Multi-Disciplinary Reading – Book Reviews

The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker, 2015 – I thought this book was about the junk food industry going by the title. I was expecting a one-dimensional bashing but was taken aback by the nuances of the complex ecosystem that has evolved in the last 70 odd years. As we optimised to feed the 7 billion mouths by improving yields, we have optimised for tons and time with genetic seeds and breeding, fertilisers and feed but have sacrificed flavour, which stands for real nutrition.

To compensate for the loss of flavour we douse our food in sauces and dips, herbs and spices and flavouring agents. The disconnect we have thus caused between flavour and nutrition has caused cognitive and emotional deception and our bodies seek the missing minerals, vitamins and plant compounds by consuming more of food rich in salt, fat and sugars without ever being sated nutritionally, even as the engineered flavours have caused a food addiction pandemic causing average weights to soar every decade.

My notes –

• People that try to lose weight through diet generally gain it back and some (“The obesity code” book made the same point)

• Weight watchers – started like AA (Alcoholics Anonymous that works on collective willpower than the individual addict’s) for the obese (ironically was sold to Heinz)

• 1960 – 13.4% of Americans were obese. 14.5% in the 70s. 30% by late 90s. Today 69% are either overweight or obese. The British, Chinese, French are all gaining – its a pandemic

• Weight increases risk of asthma, cancer, heart attack, stroke, reduced fertility, premature births, high BP, sleep apnea, liver disease, diabetes and arthritis (and depression). Obesity is surging past smoking, drinking and poverty in morbidity

• Between ‘89 and ‘12, Americans spent over $1 trillion weight loss – during same period obesity grew 50% and extreme obesity doubled

• Adult-onset diabetes is now called type-2 diabetes since even Children were getting it

• As natural reductionists, we have blamed obesity on sugar, unsaturated fats, saturated fats (before that), carbs, sugar (its a cycle) and technical jargon like glycemic load, protein ratios and serum triglycerides. There’s no single cause, so there cant be a silver-bullet solution

• Smoking causes cancer – that the “how”. The “why” is because smoking is an addiction. Similarly, we keep looking at the “how” for obesity without wondering about the “why” – because we are not able to resist food

• Food and flavour decoupled when Frito-lay invented the Doritos – tortilla chips that tasted like tacos, had an engineered crunch and an irresistible combination of salt, fat and flavour

• 1960s made great leaps in flavour technology – barbecue flavour in chips, soft-drinks in oranges, grapes and lemons – none of which were natural. Fruits, grains, meat, vegetables were themselves losing flavour at the same time

• Food was getting blander because of increase in yields – be it corn or chicken. Capitalism was optimising for yields through fertilisers and feed and not flavour. To compensate, we crank our zestiness by the ton in flavour

• Nothing tastes like what it is, everything tastes like what we want it to taste like

• Eating has as much to do with nutrition as sex does with procreation (Eating for taste and not hunger)

• If music is emotion expressed through medium of sound, flavour is emotion expressed through food

• Our flavour-sensing system is being fooled, having not evolved in the last few decades. The food crisis is thus a large-scale favour disorder

• Chicken of tomorrow contest – contest that ran from 1948 to create chicken that grew fastest and looked like a wax model provided. Scored on uniformity of size, quality of skin, length, depth and width of breast, hatchability, feed efficiency and avg. weight (not flavor)

• 1923 chicken weighed 2.2 pounds in 16 weeks. ‘33 it was 2.7 pounds in 14 weeks. ‘43 it was 3 pounds in 12 weeks. ‘73 it was down to 8.5 weeks! Chicken of today does it in 5 weeks (Fed a standard calibrated diet in a dark pen and not allowed to waste energy venturing out – capitalism at its finest)

• If humans grew as fast as broilers, a 3 kg new born baby would weigh 300 kg after 2 months

• Julia Child noticed the flavour missing in chicken back in the 60s 13 yrs after the chicken of tomorrow contest but very little was done then and since. Her recipes often recommended very mild flavouring of butter for chicken (Julia & Julia with Streep is a fab movie)

• Fruits & vegetables grown in 1930s vs 80s – rhubarb, bananas, parsnips had fewer essential micronutrients – calcium down 19%, iron down 22% and potassium down 14% (plumper, juicier produce but also diluted)

• Broccoli, wheat and corn had changed due to careful breeding to grow faster and bigger (improved yields). Breeding, fertilising and spraying was diluting nutrients, just like broiler chicken. Quantity has come at a significant loss to quality (nutrients lost, replaced by carbs and water)

