Shmoo Review: Twinkie, Deconstructed

"EEEW"..."Gross!"..."YUCK!" Warning: don't curl up in bed with Twinkie, Deconstructedif outbursts like that are going to keep your spouse from sleeping. Because it's hard not to exclaim out loud as author Steve Ettlinger leads you through the mysterious inner workings of the industrialized food system.

Ettlinger sets out to follow each ingredient in a Twinkie back to its original state, and describes the convoluted industrial processes that give us such food additive favorites as "polysorbate 60" and "sodium stearoyl lactylate".

This book is the perfect read for anyone who wonders where our food comes from and what it's made of. If you partake of modern processed goodies – and I don’t mean just the golden cream-filled ones -- you may be quite surprised to find out what you’ve been putting in your mouth. Even though Ettlinger chose to focus on the Twinkie because of its popularity and long list of ingredients, the additives and chemicals he describes are present in a vast number of the foods on our grocery store shelves -- yes, even some of the vegan ones.

Vegans might want to pay special attention to the chapter on soy, where Ettlinger describes the process by which soybeans are transformed into shortening, lecithin, and soy protein isolate, the last of which shows up in many vegan "meats" and "sports bars".

I highly recommend Twinkie, Deconstructed, but maybe not for bedtime reading. Because even after you quit shouting and let your partner go to sleep, you may find it hard to sleep yourself, your mind haunted by images of giant factories filled with corn, flour floating through sprays of chlorine gas, and soy flakes soaking in vats of lye. I know I did.