 Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats Books In Print, Audio Books. |
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Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats
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Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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I like 'em deep fried. Yum!
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"Ingredients: Enriched bleached wheat flour (flour, reduced iron, 'B' vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate (B1), riboflavin (B2), folic acid)), sugar, water, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable and/or animal shortening (contains one or more of: soybean, cottonseed or canola oil, beef fat), whole eggs, dextrose, contains 2% or less of: modified corn starch, glucose, leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), sweet dairy whey, soy protein isolate, calcium and sodium caseinate, soy flour, salt, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate 60, soy lecithin, cornstarch, corn flour, corn dextrin, cellulose gum, sodium stearoyl lactylate, natural and artificial flavors, sorbic acid (to retain freshness), FD&C Yellow 5, Red 40." - From an actual Twinkies package
"Last Sale Date: Dec 17" - From the same Twinkies package, purchased November 24
"Examining the labels found on supermarket shelves, it becomes obvious that Twinkies are merely an archetype of almost all modern processed foods; so many others share their ingredients and attempts at immortality on the shelf ..." - author Steve Ettlinger
As author Steve Ettlinger ruefully admits, when his 6-year old daughter asked, "Where does pol-y-sor-bate six-tee come from, Daddy?", Ol' Dad had to confess fallibility; he didn't know. Thus, his personal mission to find out the origin of this ingredient on the ice cream wrapper of the moment resulting in this book, TWINKIE, DECONSTRUCTED.
For any junk-food lover or despiser with at least a minimal interest in nutrition and a major curiosity about the world we live in, TWINKIE DECONSTRUCTED is a must read. Within, Ettlinger describes the source and processing steps for each ingredient that goes into Twinkies without becoming overly technical, or at least not so much that the eyes of anyone who failed high-school chemistry will glaze over. An example of the narrative's tone on ingredient evolution might be that on the creation of FD&C Yellow 5 and Red 40:
"Shanghai Dyestuffs Research Institute Co., Ltd., the largest synthetic food color institute in China ... (reacts aniline) with a metal sulfate to create sulfanilic acid ... Meanwhile, Sinopec (china's largest oil refinery) refines naphtha and ethylene out of more crude oil and combines them to make naphthalene ... Shanghai Dyestuffs reacts this with another acid and plain old table salt to make something called Schaeffer's Salt, the key ingredient in both red and yellow ... Two acids are essential ingredients, nitric acid to make red, and tartaric acid for yellow."
If the above passage seems technically daunting, never fear; such never becomes overpowering. Indeed, much of TWINKIE DECONSTRUCTED are asides into less technical avenues of arcane but interesting facts. Did you know that there are six kinds of wheat? Or that the one pound of the coloring cochineal, found in Campari and Dannon's boysenberry yogurt, is derived from the dried bodies of 70,000 female cochineal insects harvested off the paddles of prickly pear cacti? Or that Osama bin Laden was once part owner of a Sudanese acacia gum firm before he was tossed out of the country in 1996? This is cool stuff.
Reinforcing the fact that he's only using Twinkies to illustrate a point, Ettlinger regularly mentions the other products, foodstuffs or otherwise, which contain the ingredient under discussion in the text; for one who perhaps doesn't read ingredient labels, it's eye-opening. At times, the knowledge gained may give the worrywarts one more cause for angst:
"Let's hope the cows of Belarus graze upwind of Chernobyl, because Belarus, along with Russia and Poland, is where a lot of the cheaper milk we use to make lower grades of sodium and calcium caseinate comes from." (Do your Twinkies glow in the dark?)
I enjoyed TWINKIE, DECONSTRUCTED immensely because it's chock full of that sort of esoteric knowledge that gives me a break from daily concerns like the price of gas, Al Gore's pre-occupation with global warming and whether or not Britney is nuts and an unfit Mom. Now, if my nutrition fanatic wife would only give me back my package of Twinkies. |
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