Twinkie, Deconstructed (10 page)

However, despite the obvious benefits to shining shoes and softening faces, dextrose and glucose are not the big draw here. The main attraction is high fructose corn syrup, and that dextrose solution being piped around the plant has a real date with destiny.

H
OW
S
WEET
I
S
I
T?

It’s time to find my son some answers. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a veritable Zelig of a food ingredient, found in food products of all kinds. In the lobby of the Blair plant stands a display showcasing some of its clients’ wares—all well-known, nationally distributed, processed foods that shall remain unnamed at Cargill’s request—fruit, sports, and soft drinks galore, of course, along with wine coolers, yogurts, breads, cereals, meats, sauces, condiments, even pet food, and, of course, the inevitable cakes. The gamut represents the epitome of popular processed foods. Their makers prefer the stability, reliable supply, easy mixing, and of course, the low price of this alternative to sugar.

HFCS is an ingredient that has literally changed consumer product icons: taste a common, major-brand soft drink like a cola or iced tea abroad, where it may still be sweetened with sugar instead of HFCS, and you might be startled at the difference. Many people find the sugar-sweetened drink is cleaner and crisper-tasting, and perhaps more thirst-quenching due to its lack of aftertaste. In Twinkies, high fructose corn syrup works with its less-sweet but much thicker cousin, plain corn syrup, to perform a variety of important functions: give body to both the cake and the filling; give color to the cake through browning (via the Maillard reactions); soak up moisture and control microbiological growth; and, of course, sweeten the whole thing without the risk of crystallization that regular sugar presents. Leave some simple sugar syrup out for a few days and crystals will form on the sides and bottom of the container; not so with HFCS. For the manufacturers of packaged foods like Twinkies, HFCS is no mere sugar substitute—it is, in fact, a huge improvement.

For the consumer, cheap, plentiful HFCS is decidedly a mixed blessing—some love the fact that its cost-effectiveness and ubiquity means that more sweet foods are available, while others decry its infiltration into our food chain and link it directly to the dramatic increase in obesity and diabetes. The debate about its merits and problems rages daily, much to the industry associations’ consternation. The industry mostly assigns the blame for the country’s problems with obesity to a lack of exercise, or cites the fact that you can’t link these issues directly with high fructose corn syrup because sugar consumption has actually dropped proportionately with the increase in the consumption of HFCS. The Corn Refiners Association, for example, insists, in a booklet entitled
Corn: Part of a Healthy Diet
, that HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) are metabolized in exactly the same way once they are absorbed into the bloodstream. Industry Web sites state that Mexicans and Europeans are experiencing rising rates of obesity and diabetes while consuming far less HFCS than we do, and industry press releases state that studies concluding the contrary are flawed (some critical studies did indeed deal only with fructose, not a blend of fructose and glucose such as HFCS or table sugar). In fact, the industry’s position, that problems linked with HFCS may have more to do with larger portion sizes, is easy to accept. People are simply eating way more processed food, which also happens to contain HFCS. (Of course, the industry advertises to encourage such consumption, but that’s the American way.) The food and agriculture industry educational group, International Food Information Council (IFIC), points out that while 600 more calories per person per day are “available” now that weren’t back before HFCS became commonly used (1980), HFCS and sucrose account for only about 10 percent of the added calories we are consuming. Meanwhile, it seems that soft drinks containing HFCS have an awful lot to do with this—but mostly because of their size, not because of their sweetener. In the 1950s, soda was sold in 6.5- or 8-ounce bottles (containing 88 to 100 calories per serving) as an occasional refreshment; today, it is regularly served in 20-ounce bottles (at 240 calories a pop) and sometimes even 64-ounce servings (what does Coca-Cola expect you to put into its Monster Mug—milk?). More important, today, soft drinks are far more often consumed as a common, mealtime beverage, than as a special treat.

