Book review: the Dorito effect
“Placebo effect,” “nocebo effect,” “side effect”: what is the “Dorito effect”?
As we’re all becoming more and more aware, much of the human food supply is not ‘real’. Schatzker illustration that once we start munching on Doritos chips, most people have a hard time stopping. Even when we’re not hungry any more, we will keep eating them.
Except he also questions our abilities to eat the opposite way: cravings for certain foods correspond to nutritional status. Siting studies with chickens, cows and other animals, what they eat and why, research shows that animal tastes change from one day to the next: if an animal is deficient in phosphorus, for example, it may pig out on high-phosphorus plants today and then avoid those same plants tomorrow because that nutritional shortage has been corrected.
So do humans have this same ability? Yes! Sometimes those instincts work, and sometimes they go horribly wrong. Before you conclude that you have a severe deficiency in Ben & Jerry’s and run off to slam down a half-gallon in one sitting, you might want to read a little further.
The Doritos effect is by design. The book goes into the kinds of artificial flavors and appetite enhancers that manufacturers have added to fake food. The frequent side effect of these chemicals is a badly scrambled metabolism and feedback system. If you eat these pseudo-foods, you will not be able to depend on your innate nutritional wisdom to steer you right. This is the dreaded “Dorito effect.”
This book came out in 2016, so it is not new. I would not take every detail of nutritional advice too seriously, but the main point about what has happened to the food supply is very good and I love the idea of listening to our cravings and more importantly our nutritional shortages and whether we can correct them ourselves thru our real food. Don’t give into the Dorito Effect!
