Living in Dorito World

So in class the other day I started comparing everything to Doritos. 

Here's the heart of the analogy. 

The flavor/taste sensation of umami is the savory, meaty sensation that is distinct from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Umami is characteristic of broths and cooked meats. When you're sick, umami is what makes eating chicken broth feel like a meal.

A Dorito is engineered umami. A Dorito is savory. A Dorito is built to taste like the essence of “meaty.” Consequently, the Dorito creates a gustatory illusion, activating the same receptors that normally signal protein-rich foods. The brain gets the savory cue it evolved to trust even though what’s actually being eaten is a chemical dusting on a fried corn triangle.

And it’s not just that a Dorito mimics the flavor profile of savory foods. It’s engineered to strike those taste receptors with maximum impact. A Dorito, like other hyper-processed foods, is an example of what some call a “superstimulus.” A superstimulus is an artificially engineered enhancement of a naturally occurring, evolutionarily meaningful cue, amplifying the sensory volume far beyond what natural environments ever provided.

Two examples.

Humans have a sweet tooth. We enjoy sugar. Consider, then, the naturally occurring sugars in berries and fruit. Compare that to candy, sugary sodas, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Why do we prefer these foods over berries and fruit? Because they are superstimuli. They hijack, through their engineered potency, our natural affinity for sweetness.

A second example is how heroin hijacks the endorphin pathways in the brain. Endorphins are related to pain-numbing and pleasure, regulating our behavior accordingly. Through the morphine molecule, heroin hijacks those pathways, producing a pleasure far in excess of naturally occurring processes. So, as with sugar, the drug user begins to choose the superstimulus over the more modest and naturally evolved pleasures of normal life.

In both cases a natural reward pathway is exposed to an artificially amplified signal so potent and so salient it comes to be preferred over the very things it was originally designed to recognize. And that’s what’s going on with the Dorito. The Dorito is a superstimulus, tricking the brain into chasing a savory, protein-like signal that isn’t meat at all but a flavor-engineered illusion on a processed corn chip.

So all that is at the heart of my Dorito analogy. Simply put, the Dorito is a highly pleasurable, alluring, and addictive fake (chemically engineered umami) that tricks you into thinking that you're engaging with or consuming something real (meat, protein). That’s Dorito World. Choosing the fake over the real, the empty over the substantive. This happens because the fake comes to us as a superstimulus, presenting as more alluring and enticing. But like with a Dorito, overconsumption of the fake and empty over the substantive and the real leads to dysfunction and undermines health.

Here's the main structure of the Dorito analogy:

Superstimulus: More enticing and alluring than the real thing.

Empty and Fake: Doesn't substantively provide or reinforce what the stimuli is naturally associated with.

Overconsumption Undermining Health: Health is compromised when the empty and fake comes to replace the real and substantive.

And with this analogy now in hand, you're ready to appreciate many of the things I've shared in my class about how we are increasing choosing the empty and fake over the real:

"Social media is the Dorito of relationships."

"Online porn is the Dorito of sexuality."

"Virtue signaling is the Dorito of character."

"Politics is the Dorito of morality."

"Video games are the Dorito of achievement and accomplishment." 

"Online activism is the Dorito of justice."

"Streaming worship is the Dorito of church."

"Consumerism is the Dorito of joy."

We are living in Dorito World.