—Interjection—

Transition to a Higher Content of
Food As We Know It

It should not be too much to imagine that the NOT-winkie could asymptotically approach actual food, given what’s now known about nutrition, nutrients, and anti-nutrients. An emerging concern—not just over Twinkie-like foods—is over the unique molecules formed by exposure to high heat and dehydration—baking, frying, broiling—and by the modern tortures of microwave and ionizing irradiation.

Natural Preservation

I’ve always tried to honor the meme of “Eat only those foods that will spoil... but eat them before they do spoil.” Yes, that’s all very well, but reasonable durability on the shelf or in the brown bag is not too much to ask in this case. The NOT-winkies Experience, as with its Twinkies predecessor’s, must be gay—old definition: joyful and carefree—and not cause undue worry about spoilage.

The bog-standard Twinkie relies on sorbic acid, high sugar and salt content, and scant levels of perishable ingredients to extend shelf life to the one-month mark. In making the transition to food-based ingredient functions in NOT-winkies, some natural solutions against rot & rancidity begin to come into focus:

Antioxidants:

To retard rancidity of oils & fats, there are some natural substances to consider including:

• Cinnamon (Cinnamomum spp.) bark oleoresin and extracts
• Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) extract
• Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) extract
• Turmeric (Curcuma longa) extract
• Blends of ascorbyl palmitate (vitamin C reacted with palm oil), lecithin, and tocopherols (vitamin E)

Antimicrobials:

And to stop pathogenic microbes taking up residence in your Golden Sponge Cake:

• Allspice (Pimenta dioica) extract
• Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) extract
• Cinnamon (Cinnamomum spp.) leaf extract
• Curry tree (Murraya koenigii)  leaf extract
• Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) extract
• Lemon thyme (Thymus x citriodorus) extract
• Cranberries (Vaccinium spp.): contain natural benzoates
• Prune (Prunus domestica) juice: contains malic, benzoic and salicylic acids
• Raisin (Vitis spp.) paste: contains propionic acid (mold inhibitor), and tartaric acid
• Cultured whey serum: contains acetic, propionic, and lactic acids

As you can see, many common dietary spices and fruits tend to possess strong antimicrobial and antioxidant properties in foods and in vivo. The most potent ones include marjoram, rosemary, clove, cinnamon, allspice, thyme, basil, coriander, cumin, fennel, oregano, savory, and nutmeg. Their antioxidant capacity is strongly related to their total phenolic acid content.

If including these natural preservative foods, how a NOT-winkie would actually taste is another matter. It could be that the price of giving up sorbic acid would be moving from a bland, vaguely vanilla-ish flavor to a pleasantly-scented treat with notes of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Could do worse...

Mix in berry and fruit concentrates, and the antimicrobials hitch a ride with the appealing natural aromas and flavors. Thus the artificial flavors get pinged, and the reds and yellows of cranberries and turmeric (and maybe carrot carotene pigments, aka pro-vitamin A) allow dispensing with the artificial colors too.

Sweet! and Shelf Life: Look to the bees

The lævulose (fructose) in the artificial sweetener high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) functions as a humectant, attracting and holding moisture to help keep Golden Sponge Cake tender. Since HFCS is out, natural alternatives would be a little hard to find if it weren’t for honey. Honey has of course been sought after, hoarded, and prized by mankind for millennia, none of which can be said for HFCS.
 
Honey bee workers process floral nectar into proto-honey by adding Diastase and Invertase enzymes, which break down starches into dextrins and simple sugars, and disaccharide sugars into dextrose (glucose) and lævulose (fructose). After a little evaporation and maturation in open honey comb cells, the workers cap the comb for safekeeping for future energy needs.

Adding honey at 6%-7% of the dry granular sugar’s weight would be more than enough to keep our reformulated NOT-winkie moist and sweet!, while throwing a bone to regional beekeepers by boosting honey-production income.

Food Abuse: RoHS meets modern baking

There is a substance produced whenever a foodstuff containing both amino acids (protein) and reducing sugars (glucose, fructose) is hit with high temperatures under low-moisture conditions: Acrylamide, known as prop-2-enamide to the chemistry wonks. As one of a broad class of Heat-Generated Food Toxicants (HEATOX), acrylamide is widely found in common consumables such as fried potatoes (french fries/chips and potato chips/crisps), coffee, and tobacco smoke.

Regrettably, we find acrylamide especially in the dry, heavily-browned parts of baked goods such as bread crust, crispy cookies, and (almost certainly) the soft, brown layer of a Twinkie that sticks to the card stock insert of the packaging.

The FDA and WHO have been kicking the acrylamide can down the road for a quite while now, ever since it was found to be neurotoxic and hypothetically carcinogenic. The strongest action taken, apart from a few low-profile Nanny-State lawsuits, has been to encourage food processors to take steps to reduce acrylamide levels in their products by, say, 50%. To avoid alarming the public with or further desensitizing us against yet another health scare, little concerning acrylamide has been released by the three-letter bureaucracies.

To be proactive and foster consumers’ need for a little prudent avoidance of acrylamide, the formulation and baking of NOT-winkies could beneficially incorporate one or more of these elements:

• As baking progresses and the cake begins to dry out, retard the Maillard reaction by reducing the baking temperature to under 154C (309°F)
   
• Find a way to bake at the lowest possible temperature, say T < 135C (275°F) or preferably < 121C (250°F)
   
• Avoid heavy browning & hard crust formation
  
  
• Investigate steam and infrared (radiant heat) cooking methods
   
• Reduce protein and simple-sugar content; well... not likely
   
• Add nutmeg as spice/antioxidant; it may reduce acrylamide formation
   
• Consider live yeast as a processing step; it gobbles up acrylamide precursors
   
• Adding calcium salts e.g. calcium sulfate aka edible gypsum as a possible acrylamide inhibitor
   
• Show this to your parents and say humbly but firmly, “See? I was right to ask to have the crusts cut off my sandwiches!”

So spices, honey, and baking-method alternatives seem likely, necessary, inevitable, and probably why not?-welcome in the NOT-winkies milieu.

—

 
BTW acrylamide and other HEATOX compounds such as AGEs and HMF were all brought into the human diet ever since the clever notion of cooking food caught on.

And then there are the unknowns resulting from irradiating foods with gamma radiation (look up URPs), and just what microwave heating or cooking does to food.

So whaddya gonna do, except strive to avoid overheated, scorched, burned, roasted, overcooked, nuked, and old foods?
 

Coming up:
Interjection: Transition to a Higher Quality of Food As We Know It

Beekeeping for Poets

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