(upbeat salsa dance music)
(mysterious whispering)
- I have a slightly complicated relationship with breakfast.
(upbeat music)
I (censor beep) hate American breakfast.
(the word "Breakfast" echoing)
So, the first meal of the day.
- