Twinkies: The Breakfast of Champion Programmers Still Hard To Get 223
An anonymous reader writes "When Hostess, baker of Twinkies, filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations in November, Twinkies were no more. Then, a private equity firm bought the business for $410 million and planned to resume production in 'The Sweetest Comeback in the History of Ever.' Now, an article in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports that they're still hard to get, since an unprecedented demand has caused orders to exceed production capacity 'by a significant amount.'"
Slashvertising. (Score:2)
*n/m*
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pittsburgh is spelled with an h (Score:2, Informative)
n/t
Twinkies? Keep 'Em! (Score:2)
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I was about to turn in my nerd card, but I see I'm not the only one. I never did like twinkies, not even as a kid. Too sweet and too little substance. And no chocolate!
Ding Dongs, now, I like those. But I prefer bear claws and Danishes and all the traditional baked sweets (mmm... devil's food cake!) to any of the Hostess stuff.
Come to think of it, there's little corporate food or snacks I really like. I only buy potato chips because I'm too lazy to make my own.
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When I was a k
Breakfast of programmers? (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen a lot of developers eat breakfast over the decades and don't recall ever seeing anyone stuffing their face with a Twinkie. Tankards of coffee would be a far more accurate observation.
Re:Breakfast of programmers? (Score:4, Interesting)
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This may be heresy, but... (Score:2)
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Try arguing with a heroin addict that methadone is just as good...
awful (Score:4, Insightful)
You know what else is hard to get? Heroin.
"Champion programmers" don't eat Twinkies. Fat programmers eat Twinkies.
Don't fuck up your body, please. You only get one and it's already out of warranty.
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That's what you get when going for the lowest bidder.
No, really. Evolution is by definition the lowest bidder. Think about it.
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"Champion programmers" don't eat Twinkies. Fat programmers eat Twinkies.
In my entire life, I've never seen a programmer eat a Twinkie. Even the fat ones. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it sure doesn't happen around here.
Twinkies vs. Dreamies (Score:5, Funny)
Now I know, however, a shadow has fallen upon this romance. In Twinkies' absence, I tried Tastykake's Dreamies. Her smooth, flavorful cream enrobed in fresh, rich-tasting sponge cake was more than simple comfort when Twinkies left. Dreamies shared sensations with me that were unfulfilled fantasies when Twinkies were my sole companion. Every night after dinner with Dreamies was an exquisite exploration of forbidden flavor. Sometimes, I even had two!
When Twinkies came back, my heart and stomach pounded; lovers reunited! We left the grocery store and I buckled my box safely into the passenger seat and started the engine. At the first traffic light, I reached over and deftly parted her cardboard folds and reached for the treasures within. Cellophane yielded willingly at the next red light and soon familiar flavors and textures burst in my mouth!
Something was wrong.
My tastebuds now expected the fresher, richer flavors of Dreamies. Twinkies had a familiar, hydrogenized aftertaste, but Dreamies didn't. I don't think my companion noticed at the time, but when we got home, I put her on the shelf and have only reached for her twice since then. I've even
There's no way Twinkies doesn't know now. Something has changed between us. I think I hear sobbing in the kitchen when she doesn't know I'm near. I feel bad, but I know she feels worse because she was the one who left. I want to make it work, but Twinkies just can't bring me the sensations for which I yearn. I've
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Tonight, on "Cheaters"...
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Breakfast... really? (Score:2)
I guess I've long since ignored the polls on slashdot's front page, but I'd like to see the a poll like this.
What's your average time interval between twinkie consumption?
* 1 day
* 1 week
* 1 year
* 5 years
* 10 years
* closer to infinity
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I had one. My stomach returned it with as much as an "Ey, you nuts or something? What the fuck do you think you're throwing down here?"
I think the next I'll have will be somewhere "closer to infinity".
Comment removed (Score:3)
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You ... you want to take away my snacks?
Here's my two weeks notice, the last reason to work here is gone!
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They could offer healthier snacks - fruits and vegetables, for instance, rather than oversalted and oversugared treats.
They could offer healthier drinks as well.
