Can I Have a Twinkie?

S has never heard of a Twinkie before - much less eat one.

That was, until she saw the movie: Bridge to Terabithia.

Since then, she hasn't stopped bugging me for a taste of Maybelle's stolen treat.

Fitiingly, I came across a newspaper article a few days ago about a new book called "Twinkie, Deconstructed" by Steve Ettlinger. It tells what this cakes' 39 ingredients are made of - plus a few other interesting (to put it mildly) uses of its ingredients.

In the meantime, I finally relented to S' constant pestering and picked up some Twinkies for her at the neighborhood deli.

After a couple of bites, she pushed the plate away, wrinkled her nose, and deemed the gooey sponge as "too sticky, too sweet".

Her curiosity was satisfied.

I gladly dumped the rest of it (Tiffany plate not included) in the garbage bin.

That will be her first and last taste.

Here are five of the snack's peculiar elements:

CALCIUM SULFATE - Extract more water from this Twinkie ingredient, and it becomes plaster. "They just dig it up and put it in a bag, it's that pure." says Ettlinger.

There are four other rocks (including salt and limestone) in the recipe.

GLUCOSE - Glucose syrup in the cake and filling adds bulk and sweetness and helps in browning. But mainly, it keeps the cake moist.

Glucose also adds gloss and pliability to shoe leather, prolongs the setting of concrete and keeps hand lotion moist for years.

CELLULOSE GUM - One of the few ingredients with no real home equivalent, this cooked goop from cotton lends slipperiness to the filling - as it also does to rocket fuel. It's also found in Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa, Starbucks low-fat latte, denture adhesives and ceramics glaze.

PHOSPHORUS - Hard to believe the baking powder that makes Twinkies so light is partially made from the element that puts the glow in tracer bullets and the bang in artillery shells. The author went down 1,600 feet in a Wyoming fuel mine and then drove in a jeep for 20 minutes to see it being made.

POLYSORBATE 60 - Thick cream and egg yolks are nature's way of merging water and fat for creaminess. Polysorbate replicates this, but lasts much longer. The emulsifier is made using explosive ethylene oxide.

Yep, digesting that last info is enough to blow anybody's mind out.

LINK: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/terabithia/

"Far and away the best price that life offers is the chance to work hard at something worth doing." - Theodore Roosevelt