The other day, as I lay in bed beside my locally grown and sustainably cultivated lover, I mused, “Baby, where do Twinkies come from?” Silence. “Baby, HOW are Twinkies made?” More silence.
In this column, we’ve talked a lot about where our food comes from. We have sounded like real estate barons drilling Location, Location, Location into your minds. We have asked you if your tomatoes are the unique snowflakes of heritage varieties or pale inbred facsimiles? Are the grains in your bread nourished by soils maintained through warm-fuzzy crop rotation and composting or were they filled with synthetic fertilizer ‘roid rage as the combine approached? We share with you the joy of conscious eating.
But where your food comes from doesn’t refer just to postal codes. Because sometimes our food or its components (at times it is a stretch to call the ingredients food) come from miles under the ground. Sometimes they are the by-product of a long series of complex, energy intensive chemical reactions. They are the driver of habitat depletion. I know, I know, why does everything have to be so complicated? Well to answer that, let’s check the ingredients list on the feared and revered Hostess Twinkie.
Complex to say the least. Twinkies require a refined palate. Refined as in petroleum refinery. The long distances and time spent on the shelf mean that Twinkies have to last and not make you sick in the near term with bacterial growth (possibly preserving you long enough to suffer the direct health consequences of a diet rich in processed foods). Sorbic acid is added to many foods as a preservative and is produced using petroleum, just one of the many ways that oil is linked to our eating lives. This is not what we meant by “preserving the harvest!” Petroleum also comes to play in the added vitamin Niacin, plastic packaging, fertilizers and pesticides for producing the few grown ingredients, transportation and the energy to fuel large scale manufacturing.
Now the bad news. The familiar and comforting symbol of harvest, corn, is all over the ingredients list, attached to at least six ingredients. Corn is a greedy plant, requiring irrigation with aquifer depleting amounts of water and huge volumes of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides (petrol and mining!) due to the scale of production and low genetic diversity of crops. These intensive practices deplete and erode soils, contributing to desertification.
And how can farmers afford all these expensive interventions when the price of corn by-products is so low that soft drinks keep getting bigger AND cheaper? Subsidies. Why would governments put tax dollars into corn? Well, one answer is to help out farmers, but the rapid rate that small farms continue to go bankrupt suggests there is a more corporate beneficiary of this economic stimulus package. Big agribusiness. In order to make money in this agricultural market you need to be huge, and the bigger you are the more subsidy money you can collect to buy big equipment and fancy chemicals from big agribusiness. That’s right. Your cheap little Twinkie is a subsidized food! Heck, per calorie, Twinkies are cheaper than most vegetables. So far though, no money for small broccoli farmers is in sight.
This little snack cake has about 40 ingredients. About 40? In the interest of corporate cost savings, parts of the list read a bit like a Choose Their Own Adventure with phrases like “contains one or more of.” Vegetarian or not, I would like to know if my dessert contains beef fat.
Ingredients lists are in order of amount, from largest to smallest. But nearly 3/4 of a Twinkie’s ingredients are qualified by the statement “contains 2% or less of,” meaning these ingredients can be in any order at all. One of these possible ingredients is the rather innocuous-sounding sweet dairy whey (kudos to Hostess for finding a use for the leftovers from milk processing); while another, Monocalcium Phosphate, is also found in drywall plaster. Now I love a good kitchen reno, but plaster in my food seems rather unnecessary! Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate and friendly baking soda are also products of mining.
Now if I were to bake a Twinkie, or a “Golden Sponge cake with creamy filling,” what would my ingredients list look like? Wheat flour, eggs, honey, salt and cream. FIVE INGREDIENTS! That is 35 fewer ethical decisions to make, 35 fewer sources to consider. Sure the economic, health and environmental impacts of each of these ingredients are very real, but at least they are knowable. At least we have long-term safety data on eggs, cream, honey, flour and salt. Good in moderation. And it tastes good too – so good, in fact, that I guarantee whoever you bake it for will be very happy to see you!
Consulting the Label
Twinkie Ingredients:
Enriched Bleached Wheat Flour (Flour, Reduced Iron, B Vitamins (Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1)Riboflavin (B2)Folic Acid)), Sugar, Water, Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable and/or Animal Shortening (contains One or More of: Soybean, Cottonseed or Canola Oil, Beef Fat), Whole Eggs, Dextrose. contains 2% or Less of: Modified Corn Starch, Glucose, Leavenings (Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Monocalcium Phosphate), Sweet Dairy Whey, Soy Protein Isolate, Calcium and Sodium Caseinate, Salt, Mono and Diglycerides, Polysorbate 60, Soy Lecithin, Cornstarch, Corn Flour, Corn Dextrin, Cellulose Gum, Sodium Stearyl Lactylate, natural and artificial flavours, Sorbic Acid (to Retain Freshness), FD&C Yellow 5, Red 40.
Suggested Reading:
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover how the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (yes, mined), and Manipulated into what America Eats, by Steve Ettlinger
Recipe:
Homemade golden sponge cake with creamy filling
Honey sponge cake:
Beat 6 yolks until very light and fluffy.
Beat in 1 cup liquid honey gradually until smooth and light.
Mix 1 cup unbleached white flour with ¼ tsp salt.
Add the flour blend gradually to the egg mixture. Beat until well blended.
Separately whip 6 egg whites until stiff. Gently fold into the batter.
Grease and flour muffin tins (or line with cupcake papers), and fill 3/4 with batter.
Immediately bake until golden brown at 350F for 10-15 minutes. Cool.
Cream filling:
When mini sponge cakes are cool, whip cream with 1 or 2 tablespoons of honey (depending on your sweet tooth) until stiff peaks form.
Slice each cake in half, add a generous
dollop of cream and replace the lid.
Serve with a glass of locally brewed root beer or sarsaparilla and revel in the sustainable rush.