Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats
In this delightful romp through the food processing industry,  Ettlinger, who writes on consumer products (The  Complete Illustrated Guide to Everything Sold in Hardware Stores),  says, "Believers of urban legends take note.... Twinkies are not just made of  chemicals," nor will their ingredients allow them to last, "even exposed on a  roof, for 25 years." But what exactly their ingredients are, and how they come  from places like Minnesota and Madagascar to be made into what Ettlinger calls  "the uber-iconic food product, the archetype of all processed foods," is the  subject of his book. Each chapter looks at individual ingredients, in the same  order as on a Twinkie package, so Ettlinger finds himself traveling to eastern  Pennsylvania farms to study wheat, as well as to high-security plants that  manufacture highly toxic chlorine used in minute amounts to make the bleached  flour that is "the only kind that works in sugar-heavy" Twinkies or birthday  and wedding cakes. His exploration of the manufacturing processes of cellulose  gum ("perfect for lending viscosity to the filling in snack cakes—or rocket  fuel"), for example, cleverly reveals how Twinkie ingredients "are produced by  or dependent on nearly every basic industry we know."(Mar. 1)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.