What is deceptive food?

The book Foods That Lie introduces the concept of deceptive food and explains how molecular deception in the food supply provokes overeating and obesity. This article summarizes this concept.

Deceptive food is any food product that contain isolated chemical additives. These additives mislead the body’s sensory systems about the nutritional content of what is being consumed, creating a mismatch between the flavor signals detected by taste and smell receptors and the chemicals delivered to the body.

The key aspect of deceptive foods is the manipulation of flavor through various manufacturing techniques:

Concealing Flavor: Manufacturers often use “masking solutions” and “bitter blockers” to hide unpleasant flavors that would naturally deter consumption. For example, pea protein, which has an off-putting “grassy, beany, earthy, bitter and chalky” taste, is masked with additives so consumers cannot detect its true flavor. This disarms the body’s natural taste alarm system that would otherwise warn against consuming certain substances.
Transporting Flavor: Manufacturers often take flavors from one context and apply them elsewhere. For instance, in The Dorito Effect, Mark Schatzker describes how corn chips were initially unsuccessful until flavors were added to make them taste like more nutritious foods. This creates a kind of “chemical hoax” where bland, low-nutrition ingredients are made to taste like they contain various beneficial nutrients.
Strengthening Flavor: Companies artificially enhance existing flavors to make them more intense. For example, butter can be made more “buttery” through the addition of diacetyl. Even basic items like crumbed chicken and pasta sauce often contain “natural flavors” or “extracts” that amplify their taste far beyond what would naturally occur.

The problem with deceptive foods is not just that they contain artificial ingredients, but that they create intermittent reinforcement of flavor – an unpredictable relationship between flavor and nutrition. When someone consumes a deceptive food, the intense flavor signals to the body that substantial nutrition is incoming. However, when this nutrition fails to arrive as predicted, it creates confusion in the body’s regulatory systems.

However, this concept extends beyond just artificial flavors. Some manufactured foods contain neurochemical mimicry through substances like caffeine or theobromine (found in chocolate), which can create additional layers of deception. Adding chemicals for preservatives or supplementation can also create intermittent reinforcement.

Intermittent reinforcement of flavor has several consequences:

Downregulation of Taste and Smell: As flavor-nutrition relationships become unreliable, the body reduces sensitivity of taste and smell receptors to account for the discrepancy. This means both deceptive and genuine foods begin to taste worse over time, driving people to seek out increasingly intense flavors.
Increased Hunger: Because less nutrition is received per unit of flavor than expected, hunger signals increase to ensure adequate nutrition is obtained. This creates a vicious cycle where more food is consumed but nutritional needs remain unmet.
Disrupted Satiety: Natural satiety mechanisms are compromised because the flavor signals don’t accurately predict the incoming nutrition. This prompts the individual to consume more food than usual, as the body continues seeking nutrients that the flavors promised but didn’t deliver.
Insulin Resistance: Unpredictable relationships between flavor and glucose are predicted to lead to difficulties predicting precisely how much insulin should be released. When an estimated average prediction of sorts is used, sometimes too much insulin is released and sometimes too little. It appears likely that insulin resistance might be a simple way for the body to help compensate for these unpredictable swings in blood sugar that result.
Impact on Circadian Rhythm: The confusion between flavor and nutrition often leads to irregular eating patterns and snacking, which can disrupt the body’s natural circadian rhythm and metabolic processes.
Microbiome Effects: Deceptive foods can alter the gut microbiome, affecting digestion, nutrient absorption, and even mood regulation.

It’s important to note that deceptive foods are not necessarily synonymous with “junk food” or processed food in general. Many seemingly healthy foods can contain deceptive elements, while some processed foods are not deceptive. Traditional food processing methods like cooking, fermenting, or drying typically rarely create deception because they result in predictable and reliable changes in flavor that accurately reflect changes in nutrition. The key distinction is whether the food contains isolated chemical additives that confuse relationships between flavor and the chemicals that subsequently arrive in the gut.