Of course, the real reason they don't is that salty and sugary treats and soda are much cheaper, last forever, and everyone gets addicted to them because those treats were engineered to be liked by our lizard-brains.
But ... how? (Score:2)
How the heck can a company that makes products where demand outstrips supply by "some margin" go bankrupt? Isn't that kinda anathema for capitalism?
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How the heck can a company that makes products where demand outstrips supply by "some margin" go bankrupt?
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It's pretty easy, actually. Just charge less for your product than it costs you to make, market and deliver it (including your pension, healthcare and other overhead costs), and demand will actually make you go bankrupt faster.
Milo Minderbinder would like a word with you concerning his prior art in this IP area.
Obviously confused (Score:2)
As John Belushi showed us, the true breakfast of champions is little chocolate donuts.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/2345 [hulu.com]
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bit rich coming from someone making an anonymous comment on an internet article, which is about the intellectual equivalent of a vending machine breakfast. I say this as a past-master at both activities.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
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Something almost exactly unlike cake.
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You blew it. You should have said "It tastes almost, but not quite, entirely unlike cake."
Get your Adams quotes straight!
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Ah, but that wouldn't be accurate. It tastes like the very apotheosis of cake. I just don't know what the hell it actually is.
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A (semi)solid food equivalent of a "sugary-water" drink.
Basically, a device created to facilitate the ingestion of sugar and/or corn-syrup.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Informative)
They are pound or sponge cake with a highly fat filled marshmallow creme filling. They are incredibly easy to make.
Todd Wilbur has a great video [youtube.com] on how to duplicate them at home. He does the same for a lot of snack foods -- Does a great Oreo [youtube.com] too.
Personally I'm not terribly excited for Twinkies' return. This most recent mess was the result of a bunch of Romney-style Capitalists trying to bust Hostess' Union for more profit, being helped along with assholes on Fox News blaming the victims of 10+ years of those assholes sucking Hostess dry.
The new Hostess is non-union and has lost most of it's talent -- and no American should ever support Union busting.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, Talent? They were making Twinkies. Not growing human brains on mars. I'm pretty pro union, but this union voted for unemployment, rather than a concession on stupid job conditions. They're the idiots that aren't needed in organized labor in this day and age. Many people saw corruption and incompetence take root at unions and decided they were better off without the unions at all. In the end for most, the decision was simply choosing the method of death. Unions need to be smarter and have pay and benefits aligned with the company's financial health.
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I'm pretty pro union, but this union voted for unemployment, rather than a concession
Yes they did. I saw an interview with one of the Union members asked about this. The well-paid TV talking heads clearly didn't understand how someone could vote themselves out of a job.
The response was essentially, "Yes, I have a good job now that is worth saving. However, the job they are trying to get me to conceed down to is not that job. The new job they want me to have is a crappy job that I could go out and get anywhere."
So in effect, their jobs were dead already. That was not their choice, it was
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I'm not terribly excited for Twinkies' return. This most recent mess was the result of a bunch of Romney-style Capitalists trying to bust Hostess' Union for more profit,
I don't care about Twinkies, but the situation was much more complex than your stereotype. Half the union workers were in favor of the breakup. Why? It was Teamsters against the Bakers union.
Hostess was not profitable, I don't care if you're pro-union or anti-union, if you're not profitable there will be no union. The bakers realized this, and blamed the Teamsters for making Hostess inefficient. They thought if they went through bankruptcy, the court might get rid of the Teamsters, and a new buyer would come and re-open Hostess, and they would get their jobs back (that is basically what happened).
The Teamsters opposed the breakup, because they preferred to keep their jobs (naturally). The problem was massive inefficiencies made them uncompetitive. Union rules required that different products be delivered on different trucks, and a different person had to come with the driver to unload the truck while the driver had to just stand there waiting. They maintained an entire network of outlet stores (did you ever visit a Hostess outlet? Neither did anyone else, but they stayed open anyway).
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They are incredibly easy to make.
The new Hostess is non-union and has lost most of it's talent
If your first statement is true, it's hard to see why the second one would matter.
