Mmm. Beef Twinkies!
Posted on 06/04/2007 12:22:23 PM PDT by epow
Thursday, May 31, 2007 By Steve Ettlinger Los Angeles Times
When I began researching the ingredients for Twinkies, I naively thought that their raw materials were extracted from nuts, beans, fruit, seeds or leaves, and that they came from the United States. I was looking to link places with foods -- along the lines of California wine or Maine lobster, but for thiamine mononitrate. It turned out that I was way off.
Although eight of the ingredients in the beloved little snack cake come from domestic corn and three from soybeans, there are others -- including thiamine mononitrate -- that come from petroleum. Chinese petroleum. Chinese refineries and Chinese factories. And there are other unexpected ingredients that are much harder to trace. So much for the great "All-American" snack food.
When you bite into a Twinkie, you are chewing on an international nexus of suppliers. ---------------Like many other industries, food additives have been off-shored. No major domestic vitamin or sorbic acid manufacturers remain in the U.S. Our last vitamin C plant closed in 2005 -- in fact, it closed as I was speaking to an employee about a tour -- and most of our artificial colors and flavors come from abroad as well. Our chemical industry is rapidly dismantling its expensive domestic plants and either forming joint ventures with Chinese companies or simply buying chemicals from them. This leads to lower food and pharmaceutical prices, but perhaps at the cost of quality control.
How can you have quality control when you don't even know where the ingredient is coming from? During my Twinkie research, I was particularly surprised that many American food additive "manufacturers" buy chemicals, especially vitamins, from distributors and do not know, or don't ask, where they come from.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It is most definitely NOT ok. Please don’t.
Although written by a probable lib, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” does a pretty good job of showing us how ridiculous some food production has become. The author’s primary argument is that we are getting too darn much corn. The eight corn ingredients are a good example of this. A typical burger-fries-cola meal gets over 70% of calories ultimately from corn (corn-fed cattle, high-fructose corn syrup in the condiments/bun/cola, corn oil in the fries). And that’s not even getting to the petroleum products. Full disclosure: I still eat and enjoy Twinkies.
The author has a website www.twinkiedeconstructed.com. If anyone wants to read the full text of this LA Times article, it’s linked from there. And he has other articles on Twinkie components there.
Jim Beam, the breakfast of champions.
Speaking of Twinkies...I once made a movie when I was in high school that featured an exploding twinky.
Well, in about four weeks, I expect to be getting a lot of my food from the back yard, through the middle of September.
Every time I see thiamine mononitrate it makes my mouth water.
Mmm. Beef Twinkies!
Other stories it's probably time to recycle: You should see the bugs that are crawling over the burlap bags of raw cacao beans at the Hershey plant in Hershey PA, soon to be followed by the Did you know that FDA regulations allow up to 250 "insect parts" per cup of canned green beans, not to be outdone by the the average adult American is carrying one and one-quarter pounds of undigested beef in his lower GI tract story.
That last one is my favorite - but it isn’t complete without the bizarrely specific reference to John Wayne to “substantiate” the claim.
Geeze...I never thought twinkies were made of anything that did not come out of some chemistry laboratory...Still like them though (always good to have some around and ready for the 'twinkie defense') although I haven't eaten any in many years. And based on this article I probably won't be rushing to to store to buy any soon - although I was never under the disillusion that twinkies were pulled straight from nature's vineyard...
Yes, you can now join the millions of happy and prosperous Chinese citizens taking advantage of the growing numbers of American and Western multinational corporations “outsourcing” their production to the hard-working and industrious people of China. This outsourcing has now spread to their food supplies and ingestible items. Since these firms pay us for gross weight – and this new weight will be pretty gross – and the stupid American government only spot-checks imported items in these categories (they just got lucky on the anti-freeze thing), it has opened an entirely new opportunity which our beloved Chairman is offering to any Chinese citizen willing to do a little of what the foolish Americans call “grunt work.”
Installing one of these state-of-the-art food additive production facilities behind YOUR hovel is as simple as clipping the coupon below and sending it to the address shown. Your production plant will be shipped to you in 4 to 6 weeks. Supplies are limited so don’t fart around. ACT NOW!! 
These silly Americans have an expression we have “borrowed” and modified to describe this new and exciting venture: “Don’t give me any s**t.”
Our motto will be “We won’t give any s**t. But we’ll SELL it to you fools at a really great price.”
AND LOOK FOR A NEW DROP-DEAD MONEY-MAKER COMING SOON. SOYLENT YELLOW PROMISES TO BE BIG!!
If I can find it running or growing outside, I dont eat it.
Just like Mom useta' make!
Like the good ole Wonder Bread.
I would never have pegged thiamine to be a petrochemical. I would have expected it to be extracted from cultured yeast.
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