You probably have heard by now the Hostess Brands is back in bankruptcy (the prior incarnation of the parent company made the trip through Chapter 11 back in 2004 (and emerged in 2009).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Interstate Bakeries is more than just Hostess and Wonder Bread – a lot of the entire bread aisle is them, you just don’t realize that one company is doing all the different brands – IBC is also Drake snacks, Dolly Madison, Merita Bread, Baker’s Inn, Home Pride, Beefsteak, Eddy’s, J.J. Nissen, Sunbeam…<\/p>\n
So I figured I should buy some Hostess products and see what the problem is.<\/p>\n
I regularly have bought Home Pride bread – in the last couple years, the bread seems to have been lower quality less “butter”, courser, not as fresh,\u00a0\u00a0 The “store brand” bread is no worse, and maybe half the price.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t know until right now that it was also an IBC brand.<\/p>\n
So I picked up an 8 pack of “Golden Cupcakes” at my local supermarket (not walmart) – price was $4.43.\u00a0\u00a0 Just a tad under 1 pound\u00a0 ($4.29\/lb).\u00a0\u00a0 Each “cake” has 200 calories, meaning a $\/kCal of\u00a0 $3.61, placing it way out of the junk food range [comparison<\/a>]<\/p>\n So dig in!<\/p>\n They’re awful, even from junk food.\u00a0\u00a0 Upon closer examination, the box shows “golden” cakes with a dark brown “icing”, but nowhere does the box say that the ice is “chocolate”, because it isn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s some goo that contains some small amount of alkalized cocoa and food coloring.<\/p>\n What flavor is “Golden”?\u00a0 Got me.\u00a0\u00a0 The cake is bitter – it tastes vaguely like ginger or maybe baking soda.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is not sugary, and definitely not buttery or vanilla.<\/p>\n Snack foods cratered when they let the government steam roll them over transfats.\u00a0\u00a0 More recently, Michelle Obama has been leading the campaign to get sugar, fat, and salt out of foods.\u00a0\u00a0 In the middle of that, we had the mostly bogus peanut butter scare<\/p>\n IBC is also surely a big user of commodity futures to protect itself from wild swings in the prices of the ingredients in their products.\u00a0\u00a0 More than likely, they were directly or indirectly pushed over the edge by the failure of MF Global.<\/p>\n 90% of IBC’s employees are members of the Teamsters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is behind the bankruptcy of Hostess Brands? Continue reading