Harvey Milk and the Twinkie Defense

S: Hi everyone! I’m Sarah. 

B: & I’m Becca, and you’re listening to Dietetics After Dark. 

S: A very special episode of Dietetics After Dark - it’s actually going to be our season one finale. 

B: We’re going on vacation!!! 

S: We’ve got our socks and birkenstocks, and our fanny packs and we’re ready for the summer! 

B: Yes, definitely. We’re going to spend the summer building a bigger and better season 2 and we cannot wait to share it with you!!!

S: We’re also moving into the clinical portion of our Masters practicum and we don’t want to burn out, because we LOVE creating DAD and bringing you new episodes. Gotta protect that good energy. Working on this podcast brings us a lot of joy, and we will be back and better than ever in September. We already have a huge list of topics for next season that are just so scandalous. 

B: Possibly more scandalous than this season’s. But don’t cry!! We’ll be back. And if you just found the podcast and this news is heartbreaking, don’t worry! We have 29 amazing episodes for you to catch up on while we rest and recover and create new content for season 2. 

S: I need to get sentimental for a second. Dietetics After Dark has become so much more than we ever imagined when we started it 8 months ago. It was a pandemic project that has become a passion project, and has taken so much time and energy but I wouldn’t change a thing. We’ve had moments where we feel high with excitement after someone tells us that they listened to the podcast on a Western Australian road trip, and then we’ve had moments where we want to have a breakdown after 12 hours of research and writing and screen time, but I wouldn’t change a single second of it. 

B: Me either. We absolutely love doing this and I think I can speak for both of us when I say this would be our dream full time job. So if you love listening, it would mean the world to us if you could spread the word about dietetics after dark to your true crime loving friends - or leave a review if you haven’t already. Season 1 has been so much fun. I honestly can’t wait for season 2 to begin and we’re not even technically done yet.

S: Thank you all so much for your support. We love you all and let’s move on before I cry. 

B: lol yes, let’s get into it. 

S: So today, Becca is going to give us the history of an all-American treat - the iconic Twinkie! And then, in honour of pride month, I am going to talk about the assasination of the first openly gay elected official in California, Harvey Milk, and the trial that became well-known for it’s use of the Twinkie Defense.

Alright, let's start at the very beginning - with the invention of the Twinkie. So in 1849, a man by the name of Robert B Ward opened up a small bakery in Lower Manhattan which was later called Continental Baking. They specialized in breads, cakes, and other wholesale baked goods. In 1925, over 75 years later, Ward’s grandson acquired a bakery from Indianapolis called Taggart Baking, which was making Wonder bread products at this time. These included breads, obviously, and Hostess cakes. You might remember this from our organics episode, but in 1930, the first sliced bread machine was invented in Missouri, and the Wonderbread company began using this technology nationwide. /// An interesting and somewhat unrelated fact that I stumbled across in my research is that the US actually banned sliced bread for a period of time during WWII to conserve wax paper, which must have been used between the slices.

So around this same time in the 1930’s, the Continental Baking location in Illinois had a bunch of shortbread pans that they weren’t using for their seasonal strawberry shortcakes (as strawberries were out of season). The manager, James A. Dewar, decided he was going to try making shortcakes with the pans using a banana cream filling instead of a strawberry one. And it turns out they were delicious. 

There was a billboard near the bakery that advertised for “Twinkle Toe Shoes” which I thought were light up kids shoes, but those weren’t invented until 1992. Anyways, Dewar got crafty with “Twinkle Toe” and came up with the name “Twinkie” for his new cakes. But I do wonder if he regretted not naming them after himself considering their success…? I also wonder if they would have been as successful had they been called something like James Cakes...

So most people are familiar with the classic vanilla-cream-filled Twinkie, but banana flavoured filling is the original. You see, what happened was during World War II, all banana imports stopped, so the company was forced to get creative again, and the vanilla Twinkie was born (Moncel, 2019; The New York Times, 2016).

What is a Twinkie

This Twinkie, which is the one that people know and love today, is the standard 4-inch long, ½ inch wide yellow sponge cake with three globs of vanilla cream distributed throughout it. At the time of their creation, they were made with like fresh butter, cream, and eggs, giving them a very short shelf-life of only about two days. This quick turnover meant that a lot of Twinkies would be wasted on days and weeks where the demand was lower. So Dewar decided to reformulate the recipe. There are now 39-ingredients in the product, which has led some people to believe that they have an infinitely long shelf life, which isn’t actually true. So, today the shelf-life is only about 25 days, and much of that is due to its airtight packaging.

