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1-Page Summary of The Dorito Effect

Overview

When you eat at your favorite Mexican restaurant, it’s probably not the taste of chicken, vegetables and chili that you enjoy. It’s a complex mix of chemicals designed to imitate those flavors.

The author is concerned that eating food enhanced with artificial flavoring is dangerous to our health. In fact, the modern epidemic of obesity can be connected to it. The author will explain why we use our nose to taste; why it’s perfectly natural to have orange juice and liver for breakfast; and why flavoring makes unhealthy food taste healthy.

Big Idea #1: Despite decades of popular diet plans and weight-loss programs, obesity rates continue to rise.

Have you ever run into an old friend at the supermarket and excitedly said, “You look great! When’s the baby due?” only to have her burst into tears? This is what happened to Jean Nidetch in 1961. She was overweight and gained even more weight after this encounter with a friend who thought she was pregnant. Nidetch made it her mission to help others lose weight, which ended up changing millions of lives.

The U.S. has seen a dramatic increase in obesity rates since the 1960s, when only 0.9 percent of the population had extreme obesity and 69% were overweight or obese.

Despite the fact that Americans have spent trillions of dollars on diet plans and products, obesity rates continue to increase. Some popular programs include Weight Watchers, which was started by Nidetch, who wanted to help people lose weight by going to a support group with other overweight people. Despite these programs, life-threatening trends continue.

Obesity is a serious problem, and not just because it’s unattractive. It can cause many health issues like asthma, cancer, heart failure, high blood pressure and diabetes. Some people are actually so obese that they’re unable to work or find socially acceptable jobs.

So, what has happened in the past 50 years that makes weight control so difficult?

Big Idea #2: Over the last decades, food quality has diminished due to intensive production practices.

You buy a chicken filet at the supermarket, season it and cook it. It should taste good, but in reality it doesn’t. Why does this happen? What is making our food bland?

Farmers have been focused on increasing their yield since World War II. They’ve gotten better and better at it, but the taste has suffered.

In the late 1940s, the government sponsored regional contests to find a chicken that would be larger and grow faster. Awards were given based on breast size, feed efficiency and weight. What’s missing? That’s right: taste!

Chicken used to be very different. There was a time when there were different kinds of chicken, each with its own distinct flavor and size. Chicken tastes better the longer it is raised for because they are fed less food as they grow older. Nowadays, all chickens end up in supermarkets after 35 days or so because that’s more efficient.

If you only care about efficiency and not the quality of food, then this might be an improvement. However, from a nutritional standpoint, food has actually gotten worse over time.

The problem isn’t only with chicken. Farming practices affect the produce we eat, too. In a study from the 1980s, researchers compared contemporary fruit and vegetables to those of 50 years ago and found that even in the ’80s food contained fewer nutrients than it did back then.

This is what happens when farmers begin using modern fertilizers and intensive irrigation practices. These methods already remove much of the food’s natural mineral nutrients, which are compounded by breeding practices that opt for foods that grow fast and large. This is referred to as the dilution effect.