did little debbie snacks have to be dumped? ODOT says yes (link)
06.03.09 - katu - by katu staff & news services

late monday evening, in portland, or, near the intersection of 5 & 217, a semi-truck carrying a load of little debbie snacks was speeding down the highway when it lost control & ended up on its side. what did they do with all the snacks once they had removed the truck from the highway six hours later? fun time snack party on the highway? nope. they threw those snacks in a landfill. to this i offer up a hearty nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! what a senseless waste of snacks.

yesterday, i kept coming across reports about this story. i have one of those new fandangled google news alerts set up for "snacks" & three straight alerts were about this story. of course, they were conveniently spaced around two hours apart, just long enough for the story to leave my mind & then bam!...right back in. katu had pictures of both the disposed boxes and the truck on their website, so i decided to profile their story in today's nosh nook.

peeps in oregon have been asking questions & pointing fingers over the disposal of the snacks. why would they throw out all that perfectly "good" food? sure, the snacks were likely loaded with HFCS & other such junk, but they're still food on some level & food banks could've used at least a portion of them. as katu reports, "an oregon food bank manager raced to salvage the cargo but it was too late. it had already gone to the landfill."  mckee foods blames the ODOT for rushing the clean up & tainting the food.  the ODOT says both mckee foods & the insurance company told them to toss it.  either way, it's gone now.  amazingly enough, through it all, little debbie has managed to keep smiling...although she looks like she might be a little bit stressed out.