Unlike many so many Americans, I did not grow up eatingTwinkies. My first bite was when I bought the package pictured above for the post. I plan to share my reaction to that first bite with you as well as why I’m not necessarily in favor of UPF being included in our dietary guidelines, but first let’s take a look at what makes Twinkies an ultra-processed food.

✅ Industrial Formulation. Twinkies are manufactured on an automated assembly line. Many videos of the processing available online. The production line can produce more than 1000 per minute.

✅ Industrial Processes. Twinkies are mass produced with ingredients that have been deconstructed like refined wheat flour, cornstarch, soy lecithin or chemically modified like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

✅ Cosmetic Additives. Twinkies are manufactured with colors (Red 40 and Yellow 5) and flavors (natural and artificial).

❌ Displace traditions and long-established culinary patterns. Twinkies probably haven’t displaced traditions or long-established culinary patterns here in the United States. The product appeared in the 1930s, almost 100 years ago, and over the generations Americans have come to accept convenience and off the shelf sweetened snacks as normal.

✅ Profitable. Just this year, the brand was sold to Smuckers for 5.6 billion dollars so it’s reasonable to conclude the product is profitable.

✅ Tasty. Twinkies are tasty. Whether that means palatable or hyper-palatable depends on who you talk to and who is doing the tasting.

My sense is Twinkies are an excellent poster child for ultra-processing. As good a poster child as any other food product I can think of. Now for that first bite. The Twinkie tasted decidedly sweet almost too sweet for my taste, but not unpleasant. My gut was not pleased however with the Twinkie. After about half an hour I felt some discomfort. Nothing at all serious and the discomfort didn’t last long. I tried another Twinkie the next day with the same result so I never finished the package.

THE VIEW FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW.

Initially I was in favor of including NOVA and UPF in the next release of our dietary guidelines. But now I’m not so sure.

Americans who cook already appreciate NOVA because it’s hard to cook without using mostly minimally processed ingredients and most home cooks and chefs already bring a holistic perspective to food.

Americans who rely heavily on take out and convenience food have their own set of reasons for avoiding the kitchen and many of these reasons are valid and understandable. More money, more time, better cooking & storage options could help, but these are financial incentivizes and not related to degree of processing. Recommending a single mom with a couple of kids who works 2 jobs to buy more perishable food and to do more cooking at home is not going to solve financial problems.

I also think back to what happened when the USDA stopped being hostile to organic farming and enabled manufacturers to use the word on product labels. For those of who supported the original holistic view of organic, what we might call regenerative farming today, labeling food organic just meant that food manufacturers had one more label to market. Many, myself included, believe the official USDA process actually subverted the original vision and provided little value.

I’m sure once Big Food gets over being hostile to NOVA, the marketing departments will adapt quickly and discover creative ways to market more highly processed food using NOVA terminology.

So maybe, just maybe, it’s better to leave NOVA out of our guidelines. The holistic construct is fundamentally incompatible with the tool – the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) – used by my fellow dietitians to assess dietary guideline compliance. And I don’t see that reductionist approach changing anytime soon.