called Little Shortcake Fingers, they were renamed Twinkie Fingers, and finally “Twinkies.”
  • Over 500 million Twinkies are sold per year.
  • April 5th is National Hostess Twinkie Day.
  • The cream inside Twinkies was originally banana flavored. When the government rationed bananas during WWII, Hostess changed the flavor to vanilla.
  • A “Twinkie defense” is a term for a criminal defense in which the defendant’s actions were supposedly affected by unimportant factors like diet.
  • Twinkies are a popular food for eating contests, and one man ate 24 of them in under a minute.
  • In 2010, nutrition professor Mark Haub went on a “Twinkie diet,” during which he ate only convenience store junk food for 10 weeks. He lost 27 pounds.
  • The Twinkies eaten in Zombieland were not real Twinkies. Being a vegan and raw-foodist, Woody Harrelson would not eat real Twinkies. Rather, the “Twinkies” he was shown eating were made from cornmeal and were vegan-safe.
Twinkie Fun Facts We May Have Missed

If so, please feel free to let us know about the Twinkies fun facts we missed. We always love to add to these lists. If we can verify that the facts is just that, a fact, we will give the reader credit in the article.

Reference: Fun Facts about Twinkies

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