It was a trending item on the web today that Twinkies™ may be back this summer. Millions of Twinkies addicts will be satisfied at this news. Concerned parents that were thankful that Twinkies were going away are disappointed.
If spiritualists believed in the devil, Twinkies would be a gift from the devil. Every religion professes that the body is the temple of the soul. Twinkies have no nutritional value, and they are a major threat to health for anyone that eats them. People on the Spirit Path should not be hiking with Twinkies as their snack.
In a reverse twist of evolution, microorganisms are smarter that people when it comes to eating Twinkies. There are ingredients in Twinkies that inhibit mold and rancidity that had the original shelf life at two days. A full disclosure of the modern ingredients would make a good final exam for Organic Chemistry 201. The official shelf life of a Twinkie is listed at 25 days, not 25 years.
The original Twinkie recipe was mainly eggs, butter, white flour, milk and sugar for the pastry and a banana creme filling. It had to be eaten nearly immediately. It wasn’t heart healthy or good for diabetics, but it wasn’t a mini chemical factory in a plastic bag.
Modern recipe Twinkies are over 20% derived from corn products, including corn starch, glucose, fructose and high fructose corn syrup. Eggs were replaced by monoglycerides and diglycerides. Butter was replaced with hydrogenated vegetable oil or beef fat in the “pastry” part. Cellulose gum and polysorbate 60 replace the fat in the filling. Polysorbate 60 comes from petroleum, hydrogenated palm oil and corn, with the corn being genetically modified by Monsanto to resist Roundup, which is also a Monsanto product.
Sorbic acid is used as the preservative to stop mold. Baking powder is made from mined rocks. Phosphoric acid is an ingredient in baking powder, and is a product of Monsanto. Monsanto’s genetically modified corn is used in the corn products listed above. The artificial flavors are made from petroleum. There are a lot more ingredients in Twinkies. The vitamins used to enrich the flour are coming mainly from China and India.
The Devil is one hell of a food chemist. According to Calorie King, one Twinkie has about 150 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 19 grams of sugar, and no dietary fiber. Hydrogenated vegetable oil is like a bomb for your heart, only slower and in this case much sweeter.
It is suggested that one more substitution be done for the next generation of Twinkies. Olestra could be used to replace the hydrogenated vegetable oils or beef fat. Olestra is a fat that is a combination of sucrose and vegetable oil that passes through the body without being digested. A side benefit is that the new Twinkies would likely cause diarrhea in many people, which is a good end to the Twinkie story.
The attached video is a talk done at Google under the Authors@Google program by Steve Ettlinger in which he discusses his book: Twinkies, Deconstructed. Steve’s book describes the source of all the ingredients in a Twinkie. The author of this article also wants to thank Ed Grabianowski for his article called How Twinkies Work. These two sources were major contributors for the technical aspects of this article.
This is a list of the ingredients in Twinkies:
Wheat Flour; Bleach; Ferrous Sulfate; B Vitamins - Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (B1), Roboflavin (B2) and Folic Acid; Sugar; Corn Sweeteners; Corn Syrup, Dextrose, Glucose and High Fructose Corn Syrup; Corn Thickeners: Cornstarch, Modified Cornstarch, Corn Dextrins and Corn Flour; Water; Soy: Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil and/or Animal Shortening, Soy Lecithin and Soy Protein Isolate; Eggs; Cellulose Gum; Whey; Leavenings; Baking Soda; Phosphates: Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate and Monocalcium Phosphate; Salt; Mono and Diglycerides; Polysorbate 60; Natural and Artificial Flavors; Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate; Sodium and Calcium Caseinate; Calcium Sulfate; Sorbic Acid; and FD&C Yellow No. 5 and Red No.40.
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