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"The new Hostess is non-union and has lost most of it's talent -- and no American should ever support Union busting."
(a) is debateable, but (b) is a LOAD OF HORSESHIT.
The old Hostess officially went out of business because its union workers went on strike, with the specific goal to drive Hostess out of business. They did not wish to negotiate. Their goal was to drive the company into bankruptcy.
So now the new Hostess doesn't recognize the union that broke the back of the old Hostess? Cry me a god damn ri
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The old Hostess officially went out of business because its union workers went on strike, with the specific goal to drive Hostess out of business. They did not wish to negotiate. Their goal was to drive the company into bankruptcy.
[citation needed] Indeed, the union wasn't willing to negotiate. The company had previously asked the workers to take a pay cut, supposedly to help the company, yet immediately afterwords the management got bonuses and the company had extra big profits that quarter. Seems like good cause to refuse negotiating pay cuts to me.
Unions in the US have done some less than wonderful things, but they've had to due to what corporations have done. Alas, most people in the US apparently learns about the bad things the unions have done, but never learn of (or forget about) the bad things corporations have done. I just hope the US doesn't get any more screwed up.
Exactly. The management was quite willing to bargain with the union for a pay cut, then gave themselves YET ANOTHER pay increase and bonus. The pay cut was supposedly because the company was dying, the pay increase and bonus was because it sure as hell wasn't management's fault that the company was going bad, and heck, they were so innovative in conning the union members into working for less than they were worth -- again.
That was the breaking point, that caused the Union to strike. And of course, Fox Ne
Re:Pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)
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...not to mention that unions are responsible for the decrease in child labour. Why does he hate children? Please think of the children. I wonder if he beats his wife. I'm convinced he's a terrorist.
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I heard the OP Googled Pressure Cookers..
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I 100% support the right of unions to exist and collectively bargain. What I don't support are unions forcing the unwilling to pay dues. That is against the spirit of free association.
So you support Right to Mooch States, where the Unions fight for benefits that apply to all the workers, but the workers don't have to support the union to get them?
Or did you honestly think that a company would pay union members one wage and non-union another? The entire point of a union is to be collective.
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And somehow you think this protects your freedoms?
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Funny)
They have been used as a unit of measure for psychokinetic energy.
"Well, let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning's sample, it would be a Twinkie... thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds."
Re:Pathetic (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never had a twinkie. I want to try.
besides, most countries have taxes on sugar etc..
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
besides, most countries have taxes on sugar etc..
heh, in the US we tariff the hell out of sugar and subsidize high-fructose corn syrup. To support the War on Triglycerides, apparently.
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
Are you kidding? That strategy has generated billions of dollars worth of free advertising for the Twinkie brand and demand is now at an all-time high; profits from now go to the new owners, losses from then are accounted for in the bankruptcy and get paid for by the creditors. It's brilliant, really, in a sociopathic sort of way.
FWIW, there is a mountain of Twinkie boxes and a 5x8 advertising banner at the entrance to the WalMart in Claremont, NH. I won't need any until October, when the boy wants some of those Minion cupcakes for his birthday party.
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besides, most countries have taxes on sugar etc..
heh, in the US we tariff the hell out of sugar and subsidize high-fructose corn syrup. To support the War on Triglycerides, apparently.
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
Are you kidding? That strategy has generated billions of dollars worth of free advertising for the Twinkie brand and demand is now at an all-time high; profits from now go to the new owners, losses from then are accounted for in the bankruptcy and get paid for by the creditors. It's brilliant, really, in a sociopathic sort of way.
FWIW, there is a mountain of Twinkie boxes and a 5x8 advertising banner at the entrance to the WalMart in Claremont, NH. I won't need any until October, when the boy wants some of those Minion cupcakes for his birthday party.
They also managed to extract all the money from the employee's retirement fund and give it to themselves in the form of bonuses, then continue to reduce pay (while increasing bonuses) until the workers couldn't afford to work anymore. Then they sold the company for millions. I'd say they managed the "bankruptcy" brilliantly, from a cut-throat, anti-working folks sort of way. Now those same working-class folks are going to go run out any buy the product to reward it.
