Consider the Twinkie.
Soft, sweet, golden sponge cake.
Fluffy, creamy, melt-in-your mouth filling.
Thirty-nine ingredients.
And 14 of the country’s most common chemicals.
It’s more than a guilty pleasure, it’s a bona fide cultural touchstone whose shelf life is the stuff of urban legend.
So when Steve Ettlinger set out to write a book about processed food, the Hostess Twinkie turned out to be the perfect model.
“Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated into What America Eats” (Hudson Street Press, $23.95) chronicles Ettlinger’s quest to find the source of every ingredient listed on the iconic snack cake’s label.
The idea for a book about artificial ingredients was sparked when Ettlinger’s 6-year-old daughter asked him, “Where does polysorbate 60 come from, Daddy?”
It was a question the veteran food writer couldn’t immediately answer.
“I can picture the wine country in France and California when I drink wine. Why not do the same for polysorbate 60?”
He considered exploring the ingredients used to make bread, Yoo-hoo chocolate drink, salad dressing and instant soup.
“I wanted to find one product that was familiar, whose ingredient list was about the right length and which covered the range of ingredients, flavors and colors,” Ettlinger says. “I went to the supermarket and poked around a long time and found the Twinkie and said ‘Eureka!’ “
Ettlinger’s fact-finding mission took him from a plant in New Jersey that breaks 7 million eggs a day, to a gypsum mine in Oklahoma to a tree farm in Arkansas.
So much of his time was spent at locations that appeared far removed from anything resembling food that he had to continually remind himself that he was researching something that — ultimately — you could actually eat.
“I was standing in the mine where they dig trona, or sodium carbonate ore for baking powder, baking soda and other things,” Ettlinger says.
“I’m looking at this giant claw of a machine that scrapes 3 feet of rock every time it bites into the wall of rock 1,600 feet below the ground. I’m thinking, all this just for a little cake?”
Examine the Twinkie’s ingredient list and you will find a few items recognizable as edible: flour, sugar, eggs. But it’s mostly a head-scratching register of chemicals. It’s not surprising that the Twinkie is related to such delicacies as cardboard, ceramic glaze, shampoo, concrete, fire retardant and explosives.
The close kinship between what we eat and what we use to, say, fertilize the lawn or oil the brakes on our car, does raise the question of whether artificial ingredients are healthy. Ettlinger’s book avoids this topic entirely, leaving judgment on the relative merits of artificial ingredients to dietitians and nutrition experts.
“Are Twinkies bad for you? Everybody asks me that,” Ettlinger says.
“Well, I don’t think of Twinkies as good or bad. They’re a treat, they’re a dessert. If you want good for you, it’s your fruits and vegetables. End of story.”
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What makes a Twinkie a Twinkie?
A look at some ingredients that give this popular treat its signature look, feel and taste.
Yellow No. 5 food dye
Function: Coloring that puts the “gold” in “golden sponge cake”
Source: Benzene
Other uses: Solvents, detergents, gasoline, plastics and perfume
Calcium sulfate
Function: Binder that prevents dry ingredients from caking
Source: Gypsum
Other uses: Plaster of Paris, Sheetrock, paint, beer, canned fruits and vegetables
Polysorbate 60
Function: Emulsifier that creates “cream” by replacing real butter and eggs
Source: Corn, palm oil and petroleum
Other uses: Shampoo, soaps and cosmetics
Cellulose gum
Function: Filler that plumps up “cream” and keeps it moist and glossy
Source: Trees and cotton
Other uses: Denture adhesive, ice cream, ceramic glaze, diapers and liquid detergent
Phosphates
(sodium acid pyrophosphate and monocalcium phosphate)
Function: Helps make this sponge cake light and airy
Source: Phosphate, lime and soda ash
Other uses: Coca-Cola, meat preservative, surimi, herbicide, fire retardant and naval jelly
Source: “Twinkie,Deconstructed”
