The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor

Brings a reality in our current flavorless fake nutrition world. Great way of exposing a controlled bad reality.

I found this book to be fascinating on so many levels. While it could be viewed as a expose of the evils of the food industry I rather chose to look at it from the science side of what we eat and why. First, the book explores the history of food production, and its focus on choosing breeds and seed stock that produce the biggest yields the fastest. Makes sense from a farming point of view of course. But horticulturalists and animal husbandry experts failed to consider taste in their studies. The result is we have food that has essentially lost it's taste while growing bigger and less nutritious products. This is where the history of the "flavor industry" comes in... to making flavor into a science... breaking down flavors molecule by molecule and then coming up with combinations that mimic or enhance the flavors we seek to make up for the blandness we get in today's vegetables and meats. It also looks at the science behind cravings and our natural, almost instinctual attraction to certain foods depending on what the body needs in essential nutrients. Left to their own devices, animals and humans will normally gravitate to the right foods in the right amounts.Overall it is a fascinating book into the inner workings of modern farming, the flavor industry, and human and animal biology... I highly recommend this book.

This book gives a good comprehensive history and view of how we got to where we are in the era of modern food production. At the end of the book, a fancy dinner is described, where about 100 people are invited to feed on food that used to be, but can no longer be. A major reason why that is true is that the cost of such is simply not in the cards for most consumers. Mass production of foods, like it or not, has yields that keep the masses alive, plus food scientists over the years have made the end products taste about as good as can be expected.In some ways, the thesis of the book is that you can have your cake and eat it, too, but the trade-off is that the cake is not as it once was, before mass production took over. But, beneath that surface, is the reality that most people do not care, as long as it fills their bellies and tastes good.I love the book in that it gives lots of factoids along the way. For example, it was not until the 60’s that the masses became involved with diets. More and more Americans were becoming obese. But it was over the next 20-30 years that the “problem” became more obvious, with about 30% of Americans qualifying as obese by the 90s. Today, that percentage has grown to about 35%.Sugar mixed with salt and other “flavor enhancers” is what is enticing people to eat more and more, along with the sheer abundance of food in developed countries. Per the author, the flavor produced is all about sugar, salt, fat and flavor.Just try eat one barbequed potato chip, given the option of eating many. Per the book, the goal of the food industry is to make everything we eat taste as good as those barbequed potato chips or Doritos.In the era of advanced flavor technology, “everything tastes like we want it to taste.” And, of course, the demand is that what we like gets reproduced in great quantities, for mass consumption. For chicken, that started back in the ‘40s, when the industry began to learn how to duplicate bigger, more meaty chickens. It was done by mass producing the perfect chicks. Not only would they grow much bigger, but they grow in less time. No, they did not taste as “good” as their ancestors, but that could be fixed. The goal was to make chickens cheaper and plumper.The same thing took place with other foods, including vegetables and tomatoes. The latter may not taste like they once did, but that, too, can be fixed. The goal is to grow tomatoes cheaper and larger, so they can be more abundant.Our brains control our “tastes” for food, with the nose, tongue and roof of the mouth all sending signals to the brain to differentiate what we are ingesting. It is the combination of such that confirms that we are eating bacon or ice cream. And there is a huge industry that evaluates why we like what we like, so that it can reproduce what we like in gigantic factory settings.The average milk cow once produced about 16 gallons of milk per day. Today, many can crank out up to 200 gallons per day. “Hens lay twice as many eggs, pigs are 25 percent bigger, and a beef cow produces 60 percent more beef,” says the author. Much of this has to do with an ingredient in animal food called “palatant.” It is a powder that for some reason entices animals to want and to need to eat more. Eat more, and you get bigger, faster.And then there is the discussion of whether man knows or cares to eat what is “good” for us. In most cases, animals do differentiate what they like vs what is good for them to eat. But the scientists have been working for years to make the way our food tastes the most important part of eating. The result, per the author, is that we become “calorie zombies.”Again, at the end of the book, the author tells how he engineered a meal for 100 with food that would be both tasty and nutritious, like it used to be. I’m not a foodie, plus I grew up on processed fast-foods, to a great extent. So, the whole idea of this expensive, special meal did not interest me. Plus, the author had already made the point that, as a modern society, we really cannot afford to produce food the way we used to. It is what it is. The modern supermarket is full of thousands of products that come from mass-production and are meant to “taste good.” With food now much less expensive to Americans, than it was 50 years ago, as a percentage of the typical household budget, things may not get any better than this: Everything tastes more and more like Doritos.

The book provides an eye-opening history of the blanding down of our foods to increase profits, but this negatively affected the flavor. The solution is to spend millions on research to add chemicals to replace the missing flavors. The author takes the reader through an eye-opening journey and will get you to think the next time you go to the grocery store. Nothing is safe, not even our fruits and veggies.

WOW. I thought I had read everything about food and food manufacturing (Sugar, Fat, Salt, etc ) along with having an eating disorder in my 20s, so I thought I also understood the emotional aspects of eating. But this book adds another look at food in the American Landscape. I love the introduction of manufacturers' to increase the speed and weight of bringing a chicken to market, by manipulating the diet and living conditions of the chicken. Along the way I was introduced to the history of doritos and why they are so addictive. My take away is: we're (humans) are just another animal being "fattened up' by the processed foods that make up the majority of the American diet. Our bodies know we are not getting any actual nutrition so the body wants us to keep consuming processed food. Simply put: Spray palatants on anything and humans can be tricked into eating it...... just like sheep, cows, dogs, cats, etc. My husband now abhors it when I use the word "palatant" but google it and read a few entries from animal manufacturers who are selling the same group of chemicals to human food manufacturers. Want to eat less? Stop eating processed food. It's really that simple. Your hunger goes away as your body adapts to eating REAL FOOD that has all the secondary compounds that plants have been found in plants.

Best book I've read in years on the topic of the food industry. It tells, for example, how the food processors add addictive flavors to foods. No wonder there's an epidemic of obesity in North America. Its a 'must read' for parents.

I purchased this feeling a little skeptical of the blurb.Adding together the collected information in this book, reading some of the source materials and then doing some serious internet research.This stuff is a seriously concerning, but in retrospect, not unexpected "Hidden Problem"We are returning to the "victorian era" of adulterated food stuffs. What was in the original "Cola" that made it so desirable ?Food is becoming a "Drug of choice" because it is addictive. As a 61 year old "Well rounded" person, I can see why "The Profit god" is causing a crisis to western humanity.What is worrying is "Food companies" and "pharmacy supplying companies" are connected.READ THIS BOOK, if you are nearer your 20's than 60's You can change your own future, and maybe live longer. Even I am reading the back of packets and rejecting products I would previously eat.

Must read ! A general insight of what you put in your mouth .

I devoured this book and walked away with a strong desire to eat tomatoes fresh off the vine and grow all my own food. Original flavour is where it’s at. Must read.

FUNNY BOOK. SO MUCH INFORMATION WHICH WE HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT. A LIFE CHANGER FOR ME.