A popular rule of thumb among proponents of healthy food is that the fewer ingredients there are in something, better it is for you. With a remarkable 37 or so ingredients, many of which are polysyllabic chemical compounds, Twinkies would seem to embody the antithesis of that rule.

The photographer Dwight Eschliman was never a health nut himself, but he was raised by one; his mom kept her kids away from meat, dairy, or any kind of processed food. When Eschilman went away to college, he loosened up a bit, allowing himself to indulge in all sorts of previously forbidden treats, but by the time he had kids of his own, he found a renewed appreciation for simple, healthy food—and a renewed skepticism of chemical-filled, preservative-laden snacks. He’d also developed a love of disassembling ojects and photographing their component parts.

“Thus, this project,” he writes in his photography book 37 or so Ingredients. “It’s the product of a kid that was raised to be suspicious of foods that weren’t assembled in mom’s kitchen, and bordering on obsessive compulsive.”

What follows is a selection from Dwight Eschliman’s 37 or so Ingredients. For more information or to order a copy of the book, email twinkiebook[at]eschlimanphoto[dot]com.

Riboflavin

Iron

Sugar

Water

Corn Syrup

Animal Shortening

Whole Egg

Soy Protein Isolate

Soy Flour

Diglyceride

Red 40

( GoodTags: kitchen, food, twinkie )

Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon have brought Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form on to produce Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the live-action film that reboots the film series launched by New Line in 1990. Bay, Fuller and Form will  produce with Galen Walker and Scott Mednick.

The producers will begin meetings with writers in the next few weeks. The deal puts Bay in the center of two Paramount franchises, as he started production May 17 on Transformers 3, and is zeroing in on Rosie Huntington-Whitely to replace Megan Fox as love interest for Shia LaBeouf. TNMT, a co-production between Paramount and Nickelodeon, is an outgrowth of the $60 million acquisition made by Nick last October for global rights to the entire Turtles franchise. Right around the same time, Paramount made a first look deal with the Platinum Dunes partners, who will generate genre projects but also want to expand their scope. While they’ve already set up several projects including a Rob Cohen-remake of Fright Night, the Turtles film puts them into new territory.

It ain’t easy being cheesy. Mr. Cheetah first made this sage observation back in the ’80s, and it certainly still applies to the manufacture of his favorite bright-orange snack. Turning a hunk of cornmeal into a knobby Cheeto may take only a few minutes, but it requires a fine-tuned industrial dance that leaves no room for error. Frito-Lay’s quality-control folks will not tolerate anything less than maximum crunchiness.

Giant hopper.

MINUTES ELAPSED

0:00 to 1:00
Gritty cornmeal stored in a silo is pumped about 100 yards through a pneumatic tube into a Cheetos manufacturing plant. (Frito-Lay has 14 fried-Cheeto plants in 11 states.) The cornmeal then enters a giant hopper , where it awaits its rapid transformation into one of America’s most beloved snacks.

Entering the extruder.

1:00 to 1:10
Gobs of cornmeal are fed into an extruder , which rubs the meal between two metal plates. The friction melts the starch in the corn and causes the moisture to heat up. When it passes its boiling point, the meal “pops,” creating the Cheetos shape. The craggy bits are then spit out of the extruder, flying 3 feet at high velocity before hitting a safety cage and dropping onto a conveyor belt.

Conveyor belt.

1:40 to 2:40
The Cheetos move through a piping-hot pan of vegetable oil, much like an amusement-park log flume. The oil not only imparts a fatty flavor but also fries the snack’s moisture content down below 2 percent—a key to crunchiness. Once suitably cooked, the pieces go back on a conveyor belt .

Ready to ship.

8:00 to 9:00
The puffs hit a tumble drum, where strategically located nozzles spray a mixture of oil and powdered cheese onto the Cheetos from all sides. The cheese, which Frito-Lay buys pre-spiced in 50-pound sacks (the company won’t say from whom), looks like the stuff used in boxed macaroni-and-cheese products.

9:00 to 19:00
The pieces are dropped onto a last conveyor belt, where any remaining moisture steams off as they cool to room temperature. The finished Cheetos are then moved toward the packaging area, to be bagged, boxed, and shipped .

Tasting panel.

Quality Control
Every half hour, an in-house lab analyzes the chemical composition of samples pulled from the cooking line to verify that the Cheetos have the right density and nutritional content. Then, every four hours, a four-person panel convenes to inspect and taste the snacks, comparing them to perfect reference Cheetos sent from Frito-Lay headquarters.

(WiredTags: food, Cheetos)

BioWare’s Mass Effect role-playing game series has been known for its cinematic flair on PC and Xbox 360 — now it’s heading to the actual cinema.

BioWare parent company Electronic Arts said Monday that Legendary Pictures acquired the theatrical feature film rights to the Mass Effect science-fiction series. Warner Bros. will distribute the movie worldwide under a co-production and co-financing agreement with Legendary.

Legendary also co-produced The Dark Knight, 300, Clash of the Titans, The Hangover and Watchmen.

EA said that the movie’s producers are in talks with I Am Legend and Thor screenwriter Mark Protosevich to draft a screenplay for the movie.

Producing the Mass Effect film are Legendary’s Thomas Tull — the founder of the now-defunct video game company Brash Entertainment — and Jon Jashni, along with Avi and Ari Arad. Serving as executive producers on the film are BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk and Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson.

The Mass Effect series is set in the 22nd century and revolves around Commander Shepard of the spacecraft S.S. Normandy. His ultimate mission is to lead an eclectic crew to defeat a powerful alien race from returning to the galaxy to wipe out all organic life.

Tull said in a statement that Mass Effect is "ripe for translation to the big screen," adding that the franchise "is a prime example of the kind of source material we at Legendary like to develop."

Mass Effect originally launched on Xbox 360 in 2007 and sold over 1.6 million units in its first four months on the market. The title came to PC in 2008.

Mass Effect 2 launched in January this year and shipped 2 million units worldwide in its first week, according to EA. Both games were critically well-received.

EA has been making a conscious effort to extend its most popular franchises beyond video games. EA is also working on creating films based on the games Army of Two, The Sims, Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space and Spore.

Variety’s Cut Scene blog previously reported that producer Avi Arad had optioned the rights to Mass Effect from EA back in 2008 — more than a year before the release of the franchise’s successful sequel ( Gamasutra )