How do you make normal cake? Butter, flour, eggs, sugar, vanilla or something for taste.
The whole first part of this story describes how fat is aereated with an emulsifier and water. Or, in household terms, Butter and eggs are mixed together until creamy.
There is a lot of story how GMS "pulls in water" and "oozes around flour chips". Well, that's pretty much the function of eggs in normal cake.
Next there is part how the evil corporations put sugar in cake because it has the right weight and price. Seriously, is he criticizing factories because they put sugar in their cakes?
And on we go: in both cases carbon dioxide is chemically generated inside the cake, and being caught in those flour-toughened fat membranes, swells them up.
Yes, that's what happens in all cakes. It's how baking powder works.
So, the real differences between this industrial cake and normal home-made cake are basically two things: cheap fat and a chemical emulsifier instead of eggs. The rest of the story is pretty much the same as normal cake baking.
But adding water+emulsifier is sort of the equivalent of adding eggs. Form a chemical-industrial point of view, eggs are egg powder with added water. The article mentions a doubling of the fat by adding water, which is pretty much the same ratio between eggs and butter as I use when making cake.
And I am not sure about the excess sugar either. In my cakes, there are roughly equal parts sugar, butter, eggs and flour. That's already a lot of sugar, and it sure 'masks' the taste of the butter-with-egg mixture.
Sometimes you here people complain that the modern city-dweller doesn't know how his foods are grown. But in reality, people have a reasonably good idea how food is grown. It's industrial processes that we are really far removed from.
