The Dorito Effect.

Cafe Society
1

The Dorito Effect is a book about how foods we typically buy in the grocery store often contain additional flavouring that makes them taste like other foods. For example, Doritos started out as just corn chips, sans the Taco flavouring. In fact, Frito Lay originally rejected the idea of Taco flavoured corn chips (they already had the traditional corn chip) until the inventor’s persistance proved them wrong with regards to what people will accept as far as seasoning/flavouring.

The author goes into other interesting details about how the food and agriculture industry has developed higher yielding meat and crops that are more resistant to disease and thus more abundant and cheaper for the consumer, but at the cost of flavour. To replace flavour, a brand new chemical food industry has fluorished that is essentially there to put flavour back into food. But not the flavour you’d ordinarily find in food naturally. Hence corn chips that tase like nacho-taco-something, or there abouts.

Anyway, it got me thinking that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if we paid closer attention to the kinds of food we buy and eat at home. As a rule, we’d never go to a fast food joint because of the highly processed and nutritionally void food we’d get there. So why do we think nothing of bringing Gyro flavoured potato chips home from the store? Potato chips should taste like potatoes cooked in oil and salt and that’s it, right? Plenty of those natural type chips on the store shelves. If we want sour cream and onion flavour, make a dip of sour cream and onions. Seems simple, right? More work for sure, but not impossible as we have all the ingredients regularly in our house anyway.

So in an effort to eat better without having to grow our own non-gmo heritage seed crops, we decided to see if we could just buy the plain greek yogurt and add our own strawberries to it when we wanted strawberry yogurt. A little more work, but not a huge undertaking. So we’re doing that now. Also juicing and having green smoothies from largely organic greens and vegetables. Why? Because it seems better for you than Yoplait with corn syrup and ‘natural and artificial’ strawberry flavours.

But it all comes at a price. Certainly time in food prep. Efficiency to an extent with respect to having to shop more frequently and for a wider variety of fresh ingredients. Certainly price, though not sure how much more just yet.

All in all, I think it’s how we’re meant to eat with respect to long term health as well as having a better control over what we put in our bodies. But I have to admit, stawberries and yogurt don’t taste the same because real strawberries are largely flavourless wet styrofoam shaped to look the part but not much else. Also, I do miss me some Bold Nacho flavoured Doritos.

Anyway, what would some of you consider giving up in the way of convenience, time and cost in order to eat things in their more natural state without the mystery ‘natural flavouring added’?

Do you even consider it worth the bother? If not, why not?

2

There is a large movement today to try to breed lost flavors back into foods. There’s no reason to think that it won’t be successful while still yielding the other attractive qualities that producers and consumers both want. The best, cheapest, easiest, and most sensible way to do this is to add genes from more flavorful varieties. Yes, this would mean GMO foods. Monsanto not withstanding, GMO is potentially the most wonderful thing to happen to food. It’s like adding computers to communications; we can list many downsides to that but overall it has transformed the world and future positively.

And cake should taste like a paste of flour and water, right? Why add chocolate to it?

Too many people seem to think like you do. It’s not either/or. We can have both. In fact we can have all.

3

I’m having trouble parsing the following from the OP:

Maybe you don’t, but obviously people go there for exactly that reason. Why else do you think people go to fast food joints? Because they expect health food?

4

I’ve got a closet full of homebrewing equipment waiting in storage that I’m dying to get my hands on so I can make some beer, mead & cider that have the ingredients those beverages should contain and nothing else. Even when I buy beer, I can’t buy the flavored crap (Grapefruit Shandy? What the hell is that even supposed to taste like? Just call it a wine cooler and get on with it).

After reading a bunch of different diets and trying some of them out, I’ve devolved down to “buy your own ingredients, make your own food, save the sugar for dessert & then skip dessert.” It’s working out pretty well. The sheer quantity of coupons I have to toss is a bit depressing, though, and a trip to CostCo is kind of pointless unless I’m out of toilet paper…

5

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slamming GMO foods because they are GMO. I’m not some food ludite. But they have been largely responsible for the lack of flavour in many foods; tomatoes to name the most obvious one.

I’m also aware of the fact that they are doing exactly that… trying to put flavour back into food. Again, tomatoes being the example there.

Also not against putting multiple ingredients together to achieve delicious results. Else why cook? And why stop at chocolate cake when you can make black forest cake? I’m simply saying that when adding cherries, perhaps try to avoid the ones with added food colouring and cherry flavours.

6

Not judging you or them. Have at it. Where’s this coming from?..

7

Is dipping my chip into sour cream really healthier than some sour cream and onion flavoring?

8

I think he interpreted your specific “we” (as in we’d never go to a fast food joint…) as a general “we” (no one would go to a fast food joint).

9

That depends. Some people feel they’re healthier if they skip the perservatives, flavorings, colorings, sugar and oil that they wouldn’t use if they made it from scratch. There’s also the concern about food allergies, if it’s not clear what other products get made on that assembly line. And then there’s the biological contagion factor, if you’re concerned about listeria, e coli or salmonella. I don’t know if the individual ingredients are any cleaner than the packaged goods, but that’s the public perception among all my hippie foodie yuppie friends.