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Not likely, without a job. They'll have to export all those Twinkies to another country where the citizens have jobs.
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Claremont, NH? I'm not surprised. I curse that God-awful town every time I have to drive through it.
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re you kidding? That strategy has generated billions of dollars worth of free advertising for the Twinkie brand and demand is now at an all-time high; profits from now go to the new owners, losses from then are accounted for in the bankruptcy and get paid for by the creditors. It's brilliant, really, in a sociopathic sort of way.
Not to mention it gave them the opportunity to reduce product size and redefine 'fresh'.
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I can't believe there's such a thing as Minion cupcakes, after googling for images I think I'd be sick if I ate one at my age.
Me too - I'd contract the diabetus on the spot. But I also don't run around screaming for three hours at a set. Much.
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most countries have taxes on sugar etc.
Which countries? (seriously). I'm curious if we're talking levels high enough to alter behavior (which I suspect would be awfully high). The US taxes sugar imports, which is part of why HFCS is used so much.
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most countries have taxes on sugar etc.
Which countries? (seriously). I'm curious if we're talking levels high enough to alter behavior (which I suspect would be awfully high). The US taxes sugar imports, which is part of why HFCS is used so much.
Denmark had a fat tax, and proposed a sugar tax, but both were scrapped in 2012. http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/11/denmark-abandons-sugar-and-fat-taxes.html [nature.com]
I found a paper copy of the British Medical Journal, and found this article informative: http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2931 [bmj.com] but I don't have a subscription (there's a paywall).
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Baked goods in Ireland get taxed at 23% VAT when they have high sugar or chocolate content.
unfortunately high sugar content means a longer shelf life so your typical supermarket has no interest in stocking any dessert or cake which isn't high in sugar.
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Don't bother trying it.
I was the same way: I never had one and wanted to try. I finally had one when I was like 20yo: I couldn't take more than a bit or two and threw the rest out.
I'm not a pastry snob or anything: I've tried and enjoyed a number of mass-produced pasties. I used to LOVE Butterscotch Krimpets.
But I can't see why the Twinkie is so popular, it tastes like junk. I mean: out of all of the mass-produced pasties out there... Twinkies are like the bottom of the barrel. Even the other Hostess produc
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besides, most countries have taxes on food etc..
Here, FTFY.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never had a twinkie. I want to try.
I live in the UK, and tried one towards the end of last year. (*) In all honesty, I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about.
Even accounting for the fact it may have been marginally stale- since it was an import- it had that almost "uncanny valley" fake quality to it of something that would never have been conventionally "fresh" in the first place. It reminded me of some off-the-shelf (also long-life) waffles I'd tried previously and been similarly unimpressed with.
The snack itself was just bland; mediocre cake and an uninteresting, over-sweet cream filling. Nothing disgusting, just... pointless.
"Long life" baked goods like Twinkies don't seem to be as culturally important over here. I'm only guessing, but possibly the popularity of long-life snacks like the Twinkie may be greater in the US because being more geographically spread out than other countries made keeping goods fresh more of an issue, particuarly when Twinkies (etc.) rose to prominence in the mid-20th-century.
(*) The fact this was around the time of the bankruptcy was pretty coincidental; a new shop importing US snacks had opened, and I was curious to try one. I paid something silly for it- around £1.75 IIRC- but again I doubt that was because of the bankruptcy- the shop markup was already high, and they were charging more for individual ones split from their packs.
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what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
What happened was Hostess had no capital to run, and no ability to borrow so they had no choice but to close. It was not until after the bankruptcy that the debts were clear, pensions reduced, and union contracts ripped up that Hostess became a viable company to buy. It was simply too big a risk to buy until the ink was dry on the bankruptcy filings.
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http://idle.slashdot.org/story/12/11/16/1849212/hostess-to-close-no-more-twinkies
they were going through the death throws, i.e. cutting wages, etc...