• Tomato that ripens in the truck or a warehouse doesn’t taste as good as the tomato that ripens on the vine (when engineered to ripen late)

• Tomatos have been bred to have thick skin, be disease resistant, have better yield, look luscious and uniformly red but the genes that determine good flavour have been lost (substituted by ranch dressing)

• 12 ft tomato plant would carry 4 or 5 ripe tomatoes in the 40s. Today at 6 ft., they carry 10 ripe tomatoes – since they are source limited, they stuff the fruit with water

• Blandness in chicken, fruits and vegetables is intimately linked with nutrition (flavour is a signal of nutrition)

• Bio-distribution – birds taste like the feed they eat. Milk from cows of the grass / grain they feed on (Grass-fed goat, free-range chicken / eggs or pasture milk tastes diff for this reason)

• Processed chicken like nuggets from a factory are hydrolysed, breaded and flavoured – (diluting, adding further carbs and dousing in artificial flavour)

• Flavour solutions bring together advanced organic, analytic & synthetic chemistry, neuroscience, psychography, psychophysics, ethnography, demography, molecular biology, finance, botany, economics, physiology and even feelings

• The modern food we eat is a very good compelling lie

• An ounce of vanilla was worth as much as a shot of a good single malt whiskey. Madagascar produced most of the world’s vanilla from an orchid blossom. When its govt. tried to destroy stock to control price in the 70s, McCormick produced vanillin from pine trees (now made from clove oil which is even cheaper)

• Retronasal olfaction – aroma that enters not through nose but back of the throat, engaging different parts of the brain (wine-tasting and wasabi!)

• We can distinguish over a trillion aromas

• Umami (glutamic acid) was discovered as the flavour from cheese, meat and fish broth in 1908 by Japanese. Umami rivals vanilla on its influence on the food industry. Ajinomoto is the leading producer of MSG (monosodium glutamate)

• Vanilla was reverse-engineered through gas chromatography (deducing substances by molecular weight). Vanilla had over 100 compounds but vanillin only 30. Yet, it was indistinguishable from vanilla (though vanilla was like a layered novel and vanillin a comic book). Production moved from Madagascar to Baltimore. Even though vanilla prices have dropped, still imitation vanillin is used

• By 1965 there were 700 flavour chemicals identified through gas chromatography. Today there are over 2200, from apples, to wasabi to balsamic vinegar – all from factories instead of plants

• Garlic, miso and soy sauce contain glutathione (kokumi flavor) that’s rich, full-bodied (Givaudan & Ajinomoto make)

• Sizzlers in restaurants use sizzle sauce that makes sizzle louder and aroma more intense (engineered by McCormick)

• Flavours are engineered for “need states”. Customers buy food based on these “need states” (like no fuss dinner).

• Most restaurant chefs are chefs in the same way people that assemble ikea bookshelves are carpenters (they follow operational guidelines, not recipes)

• Customers order off menus, the restaurant kitchens also order off menus. Real cooking happens in the factory, just reheating in the kitchen. Real cooks are Griffith labs, Kerry and McCormick

• Natural flavours – derived from plants, roots etc. (natural origin) but with natural chemical processes, enzymes and heat

• Synthetic flavours – manufactured from petrochemicals and industrial chemistry. Both natural and synthetic flavours are equally engineered

• Flavorists order flavour chemicals like cis-3-hexenol (leaf alcohol) from Allured’s Flavours and Fragrances (480 page phone book for flavours). (Givaudan, IFF, Symrise, Firmenich, McCormick)

• In 1918 avg. American sprinkled half a pound of spices. Today its 3.5 pounds!

• Yield improvements since ‘48 – 4x corn, 3x rice, 3x potatoes, 2.5x wheat, 2x soybeans, 2x eggs, pigs – 25% bigger in 25% less time, beef cow – half as old with 60% more meat (with flavour dilution & hence the rise in consumption of flavours)

• Engineered flavours trigger “wants” so strong yet don’t provide the disproportionate pleasure as indicated by the craving (just like smoking or drinking)

• Food addicted brains are not happy brains. It takes a lot of gorging just to get to the baseline happiness

• With non-junk food becoming less-flavourful (flavor dilution), junk food becomes more enticing

• Just like pigs and chicken that gorge on high-octane feed, human beings have become the same gorging on high-octane junk and so look like livestock

