In 1983, McDonalds launched their "healthier" white meat alternative - a boneless chicken finger food called the McNugget. This menu item continues to be one of the most profitable and popular products. The company estimates that one-fifth of the nation eats Chicken McNuggets at some time during the year – totaling 4.8 billion nuggets per year. Michael Pollan states in his bestselling new book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, that the McNugget is the primary reason chicken supplanted beef as the most popular meat in America.

So is it a healthy white meat alternative? Well, the McNugget is so highly processed that its taste and texture depend almost entirely on food engineering. According to the McDonald's Brochure on Nutritional Values, they are made from 38 ingredients which includes:

Chicken (53%), water, salt, modified corn starch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat), sodium phosphates, chicken broth powder (to restore some of the flavor that processing leaches out), seasoning (vegetable oil, extracts of rosemary, mono, di- and triglycerides, lecithin). Battered and breaded with water, enriched bleached wheat flour (niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, bleached wheat flour, modified corn starch, salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, dried whey, corn starch. Batter is set in vegetable shortening. Cooked in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, (may contain partially hydrogenated soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated corn oil and/or partially hydrogenated canola oil and/or cottonseed oil and/or sunflower oil and/or corn oil).

Dimethylpolysiloxane (an anti-foaming agent) is also added. According to the Handbook of Food Additives this “is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen and reproductive effector.”

Then there's TBHQ, an additive to help preserve freshness for unsaturated vegetable oils commonly imported from China. According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e. lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food.” While it may reduce blood cholesterol and/or blood triglycerides, it has some negative health effects on lab animals, such as precursors to stomach tumors and damage to DNA. Pollan says in his book, “Perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to ‘help preserve freshness.’ TBHQ is aso added to their Crispy Breast Filet, but not to their Grilled Chicken Breast. TBHQ is limited to 0.02% of the oil in a nugget - "Ingesting 5 grams of TBHQ can kill."

A Twinkie looks harmless enough, even inviting. But inside that golden exterior lies the quintessentially uber-processed food product. Its 39 ingredients include:

Enriched Wheat Flour - enriched with ferrous sulphate (iron), B vitamins (niacin, thiamine mononitrate [B1], ribofavin [B12] and folic acid), Sugar, Corn syrup, Water, High fructose corn syrup, Vegetable and/or animal shortening - containing one or more of partially hydrogenated soybean, cottonseed or canola oil, and beef fat, Dextrose, Whole eggs, Modified corn starch, Cellulose gum, Whey, Leavenings (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate), Salt, Cornstarch, Corn flour, Corn syrup solids, Mono and diglycerides, Soy lecithin, Polysorbate 60, Dextrin, Calcium caseinate, Sodium stearol lactylate, Wheat gluten, Calcium sulphate, Natural and artificial flavours, Caramel colour, Sorbic acid (to retain freshness), Colour added (yellow 5, red 40).

One of the secrets to exyending the shelf-life of Twinkies and many other processed foods, is the elimination of dairy products. For example, monoglycerides and diglycerides replace eggs; Polysorbate 60 serves a similar function to the glycerides, keeping the cream filling creamy without the use of real fat; and hydrogenated shortening replaces butter.

Steve Ettlinger, the author of "Twinkie, Deconstructed", researched all of the ingredients that comprise a Twinkie. He uses the Twinkie as a representative example of how foods and non-foods alike are processed and incorporated into our food supply. His book is part cookbook, chemistry text, and travelogue. Ettlinger traveled to phosphate mines in Idaho and to gypsum mines where some of these ingredients are mined (five ingredients are derived from rocks). One is Calcium Sulphate, a substance that transforms into plaster if water is extracted out from it. "They just dig it up and put it in a bag, it's that pure. I love the idea that we eat rock like that," says Ettlinger.

Some more ingredients that make the finger cake puffy, sweet and creamy includes phosphorus, an element used to put the glow in tracer bullets and the bang in artillery shells; and polysorbate 60, an emulsifier derived from explosive ethylene oxide. He traveled to high-security plants that manufacture highly toxic chlorine used in minute amounts to make the bleached flour that is "the only kind that works in sugar-heavy" Twinkies or birthday and wedding cakes. He found that sorbic acid is actually derived from natural gas; and the vitamins, artificial colors, and flavorings in Twinkies come from petroleum - Chinese petroleum, refineries, and factories to be precise.

According to Ettlinger tracking down all the components of the snack cakes, which list 39 ingredients, was a major undertaking, especially after officials at Hostess refused to cooperate with the project. Time after time, PR guys stated that they can't really go into how those ingredients get made. And it's no wonder because much of the quality control is in the hands of foreign countries.

Bite into a Twinkie, you are chewing on an international nexus of suppliers. Most of our processed foods — salad dressing, ice cream, meal-replacement drinks — are processed with foreign additives: essential ones, like B vitamins for fortifying flour and the preservative sorbic acid, as well as Malaysian or Indonesian palm oil products, European wheat gluten, Peruvian colorants, Chadian gums and Swiss niacin, made from Swiss water, Swiss air (nitrogen) and North Atlantic or Middle Eastern oil.

No major domestic vitamin or sorbic acid manufacturers remain in the U.S. Our last vitamin C plant closed in 2005. This leads to lower food and pharmaceutical prices, but perhaps at the cost of quality control. "How can you have quality control when you don't even know where the ingredient is coming from? During my Twinkie research, I was particularly surprised that many American food additive 'manufacturers' buy chemicals, especially vitamins, from distributors and do not know, or don't ask, where they come from," said Ettlinger.