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Book Review of Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats

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If you're looking for a scathing condemnation of the processed food industry in America, you won't find it here. Steve Ettlinger's ingredient-by-ingredient deconstruction of the Twinkie has a decidedly positive spin to it. He stresses the point that even common household staples such as baking powder are composed of chemicals, and that the vast majority of the myriad processed ingredients in foods like Twinkies have been tested for safety many times over, and used in foods for decades, sometimes centuries. The value of this book lies in the huge amount of information packed inside it. Ettlinger goes to the real source - the farms, the mines, and the factories - of these ingredients, dissects them, and provides interesting bits of history about their discovery as well. If your goal is a true, thorough understanding of exactly what these bizarrely named ingredients like polysorbate 60 and mono and diglycerides actually ARE and where they come from, this book will tell you everything you want to know, and then some.