But with that many ingredients, you would think that they would at least have fortified the cake, especially since it is a snack that tends to be promoted to youth. But unfortunately, it’s pretty worthless when it comes to its nutritional value. So a serving of two cakes contains 6% of your daily iron intake, but that’s about it. No fibre or other micronutrients; but a serving does contain 32 grams of sugar, and 4 grams or 20% of your daily saturated fat intake. So it’s a treat, and something that can definitely still be enjoyed as a part of a healthy diet. But you couldn’t physically live off of just Twinkies. OH, and they aren’t pumped with preservatives either. Almost all of the ingredients are replacements for the original ingredients, as to help the cakes from spoiling. So for instance, oils are used to replace butter. There are very few ingredients that are used to retain freshness, and the main one is sorbic acid, which is naturally occuring.

I found this article that breaks down how each ingredient is used, and what it’s purpose is in the baking process, which I thought was really cool. I won’t bore you with the details of the 39 ingredients, but I will link it in our show notes - so it’s from HowStuffWorks.com, in case anyone wants to take a look at it (Grabianowski, n.d.). Today there have been about 17 variations of Twinkies, but of course not all of them are in circulation now. Some of the strangest flavours included Orange Creme Pop, Cotton Candy and White Peppermint. But apparently the Banana Twinkie lives on. I couldn't find it on the Hostess website, but I read that it became a permanent flavour in 2007. 

Anyways, Twinkies have been a staple in pop culture, but have also been involved in some scandal, which I know you will get more into. One other Twinkie-based scandal was Twinkiegate. And I know how much we both love scandals that play on the words of “Watergate”, so I had to bring it up. Did you read about this one in your research? So in 1985, a man running for Minneapolis city council was indicted for bribery after he served his constituents Twinkies. The charges were eventually dropped, but it forced the creation of a campaign finance law known as the Twinkie Law, which was later repealed in 1988 (Grabianowski, n.d.). 

Unrelated to the scandal in 1999, President Bill Clinton added a Twinkie to the millennial time capsule to represent American food culture. And this naturally had people questioning the shelf life of Twinkies again. To address consumer and scientific questions about the little cakes, the TWINKIES Project was created. TWINKIES in this case is an acronym for “Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations”. And this group performs scientific experiments to determine the properties of Twinkies. So like their solubility, electrical resistance, density, radioactivity and oxidation properties (Moncel, 2019; Grabianowski, n.d.).

Despite their immense popularity, Hostess filed for bankruptcy in 2012, and Twinkies were removed from store shelves for a few months. There was a huge bidding war for the brand, and the following year they were purchased by Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co for $410 million (Moncel, 2019). This deal included the Twinkies, but also Ding Dongs, Ho Hos, Sno Balls and Zingers (New York Times, 2016).

Then I figured I would finish off this section by giving a shout out to the individual who has eaten the most Twinkies on record in the world. And that’s Lewis Browning, who is a retired milk-truck driver. In 2005, he had eaten as estimated 22,000 Twinkies - so 1-2 a day for ~64 years (Stuff You Should Know, 2009).

So the most interesting thing about the Twinkie Defence, is that it never actually happened. At least, not the way the public thought that it did. This is a textbook case of media headlines exaggerating and swaying the court of public opinion, but the story behind how that came to be and the logic behind the Twinkie Defense, is fascinating. 

We’re going to start with the awful part. Dan White was an all-american man. He was a handsome family man that had served in the army, fought in Vietnam, and then worked as a policeman and firefighter before transitioning to politics. He joined the local San Francisco government as a city supervisor in January of 1978. Only 11 months later, on November 10th, Dan White suddenly resigned from this very job, citing the slow workings of city government and the low salary as the primary reasons for his resignation. This was very out of character for White, and the public employees who had worked very hard to get him elected were upset and vocally objected to his decision. The mayor, George Moscone, faced the politically-charged job of appointing his successor which had the potential to tip the balance of power on the Board, as seat was in a more conservative district. White’s supporters pressured him to revoke his resignation and ask for his job back, which White actually did within the week. At the same time, some of White’s former colleagues, most notably Harvey Milk, encouraged Mayor Moscone to not reappoint White, creating a growing tension on the board.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California and a leading political activist for the gay community. There is a WONDERFUL movie about him called Milk starring Sean Penn that everyone should watch, it’s a total tear jerker. Milk fought hard for gay rights at a time when they were under direct attack, and he also fought for the civil and economic rights of many marginalized communities, like the Asian community, African-Americans, Latinos, and senior citizens.Milk had unsuccessfully ran for office three times before his theatrical campaigns helped make him more and more popular, and after a long political battle, he finally took office on January 28, 1978 as a city supervisor alongside Dan White.

White and Milk were not always at odds with each other. They were actually both Democrat’s working under Dianne Feinstein, the current senator of California (since 1992). At the time, there was this horrific bill called Proposition 6 or the Briggs Initiative that was sponsored by a California state senator, and this bill would have made it not just legal but mandatory to fire gay teachers and any public school officials that supported gay rights. Both White and Milk voted against the bill, and it ultimately did not pass (thank goodness). One source I read said tha/.es1`t Milk and White would even have lunch or coffee together occasionally, and Milk even attended White’s son’s christening. 

