

The Dorito Effect - leephillips
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-dorito-effect-by-mark-schatzker.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region&region=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region

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beloch
A significant portion of the blandness of some supermarket foods is the result
of processing, with "pro-juiciness" treatments being some of the worst
offenders. Chicken (even whole chickens for roasting) are injected with water,
oil, and water-binding compounds to plump them up. The water mostly evaporates
during cooking so the result is usually blander rather than juicier. Most hams
sold today are cured by injecting them with brine, as opposed to traditional
surface-based dry curing methods that are slower and result in less mass. The
result is bigger hams with inferior flavor and a somewhat gelatinous texture.
It is still possible to find traditionally cured hams, but you often have to
go to a specialized butcher.

So, it's not just breeding that has prioritized factors other than flavor, but
also how foods are processed. We pay by the kilogram, so producers have found
ways to make the same animals weigh more.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's at the root of corn-fed beef too! Feeding cows corn the last days of
their lives before they get on the truck to be weighed and cut up, raises
their weight by far more than the cost of the corn. Its just economics. And
the farmers set the beef grades, so beef raised this way is Grade A regardless
of how it tastes.

~~~
wdewind
Honestly I greatly prefer corn fed beef to grass fed regardless of economics.
Grass fed is nice once in a while, but I think the best is grass fed, corn
finished. It gives the meat a much fattier taste, and I've found also gives
you a much nicer maillard crust.

~~~
rsync
Where and how are you eating that you are able to sample and differentiate:

\- corn fed \- grass fed \- grass fed, corn finished \- other permutations ?

Genuinely interested ... I mean, I know where I can go to get either corn or
grass fed, but I wouldn't assume that other variables are controlled for. And
then the grass fed, corn finished ... no idea who I would submit that request
to ...

~~~
arturnt
They sell these varieties all at Whole Foods. Usually Grass Fes and Corn Fed
at the butcher section and Grass Fed Corn Finished pre-packed on the side.

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speeder
I am from Brazil, here our economy depends greatly on commodity exports (meat,
soybeans, iron, coal, and whatnot).

Producers of commodities, tend to export the best stuff, and sell the crap
internally... It has an interesting result: the flavour (or quality, for non-
edible products) of some stuff, is drastically different, for example two
famous cases is chicken, and oranges, it happened once to each industry to be
unable to export for some reason, and they dumped the export product in the
internal market, people that bought the "export" chicken and oranges were very
impressed, it tasted MUCH, MUCH better, also the export oranges are obviously
different (they are bigger, heavier and have a more striking colour).

Unfortunately, I am not one of those people :( (I had girlfriends that tasted
those, but when it happened I lived in a city that was too small to get those
products).

Still, for many people that think that produce can not be THAT different, I
can say, yes, it can, even when made by the same company, sometimes in the
same farm.

~~~
dantheman
Since it costs the same to ship a mediocre product as the best products, it
makes sense to ship the nicest stuff since a premium can be charged for it.

~~~
rectangletangle
Happens in the US too, for the same reasons. Our export avocados tend to be
larger an nicer looking than the domestically circulated equivalents. However,
they both taste the same.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That explains it! I lived in California, where all the grocery-store avocadoes
were marked 'Florida'. And California is a major avocado-growing region! I
suppose all their best ones ended up in Florida.

~~~
mcculley
The same happens here in Florida with orange juice. Every grocery store
carries many varieties of "California orange juice". Which seems silly, given
that we have great oranges right here.

~~~
ma2rten
Same in California: I only see Florida orange juice in the supermarket.

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rayiner
In Bangladesh, we had scrawny little chickens that you'd buy live at the
market. When we moved to the U.S. I couldn't eat chicken for 6-9 months
because it just tasted so bland and flavorless.

~~~
nether
Back home in South Carolina, we had apple trees in our front yard. Never used
any pesticides or anything, just let them grow. Anyway, they were about half
the size of grocery apples, almost completely covered in insect bites, and
tasted like ass. Incredibly sour, strangely dry, and very little sweetness. So
thank god for pesticides and Fuji apples.

~~~
acomjean
probably a "real" apple tree. Most apple varieties are created by grafting a
branch of an existing variety onto a new tree. Thats why despite genetic
variation, they taste pretty much the same.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafting)

~~~
redblacktree
It's not my experience that apple varieties in the grocery taste "pretty much
the same." Maybe you meant something else?

Apple trees are grafted because the best-tasting varietals don't form the most
hardy root system. You put the good-tasting apple tree on top and the hardy
strain on the bottom (to become the roots)

~~~
acomjean
Each variety tastes the same (a golden delicious apple tastes like other
golden delicious apples). The grafting does that among other things "Maintain
consistency". A hardy root system that you mention is one.

I started looking into it because my dad has a giant apple tree thats much
bigger than the ones I've seen in an orchard, but the apples taste
surprisingly bitter.

I guess another reason they like grafting is the trees stay smaller and its
easier to pick the fruit.

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ricw
We have "badges" for all kinds of things, ie free range eggs, organic produce,
electricity usage etc. why does something equivalent not exist for flavour?
might be a tad subjective, but certainly doable. Might be because a lot of
people actually confuse organic produce for a flavour badge?! never been
convinced by it though..

