In the shadow of Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss

The Dorito Effect is very similar to the book Salt, Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. Schatzker seems to know this and tries to differentiate it by arguing that pointing to just Salt Sugar and Fat is too simplistic. He argues that thousands of flavour chemicals can also be blamed for the modern obesity epidemic and this is really the highlight of the book. The other main theme of the book is that fresh produce has drastically lost flavour and nutrition over the last 70 years. While this sounds completely plausible to me, the evidence he offers is surprisingly scant. His strongest evidence that chicken has lost flavour is a sentence in a Julia Child cookbook. As far as depleted nutrition, he offers up just one study where he admits the results where mixed. Also his tone towards the food industry is gratingly cynical which gives the impression that his assertions are motivated more by contempt than by logic. All in all the book is simply takes second place to Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss which basically argues the same thing but better.

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81 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Eat dark chocolate & drink wine

Anybody whose parting advice is, "Eat dark chocolate & drink wine," has information I want. The author takes our modern society's problem with obesity to a whole new level. Flavor is a key. The reader was easy to listen to & the information was life changing.

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35 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

I Had No Idea!

I heard about this book on an Underground Wellness podcast. The author interviewed well and peaked my interest. Glad I purchased it. There's lot's of information in this book, regarding how our food has changed. To my surprise, this has been going on longer than I thought!The narrator was good, and didn't put me to sleep. I've listened to this twice and have placed several bookmarks.

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31 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Thought Provoking

The idea that the same "palletizers" used to make live stock gain weight as fast as possible are common in processed human food rocked my world. Likewise, the notion that this is necessary because crops and live stock have been breed to maximize yield and appearance while flavor has been left out of the equation. It's a whole new piece of the epidemic obesity puzzle.

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29 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Thought provoking

The title of the book makes sense after reading the book, but I wouldn't have read this book if I hadn't heard a very positive review of it. I don't eat processed food - I cook from scratch - I thought the book would be irrelevant to me. But the issues raised are bigger than just our personal choices (though there is plenty of information to consider there too. It was an interesting mix of history and current research along with cultural musings. I recommend it.

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29 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Diluted Food

Our food is diluted. That's why I love this time of year when my garden yields undiluted vegetables that are so full of flavour that all I add is butter or a tiny bit of salt. Tomatoes that are taste sensations! Really delicious potatoes, corn, cucumbers, etc This flavour is missing in action in our supermarkets and I want it found. The time has come and it is not hard to do. If that's what the consumer wants and demands the market will provide it. Read this book and find out how we are duped.

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27 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Very interesting read on modern flavor

I am have a degree in human nutrition and dietetics and we never covered anything much on flavor. great read.

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24 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Important and surprisingly hopeful book

What made the experience of listening to The Dorito Effect the most enjoyable?

To me, the genius of this book is Mark's ability to tell his horrifying tale of the state of food and flavor this country without coming off as an alarmist. It would be really easy to write this story with an accusatory tone, but Mark documents the history of how food production has changed over the last 40 years, without demonizing anyone in particular. And for that reason, I hope it will be less likely to be dismissed because I think what he is saying makes a lot of sense, and if people pay attention, it will make an enormous difference in the lives of millions of Americans. Maybe it is cynical, but the hopeful part to me, is that there is money to be made in making food more nutritious, and money is what makes things change. I'm now voting for change with every dollar of food money that I spend.

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19 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

good but...

This is a "decent book". it's "okay" .... "pretty good" not "great". The narrator gets irritating after a while. I turned the speed up to 1.5× to mask his voice.

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10 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

It is chock full of knowledge and a great listen

My first thought was not even about The Dorito Effect, but about the narrator. I did not look prior to getting this book so I was pleasantly surprised to hear Chris Patton! I listened to his Yesterday's Gone narration and simply loved it. His voice definitely jumps out of the headphones so I was even more excited to listen to this book.

If you enjoy non-fiction and are curious about what the dorito effect entails, be prepared for a no holds barred look at what America puts into their food. It is disgusting. Or would be if we didn't crave these yummy materials so much. There is so much in this that I could talk about but one thing that really caught me off guard was "Natural Flavors". The author describes natural flavors as flavors that are actually not natural at all.

It's funny because I have been curious about what in the world they are for quite some time now. It saddens me to find out that they are these synthetic flavors that spice companies just come up with to make our taste buds crave more! With all the substances that we have to look for, you would think that this is probably the least harmful but it does not seem so. Sadly, during my last grocery shopping trip, I noticed that nearly everything has natural flavors. Thankfully there is a new health trend so there are some things that are natural and only have the few things that make up that ingredient. But these are few and far between!

The book continues to give insight about what we eat and why we still crave it even after knowing what it is. The author even talks about McDonald's and although he knows it is horrible, he eats there still! I have to admit to their fries being awesome. Once again, the taste of the food, not the substance, is what our brains think we want! And it is so hard to fight against.

Back to Chris Patton. It is interesting how he narrates. He has such a chipper, upbeat voice, that listening to the idea that companies are blatantly adding in crap to our food and making us obese, does not sound so horrifying! There are moments when he gets a bit more somber, however, for the most part he is his cheerful self. I think this book needs that bit of levity. Otherwise, the reader will wind up spiraling into a depression. There is a lot of depressing moments in this so his lending the cheerful voice helped a lot. The audio was perfect and very well done.

There is so much information in here that you may want to get the print version just to be able to highlight and write notes! I'm going to have to listen to this at least once more. It is chock full of knowledge and a great read.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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9 personnes ont trouvé cela utile