It’s no illusion. Food has
become blander and flavors have rescued them, with big consequences, including
obesity and diseases. Journalist Mark Schatzker gives us a taste of it all in The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth
About Food and Flavor. He tells us
what is wrong and ends with a search for very real food with real flavor.
Schatzker’s book comes to
life through some very creative nonfiction writing. He tells about a list of
people who moved the flavor problem along and/or tried to improve it. He holds
the reader’s interest to help him/her continue to read to the end, when a
scientific paper about the same topic might have been left unread. The research
is there, sometimes through the voices of the people who did it. I ate it up.
The Dorito Effect is his
name for bland food with zest added. He says, “The Dorito Effect, very simply,
is what happens when food gets blander and flavor technology gets better.” He
tells us about chicken and vegetables being carefully bred since the 1960s for
money-making qualities like yield and faster and bigger growth. That produced
what he calls the “dilution effect,” which is loss of flavor and nutrients. He
also credits intensive farming methods and fertilization.
Doritoes, Schatzker says,
arrived when a scientist showed how a bland tortilla chip could be made very tasty
with added flavor to suggest a taco. He then shows how other foods that have
become bland have been given the same treatment of seasonings and gives credit
to McCormick herbs and spices. He tells about chickens and tomatoes. Chickens
now are larger than they were in the 1950s and taste like teddy bear stuffing.
Tomatoes are like cardboard. These images appear throughout the book.
The human brain gets
fooled. Food addiction comes from neurotransmitters in the brain when many
people eat food with some added flavorings, he says. “We’re done for. The rise
in obesity is the predictable result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness.
And no matter how hard we try, we can’t make our outsized desires go away.”
Nothing will change until we think differently about food and see that real
flavor, produced authentically in nature, is our only road to salvation. Don’t
extinguish pleasure; get rid of manufactured flavors in favor of real food. And
finding real food means re-engineering the bland foods to bring back the
flavor. The solution to cardboard tomatoes is focusing on flavor more than
yield. He is not talking about GMO.
At the end of the book we
find Schatzker spending much time and effort in a worldwide search for anyone
who has tried to produce flavorful food, in an effort to present one wonderful
meal. The major players come and it is done.
Finally, he gives us an appendix, which he calls
“How to Live Long and Eat Flavorfully.” This should not be overlooked. The list
includes: Eat Real Flavor; Eat Like a Utah Goat; Flavor Starts in the Womb; Eat
for Flavor; Eat Meat from Pastured Animals; Avoid Synthetic Flavor Technology;
Avoid Restaurants That Use Synthetic Flavorings; Organic May or May Not Save
You; Eat Herbs and Spices; Don’t Pop Vitamin Pills; Eat Dark Chocolate and
Drink Wine; Give a Child an Amazing Piece of Fruit; It will Get Better. The
author concludes, “There is only one way Child an Amazing Piece of
Fruit; It will Get Better. The author concludes, “There is only one way the
overall quality of food we eat will get better: if people demand it. The
quality movement has revolutionized the wine and beer North Americans drink.
Now let’s make it happen with food.”
Now I am reading food
labels more attentively to see what I am eating. As one other food writer has
said, don’t eat anything with more than five ingredients on the label. And I
suggest that sometimes if the label includes a list of names of flavorings, don’t
eat it unless you know what underlies the words.
The book is available at
Amazon.com and many public libraries.