• Palatant – additives added to make livestock eat more eg, Sucram for sheep (feed science of its own). Hershey’s syrup is a eg. of human palatant

• Rise in obesity is a direct result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness

• Only 10% of Italian adults are obese, against 35% of American adults

• Plants produced a lot of plant compounds as toxins to ward off insects / pests. These compounds are useful for animals and goats learn to connect the dots between the flavour and nutrition (it’s a learned behaviour)

• A lot of plant secondary compounds are anti-oxidants. Trying to synthesise these has failed so far. Trying to locate the specific compound that helps prevent cancer is like crediting a solo violinist in an orchestra for the music sounding good (Eat whole fruits and vegetables, organically grown. Higher the natural flavour, higher the secondary compounds in it)

• Flavour is a chemical language, nature’s mother tongue. Bitterbrush talks through tannins, sagebrush through terpenes. The meaning could vary by species

• Animals eat what they need because what they need tastes good (Each organ and cell communicates this through its receptors)

• Coriander, fennel, ginger, basil, cinnamon, turmeric – are rich in plant compounds good for us. Since these cannot be patented, not much money is thrown into them

• Health benefits of Mediterranean diet come from Olive oil (oleocanthal) and its anti-inflammatory effects (functions just like ibuprofen). Throat burn sensation is a good indicator of quality

• People who consume artificial sweeteners suffer from obesity, stroke, heart disease, type-2 diabetes (maybe correlation but not causation)

• Flavours are highway signs for actual nutrition. When same flavour is paired with two different nutrients, the body gets confused

• Years of research suggests that multivitamins do nothing to augment health (Look up the research papers)

• When children are fed enriched junk food (thiamin enhanced frooty loops for eg.), the child has no incentive to form an attachment to food naturally rich in thiamin (cauliflower)

• Tastiest steak comes from cows that eat only grass and best fried chicken without additional flavour from free-range heirloom chicken (rare old variety genes still bred for taste). These sate even in small quantities (rich in vitamins, mineral and omega-3 and the body knows it). Plant compounds are linked with deep satiety even when its found in animals that consume them

• Ingredient driven cuisine – chefs spend more time in sourcing ingredients for their authenticity and flavour

• Not putting a Dorito in your mouth feels more bad than eating one feels good (Sounds like Kahneman’s loss-aversion curve from behavioural economics!)

• Chicken today contains more omega-6 than omega-3 because they don’t live long enough to convert ALA to DHA which they can and they don’t consume grass or chia

• Yellowed chicken skin and bright yolks comes from carotenoids (Only pastured chicken is rich in them)

• Antifeedants – compounds that reduce appetite (opp. of palatants). Raisins and chilli-peppers are known antifeedants. Bitter compounds in grapes, blueberries and broccoli do the same (Italians have an Aperitivo before dinner for same reason)

• An actual strawberry (or a mango, or jamun fruit) is a masterpiece in flavor engineering. Nature has mastered the art of hedonic density (Max pleasure, min calories). Processed food simply doesn’t have as many chemicals as what nature produces (though we think processed food is too much chemicals incorrectly)

• You can taste the pasture in the cheese or butter (Someone switching from Nandini to Akshayakalpa cow milk would notice the same). Real flavour comes from lower yield and so is often expensive

• 20 of the most delicious aromas in tomatoes are linked to nutrients of life-and-death importance (floral & fruity beta-ionone is a carotenoid, trans-2-heptenal smells fatty, green and pungent is made of omega-3 fatty acids etc)

• Eat carrots that taste sweet and “carroty”, lettuce thats darker in colour, virgin cold-pressed oils. Pay up for taste and real flavour and save on ranch dressing, hershey’s and ketchup

• Eat foods your great-grandmother would recognise as food (Michael Pollan)

Eat foods where flavour comes from the plant or animal and not from a human with a PhD in chemistry. Eat real foods and eat a variety of them. Try new varieties of food and try at least 10 times (body has to make the taste-nutrition association to “like” it). Avoid synthetic and natural flavours (Read the labels). Organic food may not necessarily be healthy – make sure it tastes good. Use herbs and spices not to cover up the blandness but to complement it. Eat dark chocolate and drink red wine and craft beer (mark of palates in tune with good food). Give kids an amazing piece of fruit instead of candy. This is one hell of a book and i highly recommend reading every page of it because changing food habits requires you to be convinced and being slowly convinced over days with sleep and thought in between is going to be better than reading this summary in 10 mins. 11/10