16 Quotes by Mark Schatzker

Can these foods [low-fat, vitamin-enriched, etc] even be called "healthy"? Perhaps we should think about it this way: If you cut a batch of pharmaceutical-grade cocaine with chai, you could say with some degree of honesty that it is "healthier," "less addictive," and "now with chai!" But would you say it's "good for you"?

Their [plant secondary compounds] healthful effects in humans, however, are not well understood, in part because things in nature like coriander and basil can't be patented so there isn't a lot of money being thrown at them, and in part because long-term studies that measure small effects of low doses are expensive and don't yield the kind of unambiguous, major effects you get with pharmaceuticals, but mainly because preventions are never as exciting as cures.

Humans look just like livestock now. We achieve a state of buttery plumpness before we've even reached sexual maturity. We experience powerful cravings for food that is slowly making us sick. We are...programmed to eat the wrong food. We aren't born calorie zombies, but that's what we have become.

Flavor factories churn out chemical desire. We spray, squirt, and inject hundreds of millions of pounds of those chemicals on food every year, and then we find ourselves surprised and alarmed that people keep eating. We have become so talented at soaking our food in fakeness that the leading cause of preventable death - smoking - bears a troubling resemblance to the second leading cause of preventable death - obesity.

Modern food may be the most compelling lie humans have ever told.

The rise in obesity is the predictable result of the rise in manufactured deliciousness. Everything we add to food just makes us want it more. And no matter how hard we try, we can't make our outsized desires go away. If anything, we're lucky, inexplicably so, that only 8.3 percent of women and 4.4 percent of men have a BMI consistent with total food addiction. But remember the children...The percentage of slender Americans will gradually work its way down to zero. (82)

The food problem is a flavor problem. For half a century, we've been making the stuff people should eat--fruits, vegetables, whole grains, unprocessed meats--incrementally less delicious. Meanwhile, we've been making the food people shouldn't eat--chips, fast food, soft drinks, crackers--taste ever more exciting. The result is exactly what you'd expect.

Are humans nutritional idiots? Our palates aren't just out of tune with our bodily needs. Our palates are out to kill us.

The Dorito Effect, very simply, is what happens when food gets blander and flavor technology gets better.