Book review: Even natural isn’t natural anymore.
Bookreview (C2+ level): The Dorito Effect.
The Dorito Effect is an interesting read on food, additives, food addiction, and why you want to eat the entire bag of crisps in one sitting. As someone who has read many books on food, has watched many documentaries, and has a father who’s obsessed with organic and natural, I thought I already knew everything there was to know about food. I was wrong.
The book is an easy read, and the accompanying audiobook (read by Chris Patton) elevates the experience even further. It’s a pleasant combination of anecdotes, information about food additives, and an excellent insight into the world of chemical additives and synthetic flavours. Schatzker is driven by one question about taste and answers many other questions during his quest for that answer.
This left me dumbfounded: the synthetic flavours are actually synthetic scents.
I was surprised to read about “natural flavours” not being natural at all but only produced in a “natural” way, and having read this, I started to check everything I have in my kitchen cupboards for natural flavours. Alas, nearly everything has “unnatural” flavours. Next to that, I was stunned to read about the fact that it’s actually about smell and we don’t only smell with our noses, but also with some parts of our throats (don’t quote me on this one, I could have misunderstood this part of the book). This left me dumbfounded: the synthetic flavours are actually synthetic scents.
Another startling idea from the book was the price of food. Apparently, consumers don’t like the idea of paying more than 99 cents for food, and anything above 99 cents is considered a rip-off. This notion drives food manufacturers to produce cheaper models of everything; models that don’t have real flavours, but cheap synthetic ones that can’t be distinguished from the real ones unless the real flavours can be accessed immediately. I went on Google or Bing and searched for the closest organic supermarket I could find. I rarely eat meat, but I got some taste for fried chicken after reading about Schatzker’s fried chicken dinner (warning though: although Dutch regulations about the term “organic” are quite strict, I still doubt whether meats at our large chain supermarkets are actually ‘organic’, or just regular free-range animals fed organic feed including organic growth hormones).
If you’re hungry for more [pun intended], here are some things for language learners. The book’s not very difficult, and it doesn’t contain any jargon that you need to know. It’s safe to call it C2(+), but the topic plays a role here as well, since it’s not something everyone’s familiar with. Keep your vocabulary organiser at hand to write down all the words you’ll learn in this book. Bon appétit!
