Mark Schatzker, award-winning food journalist and author of The Dorito Effect, reveals the surprising truth about food and flavor. Topics include why artificial flavoring may be a missing piece of the obesity puzzle, the satiating benefits of natural food toxins, and why you may have no idea what a real chicken tastes like.

Here's what we talked about: 

3:31 – The most important word in our food world and how a family vacation changed the world of flavor, allowing us to make food taste anyway we it want it to.

6:39 – Why do we use so much flavor? The technology of food and the reason most strawberries taste like cardboard.

8:14 – How a simple “Chicken of Tomorrow Contest” got us moving in the wrong direction of cheaper, faster, diluted chickens and vegetables.

16:27 – Food crisis or flavor disorder? A new look at obesity and why we’re eating more than we ever have before.

20:06 – The fascinating way one company is using your feelings as flavors in order to get you to eat their foods (and get us into overeating trouble.)

22:11 – Why does food even have flavor in the first place? What your DNA has to do with flavor and nutrition and how your body knows what’s in food before you even eat it.

24:12 – The realities of flavor, cravings and food addiction: how fake flavor sells us a promise it can’t deliver.

25:56 – The joke of “natural” flavor, the antioxidant that might actually be making your real food taste good, and why you should always take a look at that ingredient list —even if it’s a “health” food.

33:12 – What the amazing nutritional wisdom of animals and humans can teach us about eating food that gives us what we need and what goes wrong when you throw fake flavorings into the mix (plus what you can do to fix it)!

44:58 – Is there enough real food to go around? The tradeoff between quality and quantity in our food supply.

47:22 – Are toxins in our food really that big of a deal? Mark’s take on chemicals and toxins in foods we are consuming and why we can so easily overeat refined processed foods.

52:06 – The best evidence that we’re getting the obesity problem wrong and how you can use bitter foods to increase satiety.

57:31 – Some helpful info for finding real chickens.

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Hosted by Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness.