海角大神

What deep-fried Twinkies tell us about Wal-Mart鈥檚 new food lab

The science of how certain foods gratifies us is getting attention by retailers, and that might not be a good thing.

It used to be that you could regret eating deep-fried Twinkies just a few times a year, whenever you went to a fair. Now, you can regret eating them every day.

On Friday, Hostess unveiled a pre-battered, that can be frozen for baking at home with a few minutes in the toaster oven or frying pan, reported the Associated Press. The snack, which comes with vanilla or chocolate cream, is the product of a yearlong collaboration with Wal-Mart, and for the first three months, the latter will have exclusive rights to its distribution.

Hostess has debuted a number of products for the health-conscious recently, in line with a growing trend among consumers. But with nine grams of fat and 220 calories, the deep-fried Twinkie 鈥� like the carnivals and boardwalks where they remain a staple 鈥� is being branded more as a throwback to an earlier time when Americans thought less about their waistlines than about the passions of their palettes.

"It has a retro cool factor," said Ellen Copaken, vice president of marketing at Hostess.聽"And it's fun."

The deep-fried Twinkie is part of a push by Wal-Mart to collaborate with food suppliers on new products themselves 鈥� or new twists on old products. In June, the company opened a new food-innovation laboratory at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters for that purpose.

Michael Hicks, a distinguished professor of economics at Ball State University, who has studied the impact of Wal-Mart on local economies, tells 海角大神 that the lab would likely try to appeal to customers already in Wal-Mart stores.

鈥淭hey are also worried about keeping costs low, which probably means that they are experimenting not only with taste, but packaging and presentation,鈥� he says.

In a June interview with Talk Business and Politics, Charles Redfield, the head of Wal-Mart鈥檚 US food division, suggested that was a way of keeping down promotional costs.

鈥淥n our own turf, we can go deep down into the product ingredients and better control the process of dead net cost [when聽vendor rebates are subtracted from the price up front],鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd the result of that is that we can become better food experts.... It鈥檚 an education facility for us and our suppliers.鈥�

The site is , where the company surveys customers and employees on the qualities of a food or drink. And with Wal-Mart continuing its reign as the nation鈥檚 largest food retailer, what goes on in the lab may have significant implications for Americans鈥� health.

Robert Lawrence, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and founding director of the Center for a Livable Future, says the lab is also one of several that trace their origin to universities and corporations.

鈥淭here are a few university-based food labs looking at promoting nutritional quality, then there are a whole raft of food labs doing the opposite, trying to get us to succumb to even more highly processed food,鈥� he tells the Monitor. 鈥淲al-Mart falls, I think, in that last category.鈥�

Many of those labs are spending lots of time on the science of gratification. Dr. Lawrence recalls being amazed by a presentation at a Google food lab from one group of scientists who described fitting taste-testers with microphones attached to the outside of their cheeks as they sampled new varieties of chips, to measure how different levels of crunchiness corresponded to consumers鈥� satisfaction.

Food retailers, he said, 鈥渁ll have well-trained food scientists that understand things about taste and gratification and so forth that make it a big challenge for public health community to steer people toward a better diet.鈥�

鈥淔rom a public health perspective, it鈥檚 very worrisome if someone as powerful as Wal-Mart鈥檚 grocery business is making an even more appealing snack food.鈥