For Mark Schatzker, food is becoming more like Doritos even though it doesn't have to.
Schatzker, author of the upcoming "The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor," spoke at the second annual Feed a Farmer breakfast and luncheon Wednesday at Huntington University. The event recognized National Agriculture Day.
At the events, Schatzker said the nutrition and, therefore, the taste is being bred out of food.
Instead, he said food is being replaced with something similar to Doritos and has been going in that direction since scientists realized they could make flavors.
"It didn't take long once we started making flavors that we started adding them to things and what was one of the first things we added flavors to in a really successful way? Taco-flavored Doritos," Schatzker said. "The overall trend is the flavor is disappearing from the whole food that we grow and we're adding it to all sorts of other food."
Flavor is disappearing from the foods we grow, he said, because as foods are engineered for reasons such as disease resistance they are losing nutrients, which results in a loss of flavor.
Meanwhile, food flavors are being put into various different products, Schatzker said.
"When you produce flavor in factories and just start adding them things like tortilla chips or to soda or to hamburgers...you don't add the nutrition, you're just adding the sheen of nutrition," he said. "That's what we've done to food, we've made it very delicious, but it's not telling the same nutritional story."
Schatzker said this isn't as satisfying, resulting in people eating more and more. This leads to problems like obesity and diseases like diabetes.
People can think more about the flavor of the food they eat by looking at ingredients, he said.
"My advice would be to eat the most delicious food you can find, food that is delicious on its own," Schatzker said.
In terms of agriculture, he said food can still be tasty, healthy, productive, disease resistant and reasonably priced.
Schatzker's "perfect tomato" is called the "garden gem" tomato, and was developed by Harry Klee.
"This was a product of a very simple experiment," he said, adding Klee bred a bland, disease-resistant tomato with a tasty heirloom tomato. "What he got was a super tomato. It is 80-85 percent as productive as the most productive modern cultivar, it is disease resistant and it tastes so good."
People can also get these seeds for their own garden, Schatzker said, by giving a $10 donation to Klee's research effort at the University of Florida.
Animals can also be better raised to have more flavor as well and has been done in France, Schatzker said. They cost more, but he said they are more satisfying and people will eat less.
Pete Eshelman said he spoke to HU President Sherilyn Emberton about having Schatzker come to the event.
Eshelman said he met Schatzker after reading his book, "Steak," and asking him to visit the Joseph Decuis Farm, where he raises Wagyu beef.
"When his new book came out, I think it's a game changer in the food industry," he said. "I thought with what Sherilyn Emberton and Huntington University are doing with hearing all points of view with agriculture he'd be a great speaker."