~~~
pmorici
It's not straight forward that people will like traditionally produced food
products better. In the case of beef for example most people prefer the taste
of corn fed beef to grass fed even though corn is horrible for cows and grass
is their natural food.

~~~
daurnimator
Hmmm, really?

When I moved to the US, I was put off by the taste of beef; I found that corn
fed just didn't taste as good. I'm curious if you just prefer what you were
brought up on?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
The 2nd. My dad liked cold corn grits fried in lard for breakfast. Its totally
disgusting. Unless its how you got your calories on the farm during the
depression - then it was heaven-sent.

~~~
steverb
I make that anytime we have left over grits, although I usually use bacon
grease. My kids love it too. It's all about what you're used to.

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vsync
A great talk touching on this topic is "Law of the locust: a tale of swarms,
cannibals, ageing and human obesity" <URL:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rV7zAGdbyA>](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rV7zAGdbyA>)
(though I saw Dr. Simpson speak at Harvard, rather). He mentioned how the body
craves protein and will over-consume carbohydrates to get enough; less so the
reverse. It really messes things up when you have a starchy food laced with
MSG so your body thinks from the savory umami flavor it's getting protein, but
never does, so desperately eats more.... according to him Doritos are pretty
much evil incarnate.

Speaking of Doritos I just noticed they finally came out with the Roulette
ones near me. May have to risk the evil.

~~~
Frozenlock
Very nice video.

It explains a lot about the low-carb (high protein) diet.

Thank you for sharing it.

~~~
speeder
I always ate food in not much large amounts, but one thing that impressed me
is that when I switched my diet (when I could afford it...) to salad + cheese
and meat, the amount of food I ate dropped a lot, even in unrelated meals.

It was great to go to a restaurant, eat a third of what other people were
eating (it was a weight-based restaurant, so I could see that I ate a third of
what other people ate, in weight of the food terms), and feel completely
satisfied.

Even better, I could get back to work right away, or even go do something that
require physical exertion (for example once I was late for something, and
could eat, and then immediately run toward the place where I was supposed to
go).

~~~
vsync
Soylent has proven to be exceptionally filling for me, more so than any other
food. It actually gets rid of that ever-present background hunger for up to
half a day.

I've lost a ton of weight on it, enough that I've gone down 3+ inches in pant
size in a few months. Of course, being in a stressful situation such that I
lost interest in eating, then getting out of said stressful situation so I
didn't have as much of an urge to binge and stretch my normal appetite again,
probably helped.

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rectangletangle
I can confirm this, lived on a ranch where we raised our own free range
chickens. They had a noticeably more savory flavor. Not being brined, also
helped not overpower their taste. Even the old roosters who's meat was so
tough that you'd have to stew them for hours tasted better.

(it was also neat to see how neotenic and undeveloped the bones of store
bought chickens are in comparison)

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igonvalue
> According to a gruesome statistic from a 2013 article in Poultry Science, if
> humans grew as quickly as the Chicken of Today, “a three-kilogram
> (6.6-pound) newborn baby would weigh 300 kilograms (660 pounds) after two
> months.”

How is this an appropriate comparison? A quick google search attests that
birds grow faster than mammals, and that humans grow especially slowly; I'm
sure you could conjure up a similarly "gruesome" statistic with any wild bird.

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comrade1
I had to spend a good amount of mental effort trying to explain to my German
teacher, in German, why American pork tastes so bad (or, rather, has no
flavor). When I said, 'Schwein, das andere weisse Fleisch, wie poulet' (I'm in
Switzerland), she figured it out immediately and was as disturbed as anyone
should be.

~~~
m_mueller
Wait, is pork really considered white meat in the US? I've never seen white
pork, but then again I think I never consciously ate pork in the US - all I
know is that ham is absolutely terrible for my taste - but I think I've never
had good ham outside German/Italian/Spanish- speaking countries. I'm Swiss
btw.

~~~
L_Rahman
Yes. The typical pork chop in the United States contains so little fat that it
is closer to a chicken breast than a fatty cut of beef.

~~~
m_mueller
Ok, so the fat determines the way people think about it, but the meat's color
is still red, right? If it were white I'd make a big circle around it since
I'd assume it's spoiled.

~~~
L_Rahman
More of a very light pink than red. I've definitely mistaken a pork chop for a
chicken breast when glancing through my fridge.

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bengarvey
Can confirm. Doritos are amazing.

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frogpelt
It's funny that she takes the opportunity to plug her former employer chef's
work and an entirely different book at the end.

It makes it seem like that was her motivation for reviewing this book in the
first place.

~~~
dmix
> her former employer

She was a research assistant _11 years ago_ for someone who is very famous
already.

