The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor
Written by Mark Schatzker
Narrated by Chris Patton
4.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Mark Schatzker
Mark Schatzker is an award-winning writer based in Toronto. He is a writer-in-residence at the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center at Yale University, and a frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Condé Nast Traveler, and Bloomberg Pursuits. He is the author of The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth about Food and Flavor and Steak: One Man’s Search for the World’s Tastiest Piece of Beef.
More audiobooks from Mark Schatzker
The End of Craving: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of Eating Well Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to The Dorito Effect
Related audiobooks
Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Detox Strategy: Vibrant Health in 5 Easy Steps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEat Right for Your Type Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sugar Detox: Lose the Sugar, Lose the Weight--Look and Feel Great Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMetabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reverse the Aging Process Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SuperFoods Audio Collection: A Year of Rejuvenation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seeker Climate Activist Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Dementia: Brain Health in an Unhealthy Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beauty Diet: Unlock the Five Secrets of Ageless Beauty from the Inside Out Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The New Sugar Busters!: Cut Sugar to Trim Fat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skinny Liver: A Proven Program to Prevent and Reverse the New Silent Epidemic - Fatty Liver Disease Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No More Heartburn: The Safe, Effective Way to Prevent and Heal Chronic Gastrointestinal Disorders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFood Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Disease-Proof: The Remarkable Truth About What Keeps Us Well Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomach: The Hidden Influences That Shape Your Eating Habits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sprout Book: Tap into the Power of the Planet's Most Nutritious Food Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Forgotten Art of Being Ordinary: A Human Manifesto in the Age of the Metaverse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSupersized Lies: How Myths about Weight Loss Are Keeping Us Fat - and the Truth About What Really Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mystery of Sleep: Why a Good Night's Rest Is Vital to a Better, Healthier Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Industries For You
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All You Need to Know About the Music Business: 11th Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Real Food, Fake Food: Why You Don't Know What You're Eating and What You Can Do About It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You): A How-To Guide from the First Family of Podcasting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sam Walton: Made in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lego Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living From Your Creativity Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Secret Formula: The Inside Story of How Coca-Cola Became the Best-Known Brand in the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Setting the Table Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strip Tees: A Memoir of Millennial Los Angeles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mind Your Mindset: The Science That Shows Success Starts with Your Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Fentanyl: Ending the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5NFTs Are a Scam / NFTs Are the Future: The Early Years: 2020-2023 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Dorito Effect
129 ratings19 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty interesting read about the surprising (or maybe not so surprising) things that go into our food.
The basic premise is that farmers and business owners have conspired to make food a lot more profitable, making it very bland in the process. We can buy huge chickens, bright red tomatoes, and many other "improved" food items in the grocery stores, but these "improvements" have come at the cost of flavor, so scientists have come up with all sorts of additives to make our food taste more like the food it is supposed to be. Strawberries become "strawberry-er". Vanilla becomes "vanilla-er".
It truth, all of the additives that go into our food is quite scary. This book helps pull the curtain back a little bit on the history of food additives and where this is potentially headed into the future. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I won my copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway. I've read quite a few books over the years that are trying to offer quick fixes for modern diets, or that try to drum up fear of some ingredient or technology related to the food we eat. Most come across as pushy and overhyped, the sort of writing that relies more on emotion than on reason and good science to convince readers to change their eating habits. I was relieved that this book was not in the same vein. The Dorito Effect looks at the evolution of flavor from a natural and complex component of natural foods, to an ingredient that fakes the experience of one food in the form of another. One could develop quite a paranoia about 'flavorings' after reading this book, and I have to wonder now what Celestial Seasonings means on its lemon tea ingredients list by natural flavors, but still, I'd rather now more about the foods I eat, even if avoiding all artificially added flavorings is next to impossible.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ugh. This is fairly inspirational. It wants me to do better, but it also inspires me to hate myself.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Interesting learning how our food has changed over time and getting a better understanding of food in general.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a fantastic book. I am a big "food interest" fan and this book is right up there with the best of them. It should be required reading by anyone who has any interest in food and what we are being "fed" by the food manufacturing industry in terms of fake flavours and how that is changing our expectations and taste experience leaving us unsatisfied but craving for more empty calories. I learned a lot from this book and will change some of my food practices although I have always been a fan of real food, minimally processed. Terms used like "natural flavours" are not natural at all but from a chemical compound. How the food manufactures have been allowed to do this is another big question! The book is very well written.