Friday, September 23, 2016

The Dorito Effect

We breed food for quantity instead of flavor. Then we we slather it with spices, fats, vitamins and sugar to make it palatable. Our bodies are getting confused, often craving something, but getting something different. This leads to overeating as we consume more of "fake food" in attempt to get the nutrients that are not present. Even the "fortified" foods can be problematic. Our bodies may associate something like "fruit loops" as providing the nutrition we desire - even though it is mostly providing empty calories. The fortifications also only provide a few of the vitamins that we know of, depriving us of the unresearched chemicals.
The food system does, however, succeed and providing fast quantities of cheap food. We can mass-produce corn, and then flavor it to appear to be anything else we want. (The same is done with animals. Special flavorings are added to their feed to encourage them to eat more.) We have enough vitamins to prevent some of the easily noticeable deficiency diseases (like scurvy). However, this system also leads to gluttony and a whole new set of diseases (like diabetes.) Finding a balance of quality and quantity is a challenge in our society. Until then, we may continue to be "fooled" into eating greater quantities of fake food.

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