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

By Mark Schatzker

Book Overview

A lively argument from an award-winning journalist proving that the key to reversing America's health crisis lies in the overlooked link between nutrition and flavor: "The Dorito Effect is one of the most important health and food books I have read" (Dr. David B. Agus, New York Times bestselling author).

We are in the grip of a food crisis. Obesity has become a leading cause of preventable death, after only smoking. For nearly half a century we've been trying to pin the blame somewhere--fat, carbs, sugar, wheat, high-fructose corn syrup. But that search has been in vain, because the food problem that's killing us is not a nutrient problem. It's a behavioral problem, and it's caused by the changing flavor of the food we eat.

Ever since the 1940s, with the rise of industrialized food production, we have been gradually leeching the taste out of what we grow. Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in technology, creating a flavor industry, worth billions annually, in an attempt to put back the tastes we've engineered out of our food. The result is a national cuisine that increasingly resembles the paragon of flavor manipulation: Doritos. As food--all food--becomes increasingly bland, we dress it up with calories and flavor chemicals to make it delicious again. We have rewired our palates and our brains, and the results are making us sick and killing us.

With in-depth historical and scientific research, The Dorito Effect casts the food crisis in a fascinating new light, weaving an enthralling tale of how we got to this point and where we are headed. We've been telling ourselves that our addiction to flavor is the problem, but it is actually the solution. We are on the cusp of a new revolution in agriculture that will allow us to eat healthier and live longer by enjoying flavor the way nature intended.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1476724237
• ISBN13: 9781476724232
• Release Date: March 2016
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

The flavor enhanced Dorito

This book is SHOCKING TO KNOW THE TRUTH behind the food giants! The author exposed how our food become bland gradually and how it creates a flavor manipulation of fake taste to trap consumers for life in the flavor illusion. This Dorito effect is toxic to your health with our Uncle Sam just stands by and let it happen. But Europe has a stricter regulations to protect citizens health in free market economy. Same US food and drink giants follow their guidelines with different formula. Reading this book know the truth to become enlightened to guard our health with the right choice, live long to collect other share of social security.