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great book, but the narrator can sound a bit pretentious at times. Lots of interesting stories of how modern food got to be the way it is.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Raises an awareness of how food has been leached of flavor and how artifical and natural flavors have been used to flavor poor quality food. Chicken and tomatoes are used to define this bland scourge the public has had foisted on it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Despite it's weak title and cover this was an amazingly good book to listen too!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very insightful and well researched. I really enjoyed reading how food that tastes delicious can actually be better for you.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very enjoyable to just plain read, including the Notes! And the "facts" in all of this made me really start thinking about the food I was eating and tasting....what AM I eating?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very interesting book about food, flavour and nutrition. Schatzker talks about how modern chicken doesn't taste like chicken and how bland tomatoes sold in supermarkets are and how processed food leaves us feeling unhappy and lethargic. He also ties the obesity epidemic to the lack of flavour in food. He might be stretching things a bit there but it certainly is part of the problem. At the back of the book he gives some guidelines for eating flavourfully. One of the things he says is "No morsel of food should pass your lips before you have asked the following question: Where did the flavor come from? If it came from the plant or animal you're eating, keep eating. If it was applied by a human with a PhD in chemistry, put it down." That would certainly cut down on most foods that you can find in a supermarket, probably everything offered on fast food menus and even most foods offered in regular restaurants. Schatzker talks about all the imitation flavours and aromas that are available now. It is big business and getting bigger all the time, $2 billion in the United States and $10 billion globally. We need all those imitation flavours because the food that is available to us gets blander and blander. I had my own epiphany about flavour in food while eating a hamburger grilled on our own barbecue. We have been buying grass fed beef in bulk for a number of years and the taste was really good. I didn't realize how good though until the hamburger on my plate tasted almost like sawdust and I realized that we had run out of ground beef from our grass fed rancher and purchased some from the local butcher. The difference was astonishing. I will continue to buy grass fed beef even if it is more expensive than supermarket beef (and I don't think it is much more expensive when you consider each pound costs the same whether it is ground beef or filet mignon). I will also continue to source out chickens from a farmer that isn't a factory and buy vegetables that are grown in my own province. I will also continue to cook most of my own meals because then I can control what I put in the dishes.There are lots of great stories in this book (the Utah goats alone are worth the read) but there are also lots of good lessons for anyone interested in how food tastes.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I read a lot of long-form food journalism, and this is one of the best of these books I've ever read. The chapters on the relationship between actual flavor and nutrition are astonishing. It even ends on a genuinely hopeful note: When food itself tastes better (i.e. it's not so bland it has to be "enhanced" with flavor chemicals, ranch dressing, etc), it's usually better for you, too. Breeding flavor back into our fruits and vegetables will restore their nutrition, too, and will make meat from animals raised eating flavorful food better as well. We can have it all if we just ask for it.
I'm more excited for my garden now than I've ever been 8) - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker is a very highly recommended, well researched account that addresses the cause of the health crisis today as being a direct result of what we have done to our food.
In an effort to increase size, and production, we have taken the natural flavor out of food. Our bodies naturally crave flavors that the current food isn't providing so we eat more trying to fill the flavor void we're missing. Focusing on mainly chicken and tomatoes, Schatsker does an excellent job tracing how the change in our food happened and the results. There is a complex relationship between flavor and nutrition in food and we have diluted the flavor to increase size and production. Chicken today doesn't taste anything like the chicken of the past. Tomatoes today are mostly water. "The rise in obesity is the predictable result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness. Everything we add to food just makes us want it more." Schatzker points out that
the big food companies have "created the snack equivalent of crystal meth and gotten us all hooked." Not only is more and more manufactured flavor being added to things, the availability of the food with enhanced flavors is more available.
"The Dorito Effect, very simply, is what happens when food gets blander and flavor technology gets better. This book is about how and why that took place. It's also about the consequences, which include obesity and metabolic disturbance along with a cultural love-hate obsession with food. This book argues that we need to begin understanding food through the same lens by which it is experienced: how it tastes. The food crisis we're spending so much time and money on might be better thought of as a large-scale flavor disorder. Our problem isn't calories and what our bodies do with them. Our problem is that we want to eat the wrong food. The longer we ignore flavor, the longer we are bound to be victims of it. This book is also about the solution. The Dorito Effect can be reversed. That's already happening on small farms and in pioneering science labs."
Schatzker notes the words to look for on your food that indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your nose and chemicals that fool your tongue. "The following words indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your nose: natural flavor(s) natural flavoring(s) artificial flavor(s) flavoring, flavor. The following words indicate the presence of chemicals that fool your tongue: monosodium glutamate MSG disodium guanlyate disodium inosinate torula yeast yeast extract hydrolyzed protein autolyzed yeast saccharin (Sweet Twin, Sweet N Low, Necta Sweet) aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Sugar Twin) acesulfame potassium (Ace-K, Sunett, Sweet One) sucralose (Splenda) neotame (Newtame) advantame stevia."
I have been talking about this book the whole time to anyone who will listen. Schatzker does and exceptional job presenting the information and scientific research in an entertaining, accessible, and informative manner. In The Dorito Effect he divides the book into three parts: He tells us what the Dorito effect is, the importance of flavor, and the cure for the Dorito effect. As is my wont, I was thrilled to see a bibliography, notes and index.
Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Simon & Schuster for review purposes. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5OMG. Just that. listen, and be shocked. Cannot recommend it enough.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an excellent book. The unassuming title hides the gravity and importance of the message it contains.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is so good (the audio is very good, read by Chris Patton, won an earphones award). This book is about food and it is very interesting and based on real research. I had to get the book, because there is so much information and I wanted to gather some notes which isn’t easy to do when listening to an audio. The reader does read some of the footnotes but the back of the book there is the Bibliography, Notes and breaks that down by chapters siting articles that the author is using in his book and an index. So if you like food and are concerned about your food, as I am, then you will love this book. Well maybe that isn’t quite right. When I started reading this book I was so disheartened as it seemed like maybe it was a lost cause. Scientist and industry began changing our food in the forties. I was born in the fifties and am lucky to remember some of the great taste of foods but it was already changing. People of younger generations may never have tasted food that hasn’t been robbed of its flavors. The author looks at obesity and from a flavor stand point why obesity has risen in spite of all the great diets available. Flavors are very interesting things and this book is about flavor. This book is not all against science/industry and in fact acknowledges that we probably can’t afford to go back to a preindustrial food source nor is there land to do so but science can help provide solutions. It ends on an encouraging note however it is really up to consumers and that does still leave me feeling a bit pessimistic that food can achieve its former greatness.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54.5 stars
This book is all about modern food so if that isn't what you're wanting to learn about you'll probably be bored. I just happened to pick it up anyway, even though I wasn't looking for it. I really got into it. It has tons of helpful information and stuff I had no idea about. It definitely changed to way I look at things, and ever since I read it, I've been telling bits I learned in random conversation with others. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We can fake anything, and we have toThe Dorito effect is that the more raw food we produce, the more bland and nutritionally worthless it becomes, the more flavors we must add to make it interesting and the more varieties we have to offer because it so unappealing. Fruit, vegetables, chicken, beef – all taste nothing like they used to and mainly taste like nothing. So we add chipotle and soy, mustard and curry, salt and pepper, fat and sugar. And aromas. And “natural flavorings”. We consume five times as much spice as we did after the first world war, when the first stats appeared. The first third of the book is all about faking flavors (with astonishing precision and success) to make food industrially.The flavorings industry is a giant you never heard of. They are not household brands (except for McCormick) but sell billions in flavorings to cover the fact that mass produced and industrially processed food has no taste. Food is becoming more like cigarettes, Schatzger says. All foods taste different, but underneath, they’re all processed dull, flat and nutritionless, if not downright harmful. Humans now eat like livestock.The invention of gas chromatography has taken all the magic out of taste and aroma. We now have the ability to create or recreate pretty much any gustatory sensation possible, faking our way to variety, where spectacular taste once ruled. Fruits and vegetables are much blander, because we breed the goodness out when we breed for volume. Same with beef, chicken and pork; they are much fatter and blander than they used to be, and all require vast quantities of coatings, sauces and spices to make up for their lack of taste.The middle third of the book is research into “nutritional wisdom”; plants and animals instinctively know what they need. Plants take advantage of it by deterring predators and supplying predictable nutrition. Insects and animals know what they need to consume to regain or maintain homeostasis. We also have cravings when our bodies sense we are low in some nutrient. The punchline of course, is that we fool our bodies into thinking we’re eating nutritionally from the flavors and smells of the food, but instead getting nothing of use. The result is massive overeating in an attempt to consume nutrition. We have shortcircuited a laboratory-proven system that has been foolproof in a balanced ecosystem for eons. And added vitamins – useless, Schatzger says. Vitamins only work their magic in the context of whole foods, not as chemical additions or solo pills.Schatzger doesn’t let it rest there. In the last part of the book, he seeks out those who breed the real thing, whether tomatoes or chickens. He gathers a continent-wide group of experts to the meal of a lifetime. And he bravely states that all is not lost; for extra money and some research, you too can find great tasting food that has real food value, mostly directly from the farm. Stores and food processors - not interested.As horrifically serious as The Dorito Effect is, Schatzer has written it with a light touch, often commenting in sardonic and sarcastic asides. It is a lively, fast and easy read. The overall effect is that it goes down smoothly, and doesn’t leave that bloated, sluggish, unsatisfied feeling like most restaurant and prepared meal experiences. You are what you eat.David Wineberg
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Super interesting! Schatzker argues that salt, sugar, and fat are not exactly to blame for why processed food is so bad for us. After all, if you’re just handed a glob of those three things, even in attractive proportions, you’ll probably be disgusted. It’s actually flavor that makes people keep eating, and he argues that flavor science has made food that’s capable of getting us to eat, but not capable of satisfying us the way that natural flavors (which correlate with micronutrients) are. Thus we keep eating, and not in healthful ways. The science of flavor was fun to read about, and this is an instance in which—if we can keep profit-seeking megacorporations from taking over, which is far from guaranteed—we might be able to fix many of the problems. Although “dilution”—a decrease in flavor and nutrition—is broadly observable in many modern foods compared to their predecessors of six or seven decades ago, attributable to selection for ever-greater size and yield, Schatzker proposes that micronutrients/true flavors are actually not that energetically expensive for plants to produce, because they have sensory effects at parts per billion. Thus it may well be possible to produce flavorful and highly productive strains of tomatoes, apples, etc. We just didn’t bother to select for flavor for a long time.