Twinkie Extinction: Luckily I Photographed Its 37 Or So Ingredients
As the Twinkie becomes obsolete, one photographer has captured its 37 or so ingredients in their raw form.
1. Wheat flour
I’ve never been a health nut. But I was raised by one. My mother wouldn’t let us kids within one hundred feet of meat, eggs, white bread, or any sort of processed food. She made homemade wheat gluten. How many moms do that? I don’t even remember seeing a Twinkie or Hostess Cupcake until I left for college. Once I left the safety of my mother’s kitchen, I loosened up a bit. Not so much that I traded in all of my vegetables for processed food, but enough to think that Cap’n Crunch, Fritos, and Jiffy Peanut Butter most decidedly deserved a place in my new diet.
More recently, when I became a parent, I started thinking a bit about food. I began to consider which foodstuffs are healthy and which are not. Given how much thought my own mother put into it, it was hard not to. A career in photography has provided me license to embrace my obsessive compulsive side. I love the idea of taking any object and deconstructing it into its component parts. Essentially, I find great thrill in lining things up and photographing them. Thus, this project. The Twinkie is made up of 37 or so ingredients and this is what they look like.
I will mourn the loss of the Twinkie. Sadly, I've been to every store around looking for Twinkies and I've been beaten to the punch....none to be found!
28. Diglyceride
37. Red 40
22. Soy Protein Isolate
36. Yellow #5
To view all 37 or so ingredients, visit www.eschlimanphoto.com/twinkie