Ultimately, most experts agree that we Americans (and those in modernized cultures elsewhere) eat too much low-fiber, refined food. Ask a nutritionist if HFCS is OK for you, and he or she will probably tell you to exercise more and to eat fewer calories, more whole grains and minimally processed food, especially fruits and vegetables, kind of sidestepping the HFCS controversy but also—pointedly or inadvertently, it’s not clear—encouraging the avoidance of HFCS itself. But many scientists and consumers, concerned that HFCS adversely affects things like our trigylceride and insulin levels, leading to type 2 diabetes and obesity, would not be satisfied with that answer. Dr. Richard Anderson, a research chemist at the USDA’s Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, considers HFCS a “huge problem,” because it is metabolized differently than other sugars, directly contradicting the industry line. He further confirms, “I would definitely make the link [to obesity and diabetes] with the increase in the intake of fructose.” As straightforward as that statement seems, however, it’s not conclusive, because HFCS and cane sugar have roughly the same amount of fructose.

Scientists know where to look (the liver and the pancreas, for starters) but here in the early 2000s, after thirty years of common use, the proper broad and long-term studies about the effects of HFCS still aren’t being done. This leaves a big knowledge gap into which emotion and politics easily flow. The question is central not only to our national health policies but to our billion-dollar agricultural-industrial policies (corn farming is heavily subsidized; a lot of the complaints about HFCS come from subsidy-loving, sugar-growing states). It is clearly an unresolved issue from the consumer’s health’s point of view. Both sides agree that more and better studies are needed. And unless it is found that HFCS truly interferes with your pancreas and liver, and unless consumers and their government turn their backs on artificial sweeteners, biorefineries like the one in Blair will keep cranking out high fructose corn syrup by the ton.

The air in the plant smells syrupy sweet, but since the actual processing area is off-limits to visitors, I can’t identify the source. Obviously, each company competes intensely to find the most efficient conversion process in this expensive undertaking, so precise details are not offered by anyone. Most follow a highly technical process called isomerization that was developed around 1970, where the pure dextrose gets pumped through a several-story-high tower that is filled with little beads containing an extremely efficient and precisely targeted enzyme, glucose isomerase. Each time the dextrose passes through the tower, molecules are actually rearranged, and some of the glucose changes into fructose, resulting in a higher concentration of fructose, and a sweeter syrup. Putting the same atoms in different positions allows the engineers to produce syrups of varying degrees of sweetness for different customers’ needs.

Even though the tower might hold tens of thousands of gallons, each pass-through takes only a matter of minutes. Then it goes through another set of similar towers called fractionation units, where the glucose and fructose are separated, purified, and recombined, mixing and remixing what was already sliced and diced. Although 42 percent high fructose syrup is common and typically used in Twinkies (and most cakes), 55 percent high fructose corn syrup is the big deal, the one used in most popular soft drinks. The remaining percentages—58 percent or 45 percent respectively—of the high fructose corn syrup is glucose that was not converted to fructose, plus a smidgeon of other sugars (table sugar, or sucrose, is a fifty-fifty mixture of fructose and glucose). I can’t wait to tell my son: high fructose corn syrup is cornstarch cooked with enzymes. Elementary!

When corn refiners first tried to make sweeter syrup on a major industrial level, they had trouble raising the fructose levels. The first shipment, in 1967, was only 14 percent fructose. The sweetener industry folks got their “high” when they achieved 42 percent in 1968, and then 55 percent in the late 1970s. Such dedication was worth it—the product took off exponentially within only a few years. Since 1980, when it was first used in Coca-Cola
^®
, HFCS has replaced sugar in every major American soft drink. It’s come a long way from czarist Russian chemistry. We can at least thank the Russians (or is it Napoleon?) for this invention as we sip our sodas.

Johnson, my host, silently opens a door, smiling knowingly. Steep stairs lead onto steel grating, which hovers over railcars and a tank truck with hoses as thick as my leg draped into the holes at the top. The railcar is being cleaned with 180°F water, but the stainless steel mesh hose going into the tank truck is carrying the mother lode—the ultimate, ubiquitous, freshly made high fructose corn syrup.

In a small office perched on a balcony between two apparently surgically clean bays, a huge, bearded technician, whom I’ll call Bruce, appears dressed to perform minor surgery. In white coveralls and a mask, Bruce has just returned from climbing onto the big tank truck to get a sample, and now hovers over a microscope-like tool called a refractometer. A thick yellow climbing harness still dangles from his thighs. “Just checkin’ the solids,” he drawls. This is a batch of 55 percent high fructose corn syrup, the real McCoy, and this Blair plant, like any other midsize plant, can produce as many as 5 million pounds—that’s twenty-five railcars—of high fructose corn syrup each day.