Well I bought them as a EU citizen when visitting (Score:4, Interesting)
As a EU citizen you are probably aware not a single food from the US comes from the US... there is NO food exported by the US to anywhere else that did not come from somewhere else to begin with. Real American foods such as American Cheese, American Beer, Grits and .... well that is about it, are not export. American bakery products are amongst them. And for good reason.
Twinkies are famous for being one of two things to outlast the nuclear holocaust. And you got to pity the cockroaches if that is the only food left. The maker claims their long life is a myth but I tested this by keeping them on a hot PC for over 2 years and the taste at the end had not changed. Can't say if they spoiled, just that the taste has not changed.
So what is the taste. Imagine a cake.... now imagine cake without butter. Ah, like Chiffon cake you might say... NO. In order to have a long shelf life, the hostess company does not put butter in its cakes. This might confuse those of you who think ordinary cake with butter has a long shelf life if properly wrapped but you know, Americans. They have however NOT simply made a Chiffon cake (also does not contain butter) but added something else. Don't know what but it is chemical You could lick an oil refinery and not encounter such a chemical taste. Why you might want to lick a oil refinery? Possibly because you just ate a Twinky.
The cake is truly horrible in every regard, taste (chemical), texture(dry), color(frightingly yellow pale). Inside the Twinky the ugliest caterpillar ever made a cocoon and died just as its entire body had degraded into a white mass. There are various candy interiors you better not think about to closely, this is they their queen. I think it actually serves as a coating for you taste pupils to guard you against the true horror of the cake.
So why do American love it so much?
THEY DON'T!
When I went to the US a few years ago, I went on the hunt for them because I heard so much about them and had to taste them. Most Americans I asked had no idea what I was talking about. I finally found them at Redneck central Walmart. Everything you ever heard about the USA and don't really believe is happening right now at Walmart. I now understand the compulsive need American feels to own a dozen machine guns.
To recap:
If you EVER hear about a regional delicacy that hasn't made it past its region. Take a GODDAMN HINT. Chocolate, Beer (except American), Wine, Cheese, Appels etc etc ARE NOT regional delicacies because they taste damned good and everyone loves them. Rotten fish, maggot cheese, American cheese are ONLY available in select locations because everyone will sooner declare war then import them. This includes ANYTHING from the hostess company.
They went bankrupt for a reason. Americans are fond of them because their mothers (who hated them) gave them a cake from a big box to shut them up and of such things the memories of childhood are made. But nobody in the US actually eats them. You shouldn't either, I did so you don't have to.
Chapter 7 versus Chapter 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never had a twinkie. I want to try
You really don't. They are pretty gross and really bad for you.
what I find pathetic is that they ceased production for a product in such high demand. whoever handled the bankruptcy fucked up.
The company didn't go through Chapter 11 bankruptcy where you keep operating and restructure the company. The company did a Chapter 7 where you liquidate the company. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy occurs when you no longer expect the company to have a reasonable expectation of remaining a going concern. When you do that you stop production because the company no longer exists and is being sold for the residual value of its assets. Someone bought the assets and started production again which is exactly what you might expect in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
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Shut UP! Didn't you RTFS? Do you really want the awesome chocolate-like goodness to become as thin on the ground as the yellow logs of styrofoam?!
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and how much does management make to sit with their thumbs in their asses?
If they wanted to save the company, they could have. The press decided to blame it on the unions.
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Suzy Qs
Oddly, they don't serve Suzy Qs at Susie Q's. [susieqs.net] Really good fried chicken, though (Google streetview picture is before Mike bought, renovated, and opened it).
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There was an entire end-cap full of them when I went grocery shopping yesterday.......I passed them up, but I could have easily filled several shopping carts with them. Had I known I could still turn a profit on them, I might have grabbed a few.
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I think it just comes from some gross prerojitave that if someone is fat they must eat twinkies.
Good grief
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agreed. To this day, I've never actually seen a nerd consume a twinkie.
I think it just comes from some gross prerojitave that if someone is fat they must eat twinkies.
Good grief
Anyone else find it amusing that someone would be more embarrassed that people might assume they eat Twinkies than they are about being fat?
