I decided to read today's book because I'm allergic to tons of foods (basically everything that tastes good) . I'm allergic to almost every kind of processed food, and so I was hoping that if I read this book it would gross me out to the point where processed food never look good again.
Today's book; "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."
What I learned from this book was that Twinkies rules the world - well, at least the financial world. So many industries are involved in making Twinkies, so the next time you eat a Twinkie and you start to feel guilty about eating something that is so unhealthy - just sit back and think about how you are helping to fuel the economy (my blog doesn't just entertain, it also enables). The other major thing I learned is that Twinkies are not vegetarian. That may not seem major to you, but I already had a really unpleasant moment a few months ago when I had to break the news to my sister that Stove Top is not vegetarian - and I'm not anxious to travel down that road again. I guess I could have just not told her and let her go on eating it, blissfully unaware of what it really contained - but I couldn't do it. Every time I looked at her I felt guilty and I cracked and told her the truth after about 3 minutes - that is, three minutes after she picked up a box of Stove Top, not three minutes after she started eating it - I'm not heartless.
On a random side note: My computer's spell check doesn't recognize Twinkie as a word, which surprises me since it does recognize Tupperware as one. What is the spellcheck trying to tell me, that Tupperware is more important than Hostess products? I object. - After discovering this, I wasted a few minutes typing other product names to see which ones spellcheck recognizes - computers provide so many ways of wasting time, the possibilities are endless.
I learned a lot about alternative uses for the foods (and chemicals being passed off as food) that are commonly found in processed snack foods. For instance, sugar and its derivatives have many industrial uses: as a water-based ink for printing on plastic bags, for curing tobacco, for cleaning out cement mixers. Glucose, which is found in Twinkies: adds shelf life to tobacco, brings glossiness and pliability to shoe leather, controls evaporation of perfume, and stabilizes adhesives. Cornstarch, also found in Twinkies is used: to make paper and cardboard, to make packaging peanuts, to keep textiles smooth and collars stiff. - None of this is probably news to a person who actually remembers what they learned in science glass, but I've retained almost nothing from that time, so I re-learned some things from reading this book.
I also learned some stuff about how to make baked goods light and airy that I think will be useful in making allergy-free baked goods - which is an incredibly challenging experience. That alone made reading the book worth is. I have been trying for almost 12 years to figure out how to make baked goods without dairy, eggs, wheat, or refined sugar - and I have succeeded with a few things (cookies and some kinds of muffins), I am still struggling when it comes to cake and bread. Cake and break always comes out a steaming wad of dough that's so dense I think I could injure someone if I threw it at them. Not that I've ever tried - but I did throw a cake across the kitchen counter once in frustration, and it landed all in once piece - which is never a good sign when it comes to cake. But reading about the process by which baked goods are made in factories helped me to generate some new ideas. Wish me luck dear readers, because I'm about to embark on what is sure to be a frustrating 3,000th attempt to make cake without dairy, eggs, wheat or sugar.