Small sample bottles of the clear liquid are scattered on the desk, begging to be tasted. A slow sip of this much maligned elixir reveals a rather thin syrup without too much pancake syrupy mouthfeel, and an intense sugar rush. “That’s as fresh as you can get,” Bruce says proudly.

Nebraska’s finest. And its thinness stands in marked contrast to the corn thickeners made elsewhere in the Midwest—cornstarch and its siblings.

CHAPTER 8

Corn Thickeners: Cornstarch, Modified Cornstarch, Corn Dextrins, Corn Flour

W
hen a cornstarch company says its products make foods “smoother, creamier, chewier, crunchier, softer, denser, healthier, or lighter,” one might be inclined to ask, why not add that they promise instant weight loss, instant wealth, and while we’re at it, infinite longevity? If an ingredient like cornstarch can really do all that, you could be excused for feeling that cornstarch and corn flour get too little respect.

Many associate corn flour with simply keeping food (pizza, bread) from sticking to oven bottoms, packages, and baking pans. Cornstarch is famous for such pedestrian tasks as thickening sauces, or for keeping dry mixes dry and flowing. Neither seems to boast a glamorous list of accomplishments. But, in fact, corn flour and cornstarch are multitalented contributors to the food biz and even more popular in the industrial/nonfood world.

Despite being a household staple, cornstarch is used to make way more cardboard than cakes. Only a bit more than 7 percent of the cornstarch made finds its way back into food like Twinkies (out of about 750 million pounds made yearly). A full two-thirds is used to make paper and cardboard. (For detractors of Twinkies or bland food and bad gravies, that statistic may not come as a surprise.) The (roughly) remaining 27 percent is used to make my kids’ favorite toy, biodegradable packaging “peanuts,” to keep textiles smooth and collars stiff, and to keep baby bottoms dry, all a far cry from food and Twinkies. Looking to the future, it seems likely that many cornstarch products can replace petroleum-based, nonrenewable resource-devouring products, such as biodegradable plastic film, fabrics, carpeting, cups, food containers, and even furniture. The hottest ticket in development is corn-based fabrics for clothing, though it is not clear whether that would be biodegradable, too. One thing is certain: cornstarch’s future is not in food.

The cornstarch used in Twinkies is likely to come from specialized wet milling plants that use good old yellow #2 dent field corn and make nothing but starch. While the Cargill plant in Blair concentrates on sweeteners, others, such as the Tate & Lyle plant in Lafayette, Indiana, or the nearby National Starch plant in Indianapolis, concentrate on starches (both firms are members of British global chemical conglomerates). Though National’s 125-acre plant is not one of the largest, it ships an impressive 4-plus million pounds of starch a day.

Sweetener and starch plants use pretty much the same process. There’s a fork in the road of the flowchart, with slurry for syrups (“sweeteners”) veering off to one side and slurry for starches veering off to the other. What’s cool is that both forks lead to Twinkies. Dedicated starch plants use a softer type of corn than syrup plants, called waxy maize or waxy corn. This corn was bred for seed during World War II from a 1908 Chinese import, when Southeast Asian supplies of tapioca, the more common source of cooking starch, were cut off. Potatoes, rice, and wheat are also common starch sources that are sometimes blended, which is why food labels often say just “food starch.” At a starch plant, this liquid starch is dried, chemically modified, or roasted so there’s something for everyone: plain cornstarch, modified cornstarch, and dextrins. (Some plants make more than four hundred different kinds of starches for industrial and food uses for far more products than Twinkies.) But as far as Twinkies are concerned, there are only three kinds of starch.

P
LAIN AND
S
IMPLE

Plain cornstarch, a fine white powder, is what you buy in the supermarket. Since it starts out as a milky soup, the challenge is to dry it. And, since the water cannot be boiled out, nor can the starch be heated too high (because it would swell into a soft, pudding-like mass, similar to what you’d get if you added cornstarch to hot gravy), the starch solution is “dewatered” through massive presses and centrifuges. At National Starches’ Indianapolis plant, the moist granules are then conveyed into the bottom of machinery so extraordinary, it calls to mind a sort of techno-Indianapolis answer to the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This is the ring dryer, a bright silver vertical circle with a 150-foot diameter that blasts the starch on a roller-coaster ride in a bed of warm (but not too hot) air and then sends it off to be packed into bags or rail-cars, all without cooking it by mistake.