Although I'm not even sure where this supposed "all nerds love Twinkies" stereotype is even coming from. The only time I've heard of it is in the Slashdot summary for every Twinkie story. It makes me wonder if it's actually samzenpus who is addicted to Twinkies, and he's just assuming that all other nerds are too.
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Re:Pathetic (Score:4, Informative)
This is the part I don't get.
The "Obesity Epidemic" Started in the late 1990's, Before that it wasn't a big problem.
We often blame the "Obesity Epidemic" on things like Soda/Pop, Fast Food, Junk Food snacks...
However these food foods have been around for many generations, I would expect if they were a major cause to the "Obesity Epidemic" then they would have shown up much earlier after they started to gain popularity.
So either something changed in these foods that makes them different then they were a hundred years ago (such a replacing Sugar, with Corn Syrup) Or there is an other cause, probably more complex that average Joe doesn't want to think of.
My Hypothesis is to the "Obesity Epidemic" is the rise in Mass Media creating fear.
Pre-Late 1990's much of new media came from 3 TV stations, and news papers. Which for the most part were rather toned down and didn't try to put people in a major panic about everything. Sure the Russians wanted to blow us up, but that gave us a single enemy to look at. But now we have breaking news on everything, and every little detail is analysed and shown how it will react in a worse case... News of kids missing anywhere in the US is getting headlines, discussion of all the other problems all begins to weigh on us. We have been trained to be afraid of the world.
So we are afraid of the world, we won't let our kids to go outside and play, because we are afraid of the Sex Offender across the street will take them away, or if they accidentally step on the neighbors flower they will get hit by a massive lawsuit. Or if you see other kids you are too scared to discipline them when they are doing something dangerous or wrong, because you are afraid that you will get some sort of child abuse claim against you....
So we keep our kids inside all day. Kids have energy but they don't have means to burn it so they are playing video games all day... However their body is growing so it is telling them they should eat, so they eat, but it leads to excess.
If we are adults and we are afraid of the world we put on a few pounds early on mostly because we grew up and didn't adjust our food intake to match our adult needs. However we don't want to be seen as the Fat Guy at the Gym, or the Fat Guy running down the street, that TV Comedies like making fun of. So we will tend to stay inside or do activities that are safe from ridicule. Then combined with the body image that you are Fat means you will begin to accept your weight as part of you identity and not really try too hard to change it. Sure we will try some fad diets loose 10-20 lbs but it will ware us out and will put them back on, plus some. Being that it is called an "Obesity Epidemic" means we are not completely at fault either, because it is part of a bigger problem, so we will sit and weight for those who are smarter then us to solve it.
This Fear model tends to make sense with the trends of higher Obesity.
Uneducated: Untrained in dealing with information, more prone to throw stuff out of proportion.
Poor: Often Uneducated, however they are worrying about making it to the next day, so they will do what they need to get to the next day, however fearing what will happen tomorrow.
Minority Races: Fear of going out, as they are prone to more suspicion, even if they are just doing the same thing the Majority Race is doing.
Sure eating junk food in excess will not be healthy... However they are fine in moderation, and with balance of healthy living.
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Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
What is this magic healthcare we pay for that makes them healthy and keeps them alive as long as you and I?
My understanding is no amount of money will fix type 2 diabetes and obesity in a non-compliant patient. Odds are these are going to be cheap deaths. If you want to lower healthcare costs you have to get people to do more of this stuff. Us healthy folks living into our 80s and 90s requiring round the clock care is where the real costs are.
Re:Pathetic (Score:4, Informative)
What is this magic healthcare we pay for that makes them healthy and keeps them alive as long as you and I?
It's called "private medical research" and "medical tourism".
My understanding is no amount of money will fix type 2 diabetes and obesity in a non-compliant patient.
Your understanding is out of date. We are currently using Porcine stem cells and islet transplants to treat diabetes, albeit it's still considered experimental treatment in the U.S. so that insurance companies, which we still have to pay for our healthcare, rather than having a single payer system like the rest of the world, don't have to pay for the treatment:
http://www.mmf.umn.edu/diabetes/ [umn.edu]
On the other hand, if you are willing to travel to Russia, Finland, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Panama, or Poland, they'll happily take your money, and provide treatment for Diabetes, Parkinsons, and a half dozen other conditions, and several of the countries will even let you buy antiaging treatments as well.
