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© Simon & SchusterA catchy name for a tastebud pandemic.
The Dorito didn't start out as the fluorescent cheesy triangle we all know and love. First it was a regular, salted tortilla chip. And it was incredibly unpopular.

Then, there was a breakthrough. Frito Lay executive Arch West devised a way to import the savory, satisfying notes of a taco onto a fried piece of cornmeal. All it took was the right flavor chemicals.

In his new book The Dorito Effect, author Mark Schatzker investigates the explosion of taste technology and its relationship to natural, whole foods, which simultaneously are getting less delicious.

We eat sour cream and onion potato chips instead of raw carrots because they taste good. Did you ever wonder why?

"Synthetic flavors in foods have heightened their desirability at the very same time that whole foods are losing flavor," Schatzker tells Mashable. Humans have accidentally programmed ourselves to like less healthy foods because we think that's what all foods - even natural ones - should taste like. And many whole foods are now optimized for beauty and long shelf life instead of taste.

"Evolution did not program us to get fat — we've simply tricked ourselves into craving the wrong foods," Schatzker says on his website.

Yes, you read that right. We punked our own waistlines and heart health with chemically enhanced flavors and artificial tastes.


Flavor and nutrition are linked. For millions of years, the different flavor components of foods told our bodies about the nutrients in them, and we craved those foods when we needed their associated nutrients. "Now we've created foods that taste delicious, but unlike foods in nature, these foods aren't backed up by nutrients," Schatzker says.

This change in our cravings isn't because of a change in our tastebuds. It's because we have fooled our brains and bodies into thinking that the fake stuff is giving us what the real stuff does. Schatzker says,
"Now that we've broken that connection between flavor and nutrition by creating synthetic flavors, we have created foods that tell a thrilling but deceptive nutritional lie."
What has changed is how we perceive flavor. Since people get similar flavor from orange soda and a real orange, our brains think that we are getting the same nutrients from both foods. Plus, the orange soda is sweet and bubbly, so it has those added, pumped up flavor components. Since our palates tell us (wrongly) that we are getting the vitamin C and other nutrients from the soda, we start to crave that.

There's the first problem: Why seek out an orange when you can have an orange-flavored taste explosion via sugary soda?

Luckily, according to Schatzker, natural flavors are more varied and nuanced than the processed junk we are used to eating. You'll never see honey mustard pretzel chips on a Michelin-starred chef's menu. That chef looks to punchy garlic, bright lemon and rich cream to round out a gourmet entree. If you shop carefully and put an emphasis on flavor over a cheap price or long shelf life, you will be rewarded with real, natural flavor.

It's not just about picking the cucumber over the chicken nugget. It's about food that tastes like real food: food that hasn't been modified or bred to last longer in a refrigerated cross country truck; food that might spoil faster but that tastes infinitely better when it's fresh. Flavor is about choosing natural ingredients that are fresh and unaltered, not made to last longer or look prettier than they should. Focus on the flavor, not on how long you can keep it on the counter before it gets moldy.

"If you expose yourself to nature's incredible palate of flavor, you'll be thrilled by the experience." At first, you might not be thrilled by the expense or time that it takes to buy real food with real flavors, but the effect can be astounding. If you switch to eating tomatoes instead of tomato-flavored crackers, your cholesterol would likely drop and your pant size would decrease. Replace sodium and chemical-infused snacks with fresh fruits and whole grains to improve heart health.

If you are anything like Schatzker, you may stop craving junk food altogether.


Comment: Eliminate junk food cravings for good
Eating Real Food Is the Answer

The concerted effort by the processed food industry to make their products as addictive as possible has the unfortunate side effect of stimulating your metabolism to burn carbs as its primary fuel. As long as you are in primary carb-burning mode, you will strongly crave these types of foods. The solution is to decrease the amount of processed foods you eat, and replace them with high-quality whole foods. Remember, carbs need to be replaced with healthy fats in order to successfully achieve this metabolic switchover.

Again, intermittent fasting is one of the most effective ways to end junk food cravings, especially cravings for sugar and grains. No matter how cleverly enhanced these junk foods are, your cravings for them will dramatically diminish, if not vanish altogether, once your body starts burning fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel.

To protect your health, I recommend spending 90 percent of your food budget on whole foods, and only 10 percent or less on processed foods. Unfortunately, most Americans currently do the opposite, which is in large part why so many struggle with junk food cravings. Remember, virtually ALL processed foods are to some degree designed to have a high "craveability" factor, and it's really difficult to find products that do not contain high amounts of addictive sugar and carbs.

Schatzker's own eating habits have changed greatly since writing his book. He doesn't want a tomato that tastes like cardboard any more than you do. But once he put the emphasis on choosing ingredients that actually taste like something (yes, grass fed beef tastes different than grain finished beef which tastes different from fast food burgers), he actually changed his palate and his cravings.

After about a year of buying the best, freshest ingredients that he could and focusing on sweet fruit, whole grain bread and great meat, he retrained his palate and actually started craving more good, fresh food and fewer store-bought cupcakes. "I stopped putting sugar in my coffee, not because I was trying to cut back on sugar but because I felt like it was getting in the way of tasting the coffee.It's like I've rewired my palate," he says. You may actually like zucchini once you eat one that hasn't been cultivated to make it look greener and stay fresh longer versus actually taste good.

It's all about making sure real food tastes delicious.

Schatzker points to the beer movement that changed America from Coors country to a craft beer nation. He says the same thing can happen with food if enough people give real food a chance.

Already, there is a growing movement in this country among chefs and food lovers alike to get back to the roots of food, growing and producing ingredients that are delicious and nutrient dense instead of optimized for shelf life and beauty.
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© BRIAN KUHLMANN/MASTERFILE/CORBISOnce you stop eating the fake stuff, this will be the sweetest treat on earth.
In the war for our cravings, Doritos aren't even the biggest culprit. It's obvious in the way the chips are marketed that they're junk food. Other foods masquerading as healthy are actually full of flavor additives. "What's much more disturbing to me is that we're adding flavorings to yogurt, soy milk, tea - even raw meat. There are moms out there buying fruit-flavored yogurt tubes for kids that have no fruit in them at all," he says.

How can you expect your kid to enjoy a fresh strawberry when all he's used to is the pink goo inside a Pop-Tart?
"Americans now use 600 million pounds of flavorings every year," he says. "We have made bland, high calorie food taste thrillingly delicious. And we can't stop eating it. And to make matters worse, whole foods, like tomatoes, chickens and cucumbers, are getting blander and blander. In short, everything that's gone wrong with food and our eating habits can be understood through flavor."
It takes a lot convert one's lifestyle: time, money and ignoring those late night cravings for cheesy puffs in favor of freshly popped popcorn drizzled with olive oil and sea salt. If you could rid yourself of most cravings by undergoing a short period of junk food restraint, would you?