Obesity in America: Death of Twinkies Will Not Solve Our Epidemic

Ding Dong, the obesity epidemic is dead! At least that’s the word on the street following the demise of Hostess Brands, the multi-billion-dollar bread and snack-food giant that asked a federal bankruptcy court on Friday for permission to close up shop. But while the death of the Ding Dong producer is a win for public health, the victory isn’t all Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling.

On the one hand, Twinkies, Ring Dings and Wonder Bread are just the type of nutrient-poor, energy-rich foods epidemiologists have blamed for the U.S. obesity epidemic, which affects more than 1 in 3 Americans. And among the cheapest, most available options in small markets and bodegas across the United States, consumption of these products is most common among low-income Americans and minorities, groups most likely to suffer from obesity to begin with. In that regard, the downfall of Hostess may be a windfall for public health.

In fact, following its first bankruptcy in 2004, Hostess executives blamed Americans switching to lower-carb snack options, suggesting improvements in health messaging around poor-quality foods may have played a role in the corporation’s demise. If shifting dietary preferences truly set the stage for the company’s eventual collapse, it would suggest that Americans are making better choices about their health — a small victory in the greater war on obesity.

But sometimes in public health, our myopic focus on those factors that are the most obviously related to a given problem can keep us from thinking critically about factors acting more indirectly to produce the ones on which we’re so intently focused in the first place.

Poverty and marginalization, in part, drive demand for low-cost, energy-dense foods like the kind Hostess produced. Not only do the poor lack ready access to higher-quality food options in their communities, but they often can’t afford them. In that sense, public health advocates can go ahead and celebrate the end of Hostess with glee, but unless equal focus is placed on quelling the poverty and marginalization that create space for these products, our foodscape will continue to be polluted by companies like Hostess that profit at the expense of the public’s health.

Other companies are reportedly lining up to bid on Hostess’s iconic brands, which they surely wouldn’t if they believed there was no longer a market with such unhealthy products. So despite the death of the company that bore them, these junk foods will live on. Even if the bidding corporations see the writing on the wall and take steps to reincarnate them in leaner, healthier forms, a Twinkie will still be a Twinkie.

If we agree that poverty and marginalization are, in part, to blame for our obesity epidemic, it’s clear that we should put another asterisk on this win: Hostess’s demise leaves 18,000 Americans without jobs in an economy where work is hard to come by. Not only will those former employees suffer, but their families and communities will bear the burden with them. These now-unemployed workers are closer to being relegated to consuming the types of foods they used to produce — and certainly at higher risk for obesity for it.

One could argue that these 18,000 lost jobs are the necessary cost of an overall improvement in our foodscape, that the death of a company like Hostess is what happens when demand for high-energy products slips. This may be true, but it suggests that the rise or demise of companies like Hostess shouldn’t be the metrics we use to judge the effectiveness of our public health messaging. The gradual fall of Hostess since 2004 hasn’t decreased inequality or obesity, which are both at their highest levels on record and accelerating.

While Hostess may no longer be producing products that contribute to American obesity, the demise of the Ding Dong will only be a win if it happens in the context of improvements in America’s social landscape and decreases in obesity in our country. Otherwise, the public health victory in Hostess’s closing will be as empty as the calories it successfully sold for so long.

This piece originally appeared on The 2x2 Project, see here.