Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats
About this title: When Ettlinger's young daughter asked him, What's polysorbate 60? he was at a loss--and determined to find out. The result is a fascinating, thoroughly researched exploration into the food industry and some of the most commonly processed food ingredients.
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Your search:Books»Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats(77 available copies)
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Plume
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780452289284ISBN:0452289289
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Plume
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780452289284ISBN:0452289289
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Hudson Street Press
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9781594630187ISBN:1594630186
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. minor shelfwear. Never read. basically like new. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 282 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: New. A Brand New Copy. Never Read. Buy with confidence from an Independent Bookstore where the owners, a husband and wife team, have over 30 years of combined bookselling experience. read more
"Though this book has an intriguing premise, to trace the progress of each and every ingredient in a common processed food, the twinkie, I found that the story lacked cohesion. The author goes on a number of spectacular journeys to find how ingredients are created from raw materials, and then how those are combined to make the familar snack, but there is little besides the ingredients list tying the story line together. The book however was packed with factoids like how artificial dyes are created and who invented Listerine, but I was frustrated by the dismissiveness the author seemed to bring to anticipated reader concerns about the artificial ingredients. I think it could have been a much stronger book if the author used the twinkie as a starting point, and began to put processed foods in a greater context of the economy and the country's health in general. But overall, it was a good, if technical, romp through the chemistry of food."
"This book made me think of all the Twinkies and Little Debbie Snack Cakes my dad bought over the course of his lifetime-probably thousands. I seriously doubt that Dad looked at the ingredients label, and I doubt reading it would have changed his mind. He would have just shrugged and taken another bite. If you look at the ingredients of your food - I mean really look at them - or ever wondered what you're eating when they contain mono and diglycerides or calcium sulfate (a food-grade equivalent of plaster of Paris) you need to read this book. It will make you think twice about packing that Fruit Roll-Up in your child's lunchbox."
"An interesting overview of the chemical processes that are involved in the making of a twinkie. Ettinger kept the technical aspects of twinkie-making easy enough for the layman to understand, but his sporadic attempts at humor throughout the book were a little thin. Although Ettlinger's book makes it obvious that a twinkie doesn't qualify as food in the strictest sense, he never offers up any comments on the health/environmental concerns that come with the manufacture and consumption of products like the twinkie. Perhaps he felt that it wasn't his place to comment, or maybe he had to agree not to slight the companies that granted him access to their facilities. Reading this book was strangely like watching a long episode of Food Network's show "Unwrapped.""
"Do you know what's REALLY in YOUR snack foods? This book might lead you to expect a modern-day Fast Food Nation or the Jungle, but it's actually a lightweight tour of American food processing that at times almost crosses the line into free advertising. To its credit, you learn a great deal about the brain-busting scope of the food industry, how a single, simple product like a Twinkie depends upon everything from chemical plants in Minnesota to mineral mines in China, and the facts about baking were quite interesting. But this is no expose...it's a cursory guided tour by a deeply "embedded journalist" who gleefully reprints uncontested party lines from chemical and agribusiness companies, reassuring us, if not of the safety, then the inevitability of processed food. The quality of the writing is mediocre and interspersed with too many incongruous (and lame) joking asides. Nevertheless, it's very readable and you will learn a great deal. But far from making you fear a product that he has in previous chapters revealed contains (in fact, depends upon!) such ingredients as chlorine and shaved-off-rust from steel mills, the author's final chapter concludes with a mouth-watering description of eating a Twinkie that borders on the pornographic. In short, much like the food product featured in the title, this book seems to promise much yet in the end prove decidedly non-nutritive.
Perhaps a good piece to read as a counterargument to Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?"
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