Your dinner sounds delicious, BTW!

Most of the list of ingredients in the Little Debbie cakes are added nutrients to help make up for what's been removed in the flour refining process.

Ironic that in order to create wheat based UPFs that can be preserved long enough to reach store shelves, and for home storage, all these nutrients are removed or destroyed in the process of milling, refining, and bleaching: Manganese, Zinc, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Niacin, Vitamin B6, copper, folate, selenium, potassium, pantothenic acid, thiamine, calcium, riboflavin, vitamin A and vitamin E.

The "enriching" process only adds 5 nutrients: Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid.

(I've read in the past that there are actually more nutrients in the original wheat berries than in the list above - something like 23? 27? And that the nutrients added to enrich the nutrient deficient refined wheat flour are in smaller amounts than in the original grain - I don't recall what book I read that in 40-some years ago, and don't have the patience to dig through google's mess to find out right now. The point is that for all of whole wheat's deficiencies as far as nutrition is concerned, it's still better for you than the refined stuff.)

If we break it down to it's most basic parts, it's wheat starch, water, sugars, seed oils, and some cocoa. Everything is chosen to make it a product that meets minimum gov't requirements, and to preserve it.

Other items on the list of ingredients in the Little Debbie cakes are flavor enhancers, other versions of starch and sugar, or preservatives to keep the finished product from getting moldy or stale tasting too quickly.

Nutritionally though?

A perfect example of empty calories. And yet I can assure you that the nutrition label has parts that make make it sound far less nutritionally deficient than it really is.