Examples of deceptive foods

To understand the lengths that manufacturers go to in creating flavor-enhanced products, consider the case of a typical mass-produced pizza. A nationwide pizza chain in New Zealand, for example, adds “natural flavor” to the dough; “maple flavor,” “smoke flavor,” and “flavor” to the bacon; “flavor” and “autolyzed yeast extract” (which contains glutamate) to the beef topping; “natural flavor” to the cheese; “hydrolyzed yeast protein,” “autolyzed yeast extract,” “color,” and “flavor” to the BBQ and tomato sauces; and so on. NOTE: A homemade pizza with lashings of delicious, flavor-honest ingredients would not be deceptive at all.

The additives within deceptive sauces take the few scraps of nourishing ingredients – the trace amounts of meat, vegetables, and cheese – and exaggerate the flavor so that the sub-par nutritional reward is marketed under the illusion of tremendous gain.

Deceptive sauces: With a downregulated sensory system, ordinary concentrations of flavor no longer deliver an adequate sense of pleasure because the tongue and nasal cavity do not detect the strength of flavor as usual. Consequently, those with reduced flavor sensitivity are more likely to liberally apply flavor-enhanced seasonings and dressings while prioritizing deceptive food whenever the opportunity arises.

Because only some chemicals create the sensation of flavor, it is possible to dramatically change what a food tastes like without substantially altering the nutrition. Sometimes, only the aroma of a food needs to change for flavor perception to alter. Textural or thickening additives can also modify flavor perception, as can changes to visual stimuli. Some drinks, for example, have clouding agents added to mimic the natural juices after which they are named. Many otherwise identical products are multi-colored to simulate variety, even though the core ingredients remain the same.

Many of the most commonly craved foods contain trace amounts of nourishing ingredients, supplemented with a heavy dose of added flavor (cookies, pizza, ice cream, and so on). Contrast a bowl of manufactured ice cream made from sucrose, ‘milk solids-non-fat,’ trace berry fragments that are artificially strengthened in flavor and volume, emulsifiers, vegetable gums, acidity regulators, colorings, and an assortment of unspecified flavorings…versus a bowl of freshly whipped cream, freshly picked berries, and a drizzle of raw honey. The former is an empty mirage: an illusory, sensory façade.

Some might suspect that the primary issue with manufactured potato products is that they are drenched in refined seed oils, but the problem goes far deeper than this. A growing number of potato products are reformed from dried potato flakes or dehydrated powder that is mixed to form a sludge that is extruded, fabricated, and shaped. This dehydrated potato mix is used to create a variety of ‘composite potato products,’ such as croquettes, dumplings, and so on. These creations often include binding agents and “fibrous cellulosic material” to increase the perceived crispiness. After a lengthy manufacturing process, the resulting mixture is bland and may have unpleasant off-flavors. This is particularly a problem when using offcuts that don’t make the premium potato product grade (and hence go through a much longer processing journey). These aged potato derivatives are in dire need of flavor-enhancement, with the resulting items described within industry patents as “relatively flavorless particles that are bound together in a watery mass” with “only passing resemblance to real potato…” Added flavor molecules ensure that the aged potato product does not develop “an objectionable flavor totally unrelated to natural potato flavor.” Unlike a fresh potato, which is rich in nutrition, the flavor of these deficient products must be masked and disguised so that taste and smell receptors do not detect the substitution.

The motivation for creating deceptive foods is primarily economic. By using cheaper ingredients and manipulating their flavor, food manufacturers can reduce costs while increasing sales. This practice has become increasingly sophisticated with advances in technology, which allow precise identification and replication of flavor compounds.

Understanding the role of deceptive within the food supply is crucial for ending overeating. When the body receives unreliable information about incoming nutrition, it naturally adjusts internal systems, reducing flavor sensitivity and increasing hunger, encouraging the seeking of more food.

These ideas are explained in far more detail within the book: Foods That Lie.