When Porcine stem cells are used, you have to sign some pretty strict agreements, since they down't want PERV (Porcine Endogenous Retro Virus) crossing species boundaries, unless you agree to sexually isolate yourself on the order of the protection necessary to prevent the spread of AIDS (condoms, etc.).
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Your understanding is out of date. We are currently using Porcine stem cells and islet transplants to treat diabetes, ...
Type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance, not lack of insulin. All a continued and increased insulin flooding does is mask the symptoms for a while and further wreck an already messed up metabolism. Getting the patient to curb carb intake is crucial to reducing the effects of insulin resistance labeled as type 2 diabetes.
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Sure they might get some of that stuff, but I have seen plenty kick it from a stroke or simple mis-management of the disease; like drinking all night and going to bed without checking their blood sugar.
One of the big issues here is folks care is socialized so the insurance companies don't care. Young people's diseases is what they care about.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Informative)
Us healthy folks living into our 80s and 90s requiring round the clock care is where the real costs are.
The "Death Panels" will take care of you. [ /sarcasm ]
The death panels already exist and have existed for years and years - however their correct name is Actuary.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
We could do with doctors having some end of live training. I have watched too many elderly relatives treated with expensive and painful procedures that only managed to lengthen their suffering a very short amount of time. Often increasing their suffering for that time. Yeah, lets try chemo on an 85 year old who is more cancer than man! What the hell is wrong with these doctors?
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is wrong with these doctors?
The patients ask for it. I am a doctor. Many people say that they are at peace with dying, but when they are actually near death, NO ONE really means it. In 20 years, I have seen too many people die than I can count. All of them wanted everything done, regardless of the cost and side effects, and questionable benefit. If there was even the slightest question of prolonging their life 10 minutes, as long as it was covered by insurance, then they insisted on the treatment. But I'm sure you don't want to hear that. It's easier to blame the doctor.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
We could do with doctors having some end of live training. I have watched too many elderly relatives treated with expensive and painful procedures that only managed to lengthen their suffering a very short amount of time. Often increasing their suffering for that time. Yeah, lets try chemo on an 85 year old who is more cancer than man! What the hell is wrong with these doctors?
Doctors!? What about 85 Year Old Cancer Man's fearful obsession with trying to eke out even a possible tiny few months more of life? What about 85 Year Old Cancer Man's family who sues the doctor years after Cancer Man dies because the doc "didn't do all he could and spend tens of thousands of dollars to eke out another few months of pitiful life for our father/son/husband!!!!11lleleventy"
Talking directly to Cancer Man I say this: dignity, motherfucker, do you speak it? Try dying with it then you selfish asshole. The ultimate issue is that in the US, there is no dialog on death and dying, there's only more fear. We don't talk about dying, we don't want to deal with dying, we don't want to see people dying, we don't want to deal with what we sometimes must do after death (like plan funerals, etc.) Death and dying as a natural part of living are treated as almost a kind of taboo subject and rarely intrudes into public consciousness except for when complete fucking morons spout off about "death panels" and pile on more and more fear.
As a people, Americans are now defined by and controlled by every kind of fear imaginable and more the kind of fear that is only imagined.
So tell Cancer Man and his family to sit down, have a nice hot cup of shut the fuck up and figure out how to make his dying as best as circumstances allow instead of driving up everyone else's medical costs, suing good doctors into oblivion and/or driving good people out of medical practice in the first place due to these hysterical lawsuit-happy SELFISH ignorant fools.
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We could do with doctors having some end of live training. I have watched too many elderly relatives treated with expensive and painful procedures that only managed to lengthen their suffering a very short amount of time. Often increasing their suffering for that time. Yeah, lets try chemo on an 85 year old who is more cancer than man! What the hell is wrong with these doctors?