But there were other areas in which White and Milk began to clash. Milk reversed his support for White’s efforts to keep a “home for troubled youth” out of his distrcit, and maybe as retaliation, White reversed his support for a gay-rights measure that was important to Milk. One quote from an article by Daniel Flynn in the City Journal said “Milk perhaps never saw White as an ally, but White clearly saw Milk as such, which led to feelings of betrayal.”

So, fast forward to November 10, 1978, and White hands in his sudden resignation and then within a week asks for his job back. Mayor Moscone was initially going to welcome White back onto the board, but he reversed his decision last minute after Milk (and others) lobbied against it. White felt very betrayed, and if you take a look at his personal life around this time, negative feelings had been brewing for a long time. People had begun to notice changes in his usually sunny disposition, he was typically very into health and fitness, but over the past few months he had changed his diet to include primarily highly processed foods and he had stopped working out. Put a little dog ear on that fact, because we will absolutely be coming back to it. 

So the atmosphere is tense, and there is some evidence that Dan White’s mental health has been declining for some time, and now he has been told he can’t have his job back even though he has a family at home to support, and from his perspective, it’s because a friend lobbied against his return to the board. Time to call a friend and go for a drink to complain or maybe connect with a therapist, but that’s not what he did.  On November 27, 1978, Dan White had a friend drive him to the San Francisco City Hall, the very same day that Mayor Moscone was planning to appoint the new board member. White was carrying two guns, one with hollow bullets which are more lethal (they expand upon contact with soft tissue), and his service revolver from his work as a police officer. White snuck into City Hall through a window so that he could avoid the metal detectors, and went directly to Mayor Moscone’s office. Moscone could immediately sense that White was angry and asked if they could retreat to a private lounge to chat further where others couldn’t hear them. So they did, and as Moscone poured two drinks for them, White pulled out the revolver and shot him in the shoulder and chest from a distance. And then, White walked right up to Moscone and put two bullets in his head, point blank. As White exited the office, he ran into Dianne Feinstein who called after him, but White responded “I have something to do first.”

White proceeded towards his former office, and on the way there, he ran into Harvey Milk and asked Milk to step into the office with him. Milk agreed and entered the office, where he repeated essentially the same assassination - multiple shots from a close range distance and then a final very close range shot to the head. Dianne Feinstein had followed them and she rushed into the room to check Milk’s neck for a pulse. She was so badly shaken that she required physical support from police officers, but she was able to muster the strength to announce the murders to the public shortly after, and this is her quote “As President of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to make this announcement. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed. The suspect is Dan White.”

The coroner who later worked on Moscone and Milk’s bodies said that they most likely would have survived the first round of shots, but it was the deliberate close range shots to the head that brought instant death. 

Dianne Feinsten was promoted to Mayor after Mayor Moscone’s death, becoming the first female mayor to serve in that office. 

At this point, you might be wondering - where does the food come in? It’s coming, I promise. 

Dan White was arrested and charged with first-degree murder with special circumstance, which potentially carried the death penalty in California at this time. 

As you can probably imagine, this trial was sensational. Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk had many supporters, Milk was a hero to many at the start of his political career and Moscone was lovingly called “the people’s mayor”, and this crime was absolutely devastating. Dan White’s legal team had a terrible job ahead of them; they had to defend an admitted double assassin that had brought two guns into city hall, fired at extremely close range, and had been seen by multiple witnesses at the scene of the crime. The lawyers needed to get creative, and this is where the twinkie defence comes in. So the lawyers did get creative, but not as creative as some people think. Many people believe that White’s lawyers argued that White was eating so many Twinkies and other high-sugar ultra processed foods leading up to the assassinations, that his diet had actually caused psychological and physiological changes that led him to act in a way that was inconsistent with his normal behaviour. So to paraphrase, many people thought the defense was saying that twinkies made him do it. This is only a half-truth, because what the lawyers actually argued is that he had a diminished capacity due to his depression, as evidenced by changes in his personality and demeanour that included diet, lifestyle, and mood changes. 

Psychiatrist Dr. Martin Blinder was called to testify in court and he testified that Dan White was depressed as evidenced by the conversion of the previously health-conscious man into someone who had a diet of twinkies and other “junk foods”. 

Snopes.com had a great analogy as to why this statement has been misinterpreted,so I’m going to read the direct quote from Snopes. 

“This testimony was similar to offering evidence that the habitual wearing of torn and dirty clothes by someone who had previously always been a snappy dresser was a sign that that person was suffering from depression. Nobody who paid attention would claim that such testimony asserted that bad clothing had caused the defendant’s depression, but that is essentially what happened in White’s case.”

