Bookmark and Share February 28, 2010 - Dave Mulder

What’s in a Pop Tart?

One of the bigger mysteries on the American grocery store shelf is the Pop Tart. Pop Tarts are one of food science’s greatest feats: They are well-engineered replicas of food.

My favorite Pop Tart flavor, when I still ate Pop Tarts, was s’mores. S’mores are an easy campfire staple: Roast a marshmallow and sandwich it alongside chocolate between two graham crackers. The Pop Tart version of s’mores does a great job approximating this taste.

Ingredients in a Frosted S’more’s Pop Tart: Enriched flour, sugar, dextrose, soybean and palm oil (with TBHQ for freshness), graham flour, high fructose corn syrup, cracker meal, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, whey, cornstarch, molasses, cocoa processes with alkali, leavening, milk chocolate, honey, natural and artificial flavors, salt, lactose, modified corn starch, soy lecithin, dried egg whites, gelatin, color added, xanthan gum, vitamin A palimitate, niacinamide, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride, thiamin hydrochloride, riboflavin, folic acid.

To be fair, the last few ingredients are vitamins added so that the manufacturer (Kellogg’s) can claim the product is nutritional. In the very strict sense that the Pop Tart contains vitamins, they would be correct in this claim; but the trade off in completely engineering the structure and taste of the Frosted S’Mores Pop Tart is tough for me to swallow.

Real Food Grade: D+

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