I've read recently the book that the article references - Why Humans like Junk food - and it's a fascinating read - despite being poorly written.
Putting theories behind food appreciation, like Vanishing Caloric Density, the Umami flavor (MSG, garlic and Friends) and flavor familiarity (vanyloids are present in breast milk) - on the context of foods your familiar with, changes your perspective when you're tasting any kind of food, allowing you to deconstruct what are you experiencing: "Ho, I like this because it's greasy, and it salty, and it has loads of umami from the garlic".
It allowed me to deconstruct a common action, changing it from an immediate appreciation to a more rational, pondered thought process.
Reminding me of my favorite hunger hack: got into kitchen, chop onion or press garlic, toss into oil, fry. In ten seconds, I go from "dinner sounds like a hassle" to rooting through the cupboards, salivating madly.
It is really impressive when you think about it; the level of genius that goes into tricking our brains to like this synthetic mush is astonishing. But only the same way that the porn industry is astonishing in some ways - both appeal to a desire and then over-stimulate, and both are on tenuous morale standing.
What's morally tenuous about making food people enjoy? Gourmet chefs use the same science as Frito Lay. The only difference is that almost anyone can afford to have Doritos whenever they like.
Really. Price is the only difference between gourmet chefs and Doritos. Oh, come on. Frito Lay doesn't make food people enjoy, they make food people crave. You don't feel satiated after eating a lot of Doritos, and as this article points out, Doritos are engineered that way on purpose. You don't get sick of them, or full from them, or long-lasting enjoyment out of them. You just get an overloaded reward center in your brain, a lot of empty calories, and a blood sugar spike. Gourmet food typically strives for the opposite: intense and complex flavors, long-lasting enjoyment, and a pleasant full feeling. To keep with OP's analogy, saying Doritos and real food are the same is like saying porn is the same as being in a great relationship, except anyone can afford porn.
Really. Price is the only difference between gourmet chefs and Doritos.
That wasn't my claim. My claim was that they're using much of the same chemical and culinary science. For example: salt = good, more salt = usually better! Similarly, people can and do gorge themselves on gourmet food. God knows I've done so myself a few times.
You don't get sick of them, or full from them...
I invite you to test this claim with a 17oz bag!
Plenty of people find themselves completely satisfied with a reasonable quantity of Doritos. It's also an enjoyable experience for them. This food engineering is designed to make that experience more enjoyable. They're not physically addictive in any meaningful sense. If your threshold for "moral tenuousness" is the potential to cause harm because you've produced something tasty enough that people have more than is healthy for them, then you'd have to string up a whole bunch of brewers and winemakers, too. Which would be too bad.
You are right and I concede your point. I just wonder at what point does a product maker become irresponsible? Obviously a manufacturer is not directly at fault when someone misuses their product, and they also are only selling what the consumer wants, but what level of responsibility do manufacturers have to help the consumer make good choices? I disagree that Doritos are not physically addictive in any meaningful sense. Like all simple carbs, Doritos can and do create cravings. If you eat a small bag of Doritos every afternoon for a month then stop, you will experience fairly strong cravings. You will feel miserable if you don't get your sugar. Try it! I used to eat a big bowl of cereal every day, then I stopped because I realized I needed to lose weight. It worked, but I felt miserable for a few weeks, cutting out my daily sugar infusion. That doesn't mean that selling simple carbs is bad, but I would argue that Doritos are engineered to be as addictive as possible, and purposefully sold in portions that encourage overconsumption.
You mention that we would have to string up a whole bunch of brewers and winemakers, but we do currently. Brewers, winemakers, and cigarette companies are all heavily regulated and taxed because they have the potential to cause harm. Is Four Loko, which is designed for overconsumption, morally tenuous? Probably. Four Loko is on a different level than Doritos because the health effects are much worse, but the same principle applies. Clearly Doritos should not be illegal, but maybe they should be disincentivized, because...
We have an obesity epidemic. More people in this country are overweight than not overweight. It's becoming a national health crisis, and costing us a lot of money. Type 2 diabetes, renal failure, and the like are preventable.
I think this article sums up my feelings on the whole situation. We have a health problem, and the cheapest, tastiest products make the problem worse. https://medium.com/health-the-future/918b3d08f21f
> Obviously a manufacturer is not directly at fault when someone misuses their product, and they also are only selling what the consumer wants, but what level of responsibility do manufacturers have to help the consumer make good choices?
As much as I agree with the sentiment of responsible companies (with my upvote), IMHO the reality is that consumers are the ones calling the shots.
Demand is like a vacuum suction. When there is a demand there will be supply, even if some don't choose to provide on moral grounds, others will fill in. No demand, no supply.
The only responsibility that companies have is to make money, and that is done via making products consumers want. If consumers want to buy only from the responsible companies, all viable companies will be responsible.
They aren't all responsible because we don't all vote with our wallets that way.
Look at the demand for health food these days even causes McDonald's to offer salads. Change demand, and you change supply.
> We have an obesity epidemic. More people in this country are overweight than not overweight. It's becoming a national health crisis, and costing us a lot of money.
Each individual is responsible for his/her own health. We can't legislate unhealthy lifestyles away. We can only educate and motivate people to learn more and take control of their own health, starting from not visiting the highly popular junk food isles.
Even though I eat a generally healthy diet, even I can't resist the pull of the Dorito... There's just something about salty, savoury, crispy, fatty and sometimes spicy treats that is so appealing.
I forget where I read it, but a while back Frito-Lay food scientists were actually able to eliminate the 'gold dust' from Doritos. Focus groups for the new chips -- that had the exact same taste and 'biology', just without the dust -- revealed that consumers hated them, because at some level we equate flavor with the dust (and thus lack of dust with lack of flavor.)
In my neuroimaging days we found a tight correlation between visual and taste regions, even when we were only asking about one quality and from only word stimuli.
I'm curious if they understood all these concepts when they created the chips or if they were developed afterwards and realized this is why we love them.
The original product was made at the Casa de Fritos at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Using surplus tortillas, the company-owned restaurant cut them up and fried them (as in traditional Mexican chips called totopos) and added basic seasoning, resembling the Mexican chilaquiles, but in this case being dry. Arch West was the Vice President of Marketing of Frito-Lay at the time, and noticed the popularity. He made a deal with Alex Foods in 1964, the provider of many items for Casa de Fritos at Disneyland, and produced the chips for a short time regionally, before it was overwhelmed by the volume, and Frito-Lay moved the production in-house to its Tulsa plant.
Sounds like the chips came first. It wouldn't surprise me if the additional flavors of doritos were experiments studying the phenomenon, and plunged back into reformulations of the original.
Putting theories behind food appreciation, like Vanishing Caloric Density, the Umami flavor (MSG, garlic and Friends) and flavor familiarity (vanyloids are present in breast milk) - on the context of foods your familiar with, changes your perspective when you're tasting any kind of food, allowing you to deconstruct what are you experiencing: "Ho, I like this because it's greasy, and it salty, and it has loads of umami from the garlic".
It allowed me to deconstruct a common action, changing it from an immediate appreciation to a more rational, pondered thought process.