People misinterpreted the defense as suggesting that Twinkies had caused the depression, instead of being one symptom of it. Dr. Blinder did, at one point, suggest that excessive sugar could aggravate a pre-existing chemical imbalance in the brain, but it was only a passing comment and not a significant part of White’s defense. But the public was absolutely led to believe that Twinkie consumption was the basis of the defense, so in a moment, I’m going to read some snippets from the media, but some of them have spoilers, so first I have to share the upsetting and shocking outcome of the trial. 

Dan White was only convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible sentence in this case. Despite the fact that White had brought two loaded guns with hollow bullets, snuck into City Hall through a window, avoided security and bodyguards, reloaded after killing Mayor Moscone, walked across City Hall to find Harvey Milk, and shot both victims multiple times at close range, the jury found that White’s actions were not premeditated, largely due to this defense. 

To say people were furious is an understatement, and part of why the Twinkie defense myth took hold is that many found it hard to believe that a rationale jury of peers could find Dan White not-guilty of premeditated murder, and so facts were twisted to a story about how a slick lawyer used an absurd Twinkie Defense and got him off. 

The public was outraged, and this verdict actually sparked the White Night riots. The White Night riots were a series of events that took place on the evening of the same day that Dan White received his conviction of manslaughter, May 21, 1979, and the next night, May 22, would have been Milk's 49th birthday. The city's gay community was protesting the verdict, and was said to have been the largest display of anger and protest by the gay community since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City. White’s status as a former police officer only enraged the tensions. The protest started as a peaceful march and escalated to hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage to City Hall, with many injuries to police officers and rioters. 

Dan White served only five years of his seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release from prison, he returned to San Francisco, where he ultimately died by suicide. A very sad story all around. 

So here are some of the misleading media statements that caused the public to have a warped perception of the Twinkie Defense, in combination with the shocking verdict. These are collected from Snopes.com, so I actually don’t know the original publications or if there was ever a retraction. 

[White] got off with voluntary manslaughter. The defense had argued that the refined sugar in White’s junk food had made him depressed and mentally incapable of premeditated murder.

His attorney’s mounted what came to be known as the “Twinkie defense” in which he argued that he suffered from diminished capacity because of the excessive amounts of junk food he consumed.

So in summary of the Twinkie Defense: Junk food (and Twinkies specifically) was used as evidence that White was depressed; White’s depression was used to establish grounds for the diminished capacity plea; and therefore White was judged incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction. But no one ever claimed that eating cream-filled snack cakes put White into a sugar-induced rage that drove him to kill. 

It’s a terribly tragic story of the assassination of two prominent political figures to an individual struggling with mental health that wasn’t obtaining the help that he needed. 

Now, since 1978, the diminished capacity defense has been used in many different variations, most commonly with caffeine, cough syrup, and/or alcohol. 

To finish off, I want to talk a little bit about the link between sugar and depression. The defense argued that White had depression already, as evidenced by his consumption of Twinkies, but there was a comment made by Dr. Binder that excessive sugar could have aggravated a chemical imbalance in the brain. Is there any evidence to support that? 

Well, there’s some evidence to support a correlation or an association between depression and sugar intake, but not a direct causation.

Studies have shown that high consumption of soft drinks, added sugars, and low-quality carbohydrates can increase risk of depression. A dietary pattern characterized by a high intakes of fruit, vegetables, whole grain, fish, olive oil, low-fat dairy and antioxidants and low intakes of animal foods is associated with a decreased risk of depression. 

As we learned in Becca’s intro to nutrition research in episode 014 about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, it is very challenging to definitively link one nutrient or one isolated component of food to a chronic condition, especially one that typically develops from a multitude of genetic and environmental factors. So while a low-quality diet might play a role in one person’s mental illness, it may play a limited role in anothers. So we aren’t able to say “sugar causes depression” or “they’re depressed because they keep eating sugar”, but the evidence does support a statement like “diets lower in processed foods and higher in fruits, vegetables, and other whole foods are associated with lower rates of depression overall. 

You also have to consider what comes first - the depression or the lower-quality diet? Someone who is already depressed is very likely going to be reaching for convenient sources of energy that are high in sugar vs someone who is not depressed might be more inclined to make a healthy, balanced meal. & so when you study individuals already living with depression, they may naturally have a higher consumption of processed foods high in sugar. However, researchers have actually found that those who regularly consume a healthy eating pattern, for example the mediterranean diet, do have a lower risk of ever developing depression. So the research is ongoing, but it seems that people with higher sugar intake as part of a diet rich in highly processed foods are more likely to experience depression.

And that, my friends, is the end of season 1 of Dietetics After Dark. & we don’t have a question for next episode because we haven’t decided what it will be yet. 

B: I actually have a question for you!