The Dorito chip that so many know and love today, didn't actually start out as the tasty triangle we are so familiar with. At first it was actually just a salted tortilla chip and was not received well by consumers at all.
Frito Lay knew that they had a good idea, but needed to improvise and this is when they came up with the idea to fill their chips with flavor by using a fried piece of cornmeal. The only problem is, this flavor is chemical and artificial. It is not real food.
A new book entitled The Dorito Effect by author Mark Schatzker investigates not just what happened with the Dorito chip, but how artificial flavors and chemicals have fooled our brains, and societies, into desiring them while shunning healthy nutritious foods.
Flavor and nutrition are actually linked. For millions and millions of years, our ancestors could distinguish certain nutrients within food based on taste alone. And we would crave those foods to satiate certain nutritional needs. Today, however, we have been fooled into desiring artificial stimulation that offers no health benefit.
Author Mark Schatzker elaborates as follows;
"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."
Unfortunately the brain, although incredibly useful, is quite easily fooled in regards to food. If we drink a soda that has been artificially flavored to taste like oranges, for example, our brain can be fooled into believing we will be receiving the same health benefits as if we eat a real orange. As a result, we actually start to crave it more and more, because it is artificially stimulating us without satisfying us. Kind of like a hard drug. A quick high with no long term benefit.
The trouble is corporations make these unhealthy choices much more attractive to unwitting consumers. Not just through their deceptive advertising practices, but also through cheaper prices and by placing artificial preservatives which give them longer lasting shelf life. For the uninformed individual, the choice will always obviously be for the cheaper longer lasting product. But this, more often than not, is the unhealthy choice.
The solution here is simple; Start becoming more health conscious by reading labels. There is no excuse for this aside from laziness because we all can easily access google. In other words, research what you are buying. Sure, this will take time in the beginning, but as you learn what brands are safe and which are not, it will become easier.
"But what about the problem of taste?", you might be asking. As author Mark Schatzker documents in his book, as you replace artificial flavoring with real nutritious flavoring and foods, your body and brain will actually begin to resist the fake crap.
Although this article and Mark's book put a spot light on Doritos fake chips, they aren't even the worst violator because most people know that Doritos is "junk food". Other foods that are using deceptive marketing practices portraying themselves as healthy, when they are actually full of artificial flavorings and chemicals are more dangerous. As Schatzker explains;
"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... 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 are now using about 600 million pounds of artificial flavorings each year. This, alone, explains our food epidemic. As Mark notes, "everything that’s gone wrong with food and our eating habits can be understood through flavor."
No one will argue that it does not take effort to become healthy, especially when you are use to living an unhealthy lifestyle. But in a world where 1 out of every 2 people is set to get cancer at some point in their lives, I think there is more than enough motivation to do whatever it takes to not be one of them.
So although you can't change your life overnight, you can change direction. Please help to spread this article and help people wake up.
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