Gulp! Take a gander at a Twinkies 37 or so ingredients A dogged author and an obsessive-compulsive photographe
Could an argument be made that the Twinkie — the ubiquitous snack cake with decidedly mysterious origins — is in fact an “all natural” foodstuff?
It’s a question that’s dogged Steve Ettlinger for years. The author of the book “Twinkie, Deconstructed” spent months of his life interviewing chemical engineers, questioning industrial bakers and even traveling 1,600 feet below the surface of the Earth to see where Twinkie ingredients are mined. (Mined!)
To be sure, the Twinkie contains easily recognizable ingredients, such as flour, sugar, water, eggs, whey and salt. But Ettlinger dug and dug until he understood what the terms Polysorbate 60, Red 40, mono and diglycerides and calcium sulfate really meant. (Spoiler alert: Calcium sulfate is a food-grade equivalent of plaster of Paris.)
LOL!
FOOD it’s NOT!