A reader sent us a heads up on a just out Newsweek article by Anne Underwood, titled “Mmm Tasty Chemicals” about the upcoming publication of a sort of tell all book about America’s iconic junk food: the Twinkie.
The book, Twinkie, DeconstructedImage may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
by Steve Ettlinger avows right in the subtitle his stated mission to track to their origins each of the 39 ingredients (yes, 39) in a Twinkie.
The article itself is interesting, but the book promises to be much like Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, an eye-opening, jaw-dropping expose of what’s in this junk food icon and why. Just the bits of revelation in the Amazon ‘jacket’ copy make me shudder at the thought of ever having put a Twinkie into my children’s lunch sacks, albeit done, as it was, before I had my brain transplant twenty plus years ago.
We’ve pre-ordered our copy and I can’t wait to dig into it.
As for digging into the star of the show, however, if it’s cream filled sponge cake I’m after, for my money, I’d rather stray on the real thing. Give me a piece of real homemade sponge cake stuffed with real cream filling–eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, butter and cream–not some 39 component chemical chimera designed to taste like it was made of those real things, but to last, like a vampire, for all eternity. The carb cost would be about the same, but the thought not quite so horrific…or industrial.
