I remember reading this exact description of industrial cake production in maybe Harpers', sometime in probably the mid 1990s.

As I look around my kitchen and fridge, the only processed foods I find are dried pasta, high end tomato sauce which, by the ingredients, is close to what I make from scratch when I have time, and Thai curry paste. I tried making Thai curry paste from scratch. Once. It's amazingly difficult to grind up lemon grass with a mortal and pestle (I think nowadays they use food processors, but I don't have one).

Now I am not being all moral here...these selections are left over from my days as a rad veg. It's just that I've read too many articles like the cake story, and I gross out very easily for a biologist. I won't cook with things that I don't know the chain of custody from living thing to my tummy.

Speaking of my tummy, do you have a recipe for the Apple Spice Cake? I'd like to try it, since I can't live in BC anymore.

Thanks for posting this.