beauty of the American diet philosophy...

This makes me want to vomit. Has anyone ever read the ingredients label on a Twinkie? Granted, you'd probably want to set aside an afternoon to read the entire list, and then set aside the next day to look up what all those words no one can pronounce correctly actually mean. When finished, I would like to think that anyone in their right mind would at least contemplate whether or not this is actually something they'd like to challenge their body to digest. And now, in a country where one in four people is scientifically considered 'obese,' a need is felt to construct an entire cookbook dedicated to a snack laden with chemicals and beef fat (literally).

From an animal rights standpoint, the beef fat alone adds to the disgust, in addition to a choice statistic from the official Twinkie website:

Hostess has several bakeries across the country, which together bakes 500 million Twinkies each year. In order to do that, Hostess needs 8 million pounds of sugar, 7 million pounds of flour and 1 million eggs.

I'm sure all of 0% of these products are produced organically or even remotely naturally, too. This means that 8 million pounds of sugar is processed for this one snack alone, with at least part of it likely done bone-char fashion.

One million eggs. That's 83,333.33 (repeating, of course) dozen eggs. I believe the typical rate hens produce eggs is 1 egg per 24-30 hours. Since Hostess isn't exactly known for their animal rights concern, many, if not all, of these eggs are factory-produced, probably by hens that not only don't get to go outside, but never see daylight or anything besides their cage, and it takes these poor birds 30,000,000 combined hours to produce this amount of eggs. All for Twinkies.

I'd be lying if I said I have never eaten a Twinkie. In fact, I used to eat them quite often. I also was overweight middle-schooler who ate way too much of everything. I am by no stretch telling anyone what they should or should not eat, but it is my opinion that we really should question whether the very temporary fulfillment of indulging on chemical foods is truly worth it in the long-term...from an environmental standpoint, an animal rights standpoint, and even just for your own personal health.

Wired 14.05

I would like everyone who has a few minutes (and who doesn't, if you're reading a blog) to take a look at this article.