10

Ah! I see. Nope. Mine was the Royal “We”. :wink:

11

Good question. Let’s consult the experts:

Lay’s Kettle cooked regular potato chips.

Lay’s sour cream and onion potato chips.

Plain sour cream.

Looks like onions are the only ingredient in most onion powders.

So if I had to make an undeducated guess, you’re getting more calories from dipping the chip into sour cream, per chip consumed. For me personally, a handful of regular chips eaten this way would be much more satisfying than a bag of Sour Cream & Onion flavoured chips. So I think that in the end, I’d eat less of them and consume healthier calories (perhaps).

12

If I had kids I’d take greater measures to maintain healthier habits but as a single person I don’t really care to put the time, effort or money into it. I mean I don’t eat fast food very often or keep junk food in my house but I’m not gonna churn my own butter or anything. Eating in general, to me, is kind of a necessary evil as it is so I’m disinclined to dedicate more than the bare minimum to it.

13

Agreed. No churning butter. No grinding your own flour. No raising your own chickens for eggs and meat. Nothing more demanding than purchasing more fresh foods (thus less processed foods) at your usual grocery store.

14

But most people don’t eat just a handful of chips (especially not if they just made dip for the occasion). It seems reasonable to assume that, if you had a snack-sized bag of chips (the type you put into a lunch bag) you’ll eat it in one sitting. And one sitting of Sour Cream & Onion flavored chips is less calories than one sitting of plain chips plus sour cream and powdered onion on a per capita basis. As for the health benefits or risks of the SC&O flavoring, I’d have to see real evidence that it’s worse for you than the cour cream would be. We have knee-jerk reactions to “artificial” that don’t actually mean it’s a health issue.

From the two chips you linked, the SC ones are actually arguably healthier than the plain ones but your plain ones are kettle chips so maybe that’s the reason.

In any event, I bet a bag of gyro flavored chips is healthier than eating a gyro with a bag of chips :stuck_out_tongue:

15

Ok, as part of your thesis, you should probably demonstrate that flavored chips are noticeably worse for you than fried potatoes saturated with oil and salt which are notoriously not a health food.

16

Is it though?

I’m thinking of a gyro I ate almost every day in Greece. There was the grilled meat on the spit, then tsadziki, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and the pita.

Count up the calories compared to a bag of chips and I’m sure you’re right. But nutrition is not just about the number of calories but the quality/source of calories and all the other nutrients that don’t come in a bag of flavoured chips.

17

This would make sense if you’re forgoing store bought food for local produce and pasture raised meat, and growing a garden, and having a few hens out back for eggs.

But simply replacing highly preserved mass-produced strawberry-flavored yogurt with highly preserved mass-produced plain yogurt, I don’t think you’re getting benefit much in return. You think eating salt covered factory fried potato chips is healthier or better in any way than salt covered factory fried potato chips with a small amount of cheese flavored dust added?

In other words, I think your motives are right, but you’re currently only tilting at windmills. Pick better targets. Sugar and simple carbs make up approximately 75% of most people’s diets. Natural and artificial flavors make up ~0%. Which do you think would be a more effective change?

18

This was my thought as well for the longest time. The for the hell of it one year I grabbed a package of little strawberry plants at the hardware store and threw them in the planter on the back porch. Birds and mice got most of 'em but I managed to snatch one off the plant one morning. Blew me away–there was a whole layer of flavors that were conspicuously absent from even good store-bought berries. It was almost like eating candy. Started raising a garden the following year. Same deal with tomatoes, turns out. The fruit from just some cheap-o tomato plants tossed into the food processor and I’m making some fantastic tomato sauce as though I knew what I was doing. Same deal with peas, onions, zucchini, carrots…the golf ball sized apple I got off the Honey Crisp tree before the dogs chewed it down to a stump.

Problem is, I’m a wretched farmer. I have a 200 sq ft patch I tend every year (but not this year. this year it just chucked a couple bags of wildflower seeds in it fur S&Gs) and most times something bad happens–hail, bunnies, bugs, sprinkler breaks and everything’s dead before I get around to fixing it. Maybe if I was retired and could actually spend some time taking care of it. Point is, home grown grub, even from cheap stock, is stupid tastier than industrial farms by a wide margin, but it’s hard as balls to grow a sufficient quantity of it to live off of. Nevertheless, if I could do it better I’d gladly spend the extra time on food prep.

19

I’m not saying flavoured vs home made potato chips. I’m saying, I like potato chips and I’m not willing to deep fry my own because it’s too much effort and the house would smell for days of deep fried oil. I hate that. So I’m going to buy the ones that say: Potato, oil, salt. Then add my own flavouring using a similarly minimalist list of natural ingredients. And sometimes, that may not be quite the same as the flavoured potato chip. But I bet it will be nutritionally better and in the end healthier because I’ll need to eat less of it to feel satisfied.

20

I don’t think everything has to taste like something else. It’s hard to beat the absolute perfection of plain potato chips or fresh, crisp pretzels. These lilies don’t need gilding. No sour cream and onion potato chip ever made is going to taste as good as a plain chip and dip. No pretzel dusted with cheese powder is going to beat a slice of cheddar cheese eaten with a plain pretzel.