The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart

Burgis, Stephanie. The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart. 2017. 242p. ISBN 978-1-68119-343-4. Available at FIC BUR on the library shelves.

Life as a dragon can be very exasperating, especially when you have older siblings. Aventurine is tired of being hidden in the mountain by her parents. Her mother and grandfather have informed her on occasions too many to count that she can’t leave the mountain for it is dangerous out there, and humans could harm her. Only when her scales have thickened enough to protect her from most every bullet and magic will she be allowed out. But that’s in about a hundred more years, and she’s had enough playing with her older brother, who is more interested in reading human books anyway. Plus, Aventurine has an older sister who has left the mountain years ago, and she’s just so perfect that Aventurine can never compare in the eyes of her mother.

So when the opportunity presents itself, Aventurine sneaks out of the mountain to go hunting by herself. This task proves more complicated than she thought it would be, however, and she’s unable to catch prey. Until, that is, she smells a human sheltering in a cave. She follows the scent, only to discover that he’s cooking … hot chocolate. Entranced by the amazing smell, Aventurine agrees to spare the human’s life until the hot chocolate is ready. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a food mage, and as she drinks the hot chocolate, which is amazing and tastes nothing like she’s ever had, she is transformed into a puny human.

Unable to return home (grandfather tried to roast her when she approached the mountain), Aventurine makes her way to the capital of the kingdom in search of chocolate. She soons becomes an apprentice to the cantakerous Marina, whose uncompromising baking and cooking style and her infuriating personality fit perfectly with Adventurine’s own. Soon, she’s learning more about chocolate than she ever thought possible. But the dragons in the mountain have stirred, and they’ve been spotted as far as the outskirts of the capital. And when an entire flight of them bears down on the city, striking panic and fear in the inhabitants’ hearts, only Adventurine can save them all.

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor

Schatzker, Mark. The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor. 2015. 259p. 498 mins. ISBN 9781476724218. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Older people often complain that the food they eat is bland and doesn’t taste like the food they used to eat when they were children. For the most part, they are right. Over the last one hundred years, humans have managed to tremendously increase the yield of food. Crops now produce five, ten, or sometimes twenty times the amount of food they did a few decades ago. Thanks to the green revolution, we are able to feed an ever increasing population. However, it comes with costs.

Eating chicken used to be an expensive proposition, but industrial processes now make chicken fatter quicker, all the while keeping the price cheap. However, much like the crops we eat, what has been lost in this industrialization and standardization is the taste these foods developed as they aged. To compensate for this, food companies developed flavoring compounds to ensure that the taste of any given product could be enhanced. The birth of the Dorito chip is symptomatic of this process. A perfectly good crunchy corn chip was made to taste like an entire taco, thus opening supermarket doors to this new product. But in the process our brains became tricked by these new flavors that are not related to the taste of the food.

In this book the author explores a growing gap between how the food taste (better and better) and the nutritional value it has (worse and worse). For examples, blueberry waffles in the frozen section of the grocery store contain no blueberries, yet the consumer is baited and switched to a product that taste just like blueberries, without the nutritional value of actually eating blueberries. Societies worldwide are experiencing this phenomena, which leads to higher rates of obesity and diseases.

Other countries have taken measures to address these issues, by banning flavoring, and by consumers being aware of the products they buy. Chicken is more flavorful in France because poultry is not grown on an industrial scale and is given more time to mature and acquire a taste. Italian pasta and heirloom vegetables continue to be the pride of specific regions and are jealously protected.

It is up to us, the consumer, to demand better tasting food grown through natural processes, and not enhanced by a flavor industry diminishing the nutritional value of food. Pair this book with The Omnivore’s Dilemma for a depressing yet hopeful overview of the whole food industry in the United States.

The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals

Pollan, Michael. The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals. 2006. 451p. ISBN 1-59420-082-3. Available on the library shelves at 394.1 POL.

When you go to a supermarket to buy food, the variety can be overwhelming. Each grocery store has on average over 100,000 different items available to satisfy any craving you might have. Unfortunately, variety of food does not mean a diversity of ingredients. In fact, Pollan argues that corn in all its forms has grown to occupy a central place in the American diet, both in its most well-known form, corn on the cob, but also as a sweet syrup, as filler and food for animals we in turn eat, as fuel to process and transport goods to market, and in a myriad of other industrial uses. Our diet has mainly become made up of corn and its derivatives.

In this provocative book, Pollan explores the disproportionate impact on the American diet, the American farm, and the American economy that corn has. From factoring farming to inhumane slaughterhouses, Pollan describes how corn and Second World War policies came to shape our current food supply and tastes. Using for basis four meals, from the industrial to the organic to the hunter-gatherer style, Pollan discusses what happens to his food from the moment it is planted to the time it arrives on his plate, and everything in between.

This book may change your mind about how and what you eat. And even if it doesn’t, at least you will understand how our food industry has so fundamentally transformed what and how we eat that our ancestors from even a hundred years ago would be hard pressed to recognize what it is a typical American meal today. Pollan literally provides food for thought on a subject most of us know next to nothing about.