The modern diet does not love nutritional value, but it loves me.
It especially loved me in middle school. I remember spring days, jumping off the bus into the warm breeze, grabbing some Spicy Nacho Doritos and a Vault, and romping the neighborhood with friends.
I was a chunky boy. I’ve lost and gained weight a few times in my life, but the Doritos era was my peak.
As it turns out, Doritos weren’t just my problem snack. Their invention revolutionized the American diet, ushering in the food landscape we know today. That’s the thesis of author Mark Schatzker in his book The Dorito Effect.
Schatzker’s proposal isn’t just symbolism. He draws direct connection between the introduction of the Dorito in 1966 and today’s various health crises.
Not long ago, the story goes, foods tasted like what they were. A banana tasted like banana. A pineapple tasted like pineapple. Chocolate tasted like chocolate.
But corn didn’t taste like a taco.
The innovation of Doritos was their flavor technology. Frito-Lay took a plain old tortilla chip and made it taste like a taco—with ground beef and cheese nowhere in sight.
Think about it: You don’t eat Doritos for the chip. You eat them for the powder on the surface. There are an array of flavors today, and none of them taste especially like the main ingredient.
We lose perspective on how new this phenomena is. For the first time in human history, the flavor of the food we eat is divorced from its substance.
And what is that substance?
We eat all sorts of corn: taco-flavored corn, blueberry-flavored corn, cocaine-flavored corn.
Your body’s natural cravings can all be comforted with a hit of corn, flour, or gum.
This is Schatzner’s issue with our food. “Flavors are cues for nutrients,” he says. When we are nutrient deficient, the body signals cravings for specific foods to satisfy our needs.
But when flavor is artificially contrived, the body is duped. You may feel poorly, but you lack the natural means of response.
Our sensors are jammed, so we just keep eating.
The Dorito Effect makes a nutritional point, but I’m not a nutritionist. I try to eat healthy (some say not enough), but I also enjoy tasty things.
I see Schatzker’s argument—about our relationship with food—as analogous to our relationship with technology. And I see it displayed in the disconnect between generations.
I grew up on the front edge of the Internet revolution. I had YouTube at home, laptops at school, and a smartphone in the lunchroom. These were normal but new.
When older adults and Gen Z speak past each other, I sympathize with both parties’ points of view.
The younger generation feels paralyzed and anxious.
The older generation thinks they’ll grow out of it. After all, they did.
What older adults miss is the mental-physical disconnect of 21st century life. They’re experiencing it too, granted, but not in their formative years. They chalk issues of anxiety up to the typical youth experience, something that will fade in time.
Shortly, they don’t account for corn.
Perhaps dopamine is the new corn. It comes coated in all sorts of flavors, and it eases our cravings.
The Internet has our friends, jobs, entertainment, news, and education. An instant hit is a moment away.
Am I throwing out my devices? No, in the same way that I’m not picketing Frito-Lay. Modern life has benefits. But it doesn’t teach us to cook.
Let’s take it back to the kitchen. In a traditional manner, cooking the meal you want means combining the flavors you want. I like lime on my tacos (and a nice hot pepper).
In the same sense, life consists of combining the activities that contribute to your wellbeing. If you’re missing friendship, restfulness, or physical strength, there are ways to fix that: socializing, sleep, and the gym.
But like nutrition has become numbers on a spreadsheet, people’s problems have lost their physicality. Flavor and substance are divorced. You may know you feel like trash, but it’s not always intuitive what to do about it. Not with every problem (and every false gratification) screaming at once.
The real solutions you need will take time. They may feel worse before they feel better. All the while, corn tastes better but makes you feel worse.
If I’m at all correct about the problem I’m describing, then the thing Gen Z dreads most is advice.
Many adults offer the lessons they learned at similar stages in life. Any well-meaning person would. Imagine their surprise when this only agitates the issue.
Take a walk, Read a book, Things take time.
To the one offering counsel, these are perfectly practical instructions. To the one hearing them, these pithy statements and simply another datapoint.
What does Things take time to grow mean to someone who’s never planted a seed? The truth may be grasped in the head but not the hands. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Amazon ships same day.
Unless the advice is physically modeled, it’s one more message to process—in addition to the thousands we intake daily. Using a garden analogy is not helpful; planting a garden is.
Past education has focused on information. We propagated knowledge to the next generation. They read textbooks in school and escaped home to play (Doritos and Vault in hand).
With instant, up-to-date information accessible 24/7, I predict future education will shift radically toward experience—if not in education, then in other realms.
We need the practical Roman style over the abstract Greek. Lessons spoken are one thing. Lessons coached and (however clumsily) practiced together will find an audience among learners starved online.
Perhaps I’m wrong. I’m certainly not setting out to make predictions outside my expertise.
But the next time you reach for your phone or TV remote, ask yourself: Is this the substance I need? Or is this corn?
Great thoughts!