It's the same reason you get an XRay every time you go into the Dentist. You don't need them (visual inspection will tell almost everything you need to know), but they are a very simple and easy procedure that will get the dentist a good amount of money from the Insurance company. In addition, like mechanics and the specialist equipment they have to buy, paying off that XRay machine they are forced to buy will probably take a few thousand XRays, so they have to do it in order to survive.
A lot of the medic
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It's the same reason you get an XRay every time you go into the Dentist. You don't need them (visual inspection will tell almost everything you need to know), but they are a very simple and easy procedure that will get the dentist a good amount of money from the Insurance company.
thanks to a dental xray, i just found out i have a number of small cavities forming on the opposing faces of some of my molars. That seems like an area that's pretty hard to just look at.
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Fat Rage (Score:5, Insightful)
What do they care?
They all care. That is the point. You think anyone chooses to be fat, your less attractive, treated badly, can't fit normal clothes, you are generally slow, as well as a whole host of illnesses...yeah you die sooner as well, so I guess others will have to pay for your pension. Overall though its shitty being fat, and you care about it all the time.
You get penalised for being fat.
Re:Fat Rage (Score:4, Interesting)
At the end of the day, they decide that money, power and fame, is what really matters, and the rest of the world is some mess of unwashed undeserving cretins, so they fudge numbers, make things up, pat themselves on the back and congradulate themselves for disrupting other peoples lives and accomplishing nothing.
Re: Fat Rage (Score:2)
Yes, being fat is somewhat a choice for almost everyone. There are ways to keep almost everyone's weight moderate, through diet and exercise and proper sleep.
The simple truth is that many fat people are insufficiently motivated to consistently work hard on all those areas for long periods.
Tv or go for a walk? A choice.
Eat carbs or protein to satisfy hunger? A choice.
Regular or diet soda? Choice.
And this is coming from someone who has struggled with this all my life, so I'm Npt being simply judgmental.
Body is a beautiful machine (Score:2)
If calories in < calories out, you will lose weight.
Except that is an incredibly naive argument. One of the problems with *dieting* is that your body is a machine that has evolved over many centuries, and is simply not fit for today's modern world, which is built around driving to megastores, and sitting in cubicles. Food is chemicals the body can't cope with. Ironically if you eat less your body thinks its being starved...and starts turning food into fat. The bottom line is getting to be the right weight again is a constant struggle, and there is a lot of s
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Then you have never been fat. (Score:2)
Fat people can fit normal clothes. Plain old, standard, totally normal 5XL t-shirts.
You can wear *anything* as long as its a sack. If you are a man you essentially lose your waist, and as for your post you can wear a extra large tshirt...but it has to be black, oversized to look even a little reasonable. A surprising amount of companies do not even make large clothes, or only have limited range.
Grammar vs Programming (Score:2)
You should sue whoever "educated" you. ...
</unwanted education>
your “non-empty” markup tags are meant to come in pairs. :)
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In a free society, we allow people to make their own choices to a degree.
If you have freedom and civilization, you will be paying a small part of the price for your fellow citizen's twinkies. That's just how it is. There are still incentives to stay healthy, namely that you don't feel and look like shit and have parts cut off of you, so don't worry that everyone is going to get obese and make you pay f
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Cocaine is schedule II. Cannabis is schedule 1. See, you can learn something from CNN. There doesn't appear to be any real facts to support pot being a gateway drug to cocaine or heroin, but I'll bet you can find proof that it's a gateway to Twinkies.
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Only in the near future ... median wages can only fall so far before the majority of the consumer market for luxury goods implodes.
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I actually thought it was a good thing they shut their doors and stopped producing twinkies. How many years were added to lives of the general population and dollars on health problems not wasted in this country because they were gone?
Some of us are genetically predisposed to being thin. The only time I ever got too heavy was when I was on Paxil; I have to fight to keep the weight up.
I wonder how much SSRIs have contributed to the obesity problem? Everyone I've known that was on them gained a lot of weight,
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There is absolutely nothing you can possibly do to increase the shelf life of twinkies. They are already non-perishable.
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Maybe they should have a contract with the bakery in Canada that makes them. As they don't seem to have problems with production.
The Canadian licensee never went bankrupt so the production never ended here.