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What's in a Twinkie anyway and do you really want to know?
Newsweek asks why is it you can bake a cake at home with as few as six ingredients but a Hostess Twinkie requires a whopping thirty-nine?
The answer of course is to have an unnaturally long shelf-life of almost a month thus "normal" ingredients like milk, cream or butter all must be replaced with things like cellulose gum, lecithin and sodium stearoyl lactylate. Not the type of thing mom was using in the kitchen.
Now its true that not many adults eat any of the 500 million Twinkies made each year, but since many of us ate them as kids there is some curiosity about what we were packing into our stomachs. The story can now be told thanks to a new book called "Twinkie, Deconstructed" (and no thanks to Hostess who refused to help with the book).
Out of the thirty-nine ingredients in a Twinkie there are a few recognizable ones: flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, water and a trace of egg.
As for the rest, be prepared for incomprehensible and barely pronounceable ingredients that resemble industrial materials more than foodstuffs. Here is a sampling:
The cake:
* Lecithin is an emulsifier made from soy. It's also used in paint to keep pigments evenly dispersed.
* Diacetyl mimics the taste of butter, since the real stuff would go rancid on a store shelf.
* Cornstarch is a common thickener. But it's more often used to make cardboard and packing peanuts.
* Yellow No. 5 & Red No. 40 give the cake the golden look of eggs.
* Sorbic acid, the only actual preservative in Twinkies, comes from petroleum.
The filling
* Shortening (in the form of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and/or beef fat) is the main ingredient.
* Polysorbate 60 is a gooey substance that helps replace cream and eggs at a fraction of the cost. It's derived from corn, palm oil and petroleum.
* Cellulose gum gives the crème filling a smooth, slippery feel.
* Artificial vanillin is synthesized in petrochemical plants. The real thing comes from finicky tropical orchids that are pollinated by hand on the one day they bloom.
There are many more things to be found in those 160-calorie cellophane sealed packages, but to find those out we'll have to read the book.
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Is a twinkies healthy
Do you think a twinkie is heatlhy
In a word....no
Wesley Hein
Wesley [at] lifetwo [dot] com
Twinkie's
Thanks, you made me sick, my favorite snack, I will be making them from now on,Oh! wonder what's all bad in the Pound cake mix that you use in making your Twinkie's ? Seem's like most foods are all full of CRAP and we all are eating it...
Twinkies
"you made me sick"
I'm sure a similar analysis of many of my favorite foods would generate the same response. That said, Twinkies is probably one food that there is only upside by eliminating from your diet.
Wesley Hein Wesley [at] lifetwo [dot] com Sign up for the LifeTwo Newsletter!
Vanillin is not that bad, I heard.
It's made from tree bark. Of course, I haven't read the book. I'm sure the author knows what he or she is talking about.
Twinkies
I stop eating twinkies along a long time ago. I dont eat store bought or processed pre packaged foods. I would not feed a dog that shyt
Twinkies
Love the negative spin!! Everything we do, everything we eat, the air we breathe, the garments we wrap around our bodies, can all be spun this way. To be pure and sweet: do not breathe in or out; do not permit anything at all to pass your lips in either direction; shun all clothing and sheltering structures- houses are terrible, caves or hollow trees are infinitely worse- just teleport your body into the center of the sun. There the heat energy and atomic processes will dissolve you into subatomic particles. That is as good as it will get. Otherwise, just blow it all off and enjoy whatever and do not look any more closely than is possible!!!! May your life be wonderfully good!!!
Pot-head
Only someone who was "baked" themselves would write a whole book about a twinkie! Soy is used in alot of things from food, to paint to body waxes, it doesn't make it unhealthy.
Twinkies
Enjoy your Twinkies. I think I'll pass though I'm not sure I needed a book to tell me what was inside of them is not something I'd particularly want inside of me.
Wesley Wesley [at] lifetwo [dot] com Sign up for the LifeTwo Newsletter!
Re: Is a twinkie healthy?
Is eating a handful of chemical waste healthy?
Maybe or with i mean definately shud be concerned about
Today was the first time i dared to try a twinkie and was utmost dissapointed in the disgusting sweet taste to these so called "cakes". Eating a twinkie is like having way too much work but in this case it makes you sick to the stomach because of the overdone sweetness to these mixtures. I mean other than it being important to selling these have you ever actually read whats in these cakes like read the "good" ingredients, well the unfortunate part is that you wouldnt find a single ingredient to these cake that actually qualifies to being "healthy" ... this is mine and many more buyers opinions and it is and should be a concern to your company.
Why get all disgusted?
Just don't eat 'em if you don't like. Chemists are human beings with children too. I never do eat them because they're tasteless. But when I was a kid and we didn't have them so available, they were a fun thing once in awhile.
Eh
The taste was disappointing to say the least :(
Eh
The taste was disappointing to say the least.
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