The Dorito Effect by Schatzker Mark

Author:Schatzker, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

TWO MONTHS later I visited one of this continent’s more storied fried chicken spots, a Memphis joint that has been dunking breasts and drumsticks into batter and then hot fat for decades. However old the restaurant was, the broilers it was serving up were ultramodern—plump, meaty, and bland. The exterior perfectly executed the Dorito model: crispy, fatty, and loaded with MSG. The actual meat beneath it was dry as toilet paper. And yet I couldn’t seem to stop eating it. I didn’t dislike the chicken, but my level of liking was in no way commensurate with the pace at which I was eating it. After every swallow, I wanted more. It was as though the chicken created an itch that only more chicken could scratch. I ate till the bucket was empty. I was stuffed.

One afternoon, I was at a birthday party with my four-year-old twins (one girl, one boy) when something similar happened. As the children gathered around the hired children’s entertainer to sing “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed,” I made a move to the snack table, where I encountered a blue plastic bowl filled with those unmistakable powdery orange triangles: Doritos. I told myself I would have precisely one. This, of course, proved to be impossible. I crunched the single Dorito, and the sound of children singing faded out as a singular craving took hold. The want for more Doritos got so strong it was painful. I pried meager chunks of compressed Dorito out of my molars with the tip of my tongue and launched them down my throat, but it was like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with a fistful of pebbles. I cleansed my hand of seasoning, as though purity of body would bring about purity of mind. It was no use. Within a minute, I reached back in the bowl for more. The analytical part of my brain sat back and watched the primitive zones of desire and reward play their cat-and-mouse game.

Just like with the Memphis fried chicken, I didn’t enjoy the Doritos, not the way I enjoy good chocolate or a ripe peach. The only payoff was the first bite—an entertaining crunch and a brief spike of flavor that all faded to mush. Desperate to regain the thrill, I would reach in and grab another chip. It wasn’t that putting a Dorito in my mouth felt good. It was more like not eating them felt bad. As the children moved on to “Bumblebee, Bumblebee Fly Away,” I was loading them in four at a time.

It was a moment out of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. I find myself continuing to consume certain foods even though I am no longer hungry. It happened again at a McDonald’s in northern Vermont, where, on a family road trip, we pulled off the highway and I ordered a Big Mac, Coke, and medium fries, and downed all 1,120 calories in maybe three minutes. I wanted more. My wife said wait, that in twenty minutes my brain would register that my stomach was full, but I could not heed this wise advice.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.