Twinkie Deconstructed

This is what I learned upon completing Steve Ettlinger's Twinkie Deconstructed.

Everything we eat comes from rocks, corn and petroleum.

Okay, that's an oversimplification, but Ettlinger's journey through processed food kept coming back to those three things as the starting point of many ingredients. Yes, we're dependent on foreign oil for so much more than just fuel for our SUVs.

Ettlinger's book started with a question from his son. While perusing a Twinkie wrapper, he asked where polysorbate 60 comes from. Ettlinger eventually set out on a journey to trace the history of all the ingredients on the Twinkie label. He travelled through numerous factories and underground mines to locate the source of twinkie-ness.

This list, from his website, gives a breakdown of where it all comes from.

THE TWINKIE NEXUS of INGREDIENTS

The Twinkie-Industrial Complex of Twinkies’ Raw and Final Ingredients

As Described in

Twinkie, Deconstructed

ANIMAL:

chickens – whole eggs

cows - whey, caseinate, animal shortening

bacteria, yeast, fungi – vitamins B1 and B2, folic acid, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, glucose, sodium stearoyl lactylate, polysorbate 60, whey

VEGETABLE:  

corn – corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, modified cornstarch, corn dextrins, dextrose, glucose, corn flour, polysorbate 60, sodium stearoyl lactylate

soy – soybean oil, partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, soy protein  isolate, soy lecithin, sodium stearoyl lactylate

canola – shortening, sodium stearoyl lactylate

cotton - partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, sodium stearoyl lactylate, cellulose gum

wheat – flour

palm trees - partially hydrogenated vegetable shortening, mono and diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactylate

olive oil – mono and diglycerides, colors

sugar cane  - sugar

sugar beets – sugar

vanilla orchid – natural flavor

trees – cellulose gum

MINERAL:

crude oil or natural gas - artificial vanilla, artifical butter flavor, artificial colors, vitamins, sorbic acid, polysorbate 60, sodium bicarbonate, cellulose gum

limestone – monocalium  phosphate, calcium caseinate,  whey, SSL

phosphorus – monocalcium phosphate

trona - sodium bicarbonate, sodium stearoyl lactylate

salt - salt, bleach, colors (and as source of lye and HCl in all processing)

gypsum – calcium sulfate  

iron – ferrous sulfate

air – ammonia for nitric acid for niacin and colors

sulfur – ferrous sulfate

water – water

Mmm. Tasty.

I've been reading books by Michael Pollan and watching Food Inc and generally trying to be more aware of what I'm eating. This nook was another big step toward encouraging me to avoid prepackaged, processed foodstuffs. 

My favorite example, from early in the book, comes from the reveal of how iron gets into enriched flour. Of course, enriched flour is a good thing, with the added vitamins & minerals helping to eliminate the (now forgotten) disease pellagra. (Although if everyone ate a balanced diet and used whole wheat flour we wouldn't need enrichment, we'd be getting all the vitamins & minerals we need.) Now, when you make iron into steel, a big coating of rust covers the steel. So it's bathed in sulphuric acid, where the rust falls to the bottom, ultimately getting separated from the acid then ground into powder and sprinkled into flour. Voila! You've just enriched your flour with iron.

Yummy!

And so it goes, from oil refinery to chemical processing plant to your mouth.

Ettlinger's a good writer and, though the process becomes somewhat repetitive with yet another chemical plant extracting yet another oil-based ingredient, it's a great look at where we get all the packaged stuff that lines grocery store shelves - and is slowly killing us all.

Bon appetit!