I just could not get into this book. And it's even in the genre I like,
food history and information. And the twinkie? It's an icon!Ettlinger is surprised when his daughter asks where an unpronounceable ingredient on a package of food comes from. He can't answer it, and that bothers him. So he decides to research it and other food additives. And he settles on the twinkie because it is an icon and has so many unusual ingredients on it. Researching these ingredients, he visits mines, plants, and many other places to find out where the twinkie had its ingredients sourced and how it was developed.
A lot of what he finds isn't actually that helpful as all too frequently it says he wasn't allowed in the plant or noone knew much about a certain ingredient or where it comes from. It certainly presents the industry as quite secretive. And he himself is rather waffly on the subject. I expected this to be against all the additives in the food, but Ettlinger's tone is actually admiring at points, which I thought strange considering some of the stuff he tells us in this book. But he was very sympathetic to the big food manufacturers and their weird food products.
I liked the premise of the book. Who wouldn't want to learn more about twinkies? But the carry through left a little to be desired. There was a lot of information, and I learned quite a bit I didn't know, but it was hard to get through. He welds his chapters together ok but the way the information was presented was so dry that I had a hard time being absorbed or focusing on the book. And as said before, the tone was different than I expected. You'll learn a lot about what kind of rocks go into your food (it's more than you think!) but in-depth research simply wasn't possible because of the industry secrets so there's nothing too big in it.
I like these types of books but not this one. I think there are better written books about the food industry out there (Pandora's Lunchbox).
Twinkie, Deconstructed
Copyright 2007
282 pages
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