There is a lot of fascinating history and detail in this book about how the foods we eat now are not the foods our ancestors ate. I enjoyed learning about how the "Chicken of Tomorrow" contest reshaped commercial poultry, how vanillin was originally made out of pine extract, and about the various experiments with goats and nutrition. I think that Schatzker lays out a very good case for the relationship between taste and nutrition, and that flavor intensity has decreased with the industrial production of foods.
But I am skeptical of the further connections he draws between added flavorings and obesity, and his thesis that it is flavor alone, without the mitigating toxic secondary compounds that drives people to eat things that are bad for them in huge quantity. He asserts that we only overeat Doritos and similar junk food, that real food with true flavor will sate us after only a small amount, but this comes from his own anecdotal experience, not from any actual studies. (I can report my own overdosing on clementines while on a bus in Israel in the 1980s, which resulted in a desperate need for a bathroom that was not available. I have also eaten way too much high-quality chocolate, way too much delicious free-range steak, drunk way too much wine (which is certainly toxic), and so on, to believe that quality food is self-limiting.
I also found his assertion that we drown our food in spice and fake flavor because it's been engineered to blandness incredibly Western-world-centric. What about Chinese and Indian dishes, with their complex spices, which were developed long before commercial-industrial poultry and pork and produce? What about countries which do not have the entrenched industrial agriculture of the US, but which still suffer from an increasing obesity rate?
Still, I agree that the tastiest foods are usually the local, free-range, heritage breeds, whether we're talking meat or vegetables. I also appreciate that he points out the uncomfortable truth that industrial organic is still industrial, and that he acknowledges that buying food for flavor means spending more money, and that as a nation and a world, we cannot afford to feed ourselves on low-yield and free-range food in the manner we are used to. I am lucky enough to be married to a hunter and to have a large range of local, organic, heritage foodstuffs available, and have the money to pay for it, but not everybody does.
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There is a lot of fascinating history and detail in this book about how the foods we eat now are not the foods our ancestors ate. I enjoyed learning about how the "Chicken of Tomorrow" contest reshaped commercial poultry, how vanillin was originally made out of pine extract, and about the various experiments with goats and nutrition. I think that Schatzker lays out a very good case for the relationship between taste and nutrition, and that flavor intensity has decreased with the industrial production of foods.
But I am skeptical of the further connections he draws between added flavorings and obesity, and his thesis that it is flavor alone, without the mitigating toxic secondary compounds that drives people to eat things that are bad for them in huge quantity. He asserts that we only overeat Doritos and similar junk food, that real food with true flavor will sate us after only a small amount, but this comes from his own anecdotal experience, not from any actual studies. (I can report my own overdosing on clementines while on a bus in Israel in the 1980s, which resulted in a desperate need for a bathroom that was not available. I have also eaten way too much high-quality chocolate, way too much delicious free-range steak, drunk way too much wine (which is certainly toxic), and so on, to believe that quality food is self-limiting.
I also found his assertion that we drown our food in spice and fake flavor because it's been engineered to blandness incredibly Western-world-centric. What about Chinese and Indian dishes, with their complex spices, which were developed long before commercial-industrial poultry and pork and produce? What about countries which do not have the entrenched industrial agriculture of the US, but which still suffer from an increasing obesity rate?
Still, I agree that the tastiest foods are usually the local, free-range, heritage breeds, whether we're talking meat or vegetables. I also appreciate that he points out the uncomfortable truth that industrial organic is still industrial, and that he acknowledges that buying food for flavor means spending more money, and that as a nation and a world, we cannot afford to feed ourselves on low-yield and free-range food in the manner we are used to. I am lucky enough to be married to a hunter and to have a large range of local, organic, heritage foodstuffs available, and have the money to pay for it, but not everybody does.