The Dorito Effect
nytimes.com
The Dorito Effect
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: The Dorito Effect
#2I 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.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#3In 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.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#4A great talk touching on this topic is "Law of the locust: a tale of swarms, cannibals, ageing and human obesity" " rel="nofollow">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.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#5We 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..
Re: The Dorito Effect
#6It'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.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#7We 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..
Free range chickens for example seem to taste much better, but I don't see you could have a pure flavor badge.
However, you could probably just create a new flavor(s) and only apply it to nutritious foods.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#8It'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.
> her former employer
She was a research assistant 11 years ago for someone who is very famous already.
Re: The Dorito Effect
#9I 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)
Re: The Dorito Effect
#10I 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 u…
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.