Junk Food, Food | featured news

Private equity firms Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co are near a deal to buy snack cake brands including Hostess Twinkies and Donettes, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Twinkie lovers, relax. The tasty cream-filled golden spongecakes are likely to survive, even though their maker will be sold in bankruptcy court. Hostess Brands, baker of Wonder Bread as well as Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Ho's, will be in a New York bankruptcy courtroom today to start the process of selling itself.

...Even if America’s iconic lard-log is dying, however, its entrepreneurial spirit is very much alive. Which is evidenced by the market for Twinkies and Twinkie-related products that is currently emerging on eBay. According to prices set by the sellers on the auction site, if you want a piece of air-puffed, sugar-soaked, corn-fed American history … it is going to cost you.

The best-selling cookie is 100 years old today.

Procter & Gamble has agreed to sell the chip brand for $2.695 billion to Kellogg, after its deal with Diamond Foods fell apart.

Kraft Foods Inc said that splitting into two companies would lead it to cut about 1,600 jobs in North America this year and that its 2011 profit should be slightly higher than it had previously forecast.

The maker of Twinkies, Sno Balls and Wonder Bread is trying to lose the fat. Hostess Brands is hoping to cut its high costs as it heads back into bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a decade.

PepsiCo Inc.'s third-quarter profit rose 4 percent because of higher prices and strong sales of its snacks and beverages, especially overseas.

Arch West, a retired Frito-Lay marketing executive credited with creating Doritos as the first national tortilla chip brand, has died in Dallas at age 97.

The nation's largest food companies say they will cut back on marketing unhealthier foods to children, proposing their own set of advertising standards after rejecting similar guidelines proposed by the federal government....