Back when I was in junior high school, I read about Twinkies and supposedly how terrible they were for your health. One of the reasons they gave was that the Twinkie contains ingredients that are found in rocket fuel.

Even at that time, my young mind was able to laugh at the terrible logic used to claim Twinkies were unhealthy. I never disagreed that Twinkies were unhealthy, but if you want people to believe you, you need to use valid justification.

Unfortunately, I realized not everyone was bright enough to identify the huge flaw in that claim. I came across adults who avoided Twinkies because it shared ingredients with rocket fuel, rather than legitimate reasons such as its absurdly high fat and cholesterol content.

So, I decided to present a few analogies similar to the Twinkie ingredient claim to help people see why this “reason” is so bogus. Basically, what I’m trying to prove is that, just because an ingredient is used in something that is inedible does not automatically make everything else containing that ingredient inedible.

Let’s start with something very simple: salt. Salt is put in almost all your favorite foods. For example, the tomato sauce in pizza contains salt. During the winter in colder regions, trucks spray a substance on the street in order to decrease the freezing temperature and avoid icy, frozen roads. This substance is clearly inedible (unless you enjoy feeling sick and ingesting toxic substances). A primary ingredient in this substance is salt. As a result, according to the Twinkie logic, because anti-freeze road spray contains salt and is inedible, pizza is also automatically inedible, because it contains salt.

What about food coloring? We all know food coloring is used in many foods, and is non-toxic and safe to eat. Let’s say we added some green food coloring to some eggs, as a tribute to Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.” During the process, we also accidentally spilled some coloring on our little sister. Now, both our eggs and our sister contain green food coloring.

According to Twinkie logic, you should avoid eating Twinkies because it contains the same ingredient as rocket fuel, so eating Twinkies is pretty much just like eating rocket fuel. Well, you better avoid those green eggs, because it contains the same ingredient that’s currently on your little sister, so eating those green eggs is pretty much just like eating your little sister. You don’t want to be a cannibal now, do you?

As we were able to see by making these comparisons, the logic used to discourage Twinkie consumption is invalid. If anything, it is a psychological scare tactic, taking advantage of the human brain’s tendency and desire to form connections and jump to conclusions when discovering two pieces of similar information, in an attempt to fit everything into a bigger picture.

It’s easy to avoid falling into these traps in the future. When you encounter problems with unfamiliar topics (such as unknown ingredients and rocket fuel), substitute in things you’re more familiar with (such as salt and food coloring) to make understanding the big picture a lot easier.