"What's a Twinkie?"

Ah -- my heart warmed as I heard Julia say those words.

She didn't know what a Twinkie was!!

Is she missing out on a great icon of American culture? A staple of childhood? Perhaps. But I hope her ignorance shows that she's also missing out on some pretty scary chemical ingredients as well!

She asked this question after Adam described at the dinner table a little talk he had with his students today: he read them the list of 39 ingredients in a Twinkie.

Of the 39, only 3 were natural food ingredients. One was flour. One was sugar. He'd forgotten the third.

But almost all the other items were derived from either a quarry, or from oil. Did you know that they use limestone to make the filling more fluffy?

LIMESTONE? Fluffy??? Whatever!

I didn't eat Twinkies growing up either. Frankly, our family couldn't afford junk food like that -- it was expensive. My mother cooked from scratch, we didn't buy processed food, and honestly, at times it was a little embarrassing. But not anymore! Thank you, Mother! I'm limestone-free :)

BTW, evidently there's a book out there, written about the ingredients of the Twinkie. So, if you have nothing else to do, it might help you take a nap sometime.

Time for an evening snack. Little Debbie cake, anyone?