DEFIED SCIENCE :microscope:

#SCIENCE

A Disturbing Twinkie That Has, So Far, Defied Science

For eight years, a box of Twinkies sat in Colin Purrington's basement until last week when he finally opened them. Varying levels of mold had developed on the snack cakes, and he eventually sent them to two West Virginia University scientists to study the kind of fungus growing on them.

Matt Kasson

Last week, craving sweets, Colin Purrington ed the Twinkies.

He'd purchased them back in 2012 for sentimental reasons when he heard that Hostess Brands was going bankrupt and Twinkies might disappear forever.

"When there's no desserts in the house, you get desperate," says Purrington, who went down to the basement and retrieved the old box of snack cakes, fully intending to enjoy several.

He busted out the Twinkies now, instead of waiting a couple more years, in part because he was "just so bored, with the pandemic," Purrington says. "It's terrible, but it just is mind-numbing after a while."

Like many people, Purrington believed Twinkies are basically immortal, although the official shelf life is 45 days. He removed a Twinkie from the box, unwrapped it — it looked fine — and took a bite. Then he retched.

"It tasted like old sock," Purrington says. "Not that I've ever eaten old sock."

That's when he examined the other Twinkies. Two looked weird. One had a dark-colored blemish the size of a quarter. The other Twinkie was completely transformed — it was gray, shrunken and wrinkly, like a dried morel mushroom.

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