Snopes:
Claim – Hostess Twinkies have an indefinite shelf life.
Fact – Twinkies have a shelf life of twenty-five days, not seven years, and certainly not fifty years. Even so, twenty-five days is an unusually long time for a baked product to stay fresh. The secret to Twinkies’ longevity is their lack of dairy ingredients: because dairy products are not part of the formula, Twinkies spoil much more slowly than other bakery items.
After the news of the shuttering of the company, this urban legend quickly made its way around Twitter. Like most urban legends, it turns out to have no basis in facts.
Gee, lucky thing we’ve got you on the case, to debunk those cheap Twitter jokes. Who knows what we might end up believing!
I’m actually surprised, with all the preservatives in those things I’d expect those things to last at least 50 years.
Tossed on Zombie Land last night as an ode to the Twinkie 😀
Sure beats repeating lame memes until people actually do believe them.
Actually, snopes is incorrect and is simply restating Hostess’ own product misinformation. I am graduate student in Nutritional Science, and we have had both a twinkie and a mc donald’s hamburger both unwrapped and sitting in a cabinet at room temperature for over a year now. Neither have decomposed or become rotten. They have both shriveled via water evaporation, but both products are intact. They are pure chemicals and preservatives.
“They are pure chemicals.”
So are you.
Take a bite of the Twinkie and then talk to us about shelf life.
But they were still around in Wal•E so it has to be true!