Kosher, Schmosher. Try This Twinkie.

To the Editors of The Crimson:

My heart went out to Jonathan Bresman when I read his heart-rending editorial "Quest for a Kosher Twinkie" (January 8).

As a kid, I was without a doubt the world's biggest Twinkie fan. Constantly berated by my health-and-figure-conscious older sisters, I smugly hung on our refrigerator the New York Times obituary for the man who invented the Twinkie--highlighting the lines that said he ate five Twinkies a day and lived to be a healthy 95.

We named our beloved dog Twinkie, although she was a big, black standard poodle who definitely looked more like a Yodel.

Like Jonathan, my childhood best friend Jessica keeps kosher, and she would stare at me longingly as I ate my daily two-pack. One day last year, she called me from college.

"Tracy, guess what!" she screamed, her voice high-pitched with excitement. "My wildest dreams have just come true."

"You won Publisher's Clearinghouse," I guessed. "Or Tom Cruise asked you to star opposite him in his next movie."

"No," she said immediately. "This is REALLY big."

And then, hardly containing her excitement, she blurted out the cause of her ecstasy: "Twinkies Lights!"

I won't list the ingredients here for fear of nauseating Crimson readers, but the important part reads like this: "...partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening (contains one or more of: canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil), modified food starch..." Yes, Jon, absolutely no treife animal shortening!

(Of course, Twinkies Lights are not strictly kosher, because they don't have the k or u sign indicating that the process was supervised by a rabbi. But I take it from your article, in which you wrote that you would eat the Twinkies if they took out the animal shortening, that you are not that strict.)

Hostess was probably thinking about fat people rather than Jewish people when it came up with this culinary masterpiece.

The new Twinkies have fewer calories and no cholesterol. (They're also smaller, but I don't think we're supposed to notice that.)

Here's the catch, Jon. Twinkies Lights are good, but there's something missing. Maybe the creamy filling is not quite as creamy, or the golden sponge cake is not as spongy. Or maybe they're just not as greasy.

The fact is, an original is an original. I was just as disappointed with chocolate Twinkies, which came out a few years and have since been discontinued; and when Coca-Cola tried New Coke.

So, Jon, as a future Jewish mother, let me give you some advice regarding Twinkies Lights (and "Zoinks!" for that matter)--eat some matzah ball soup. It's better for you. Tracy Kramer '92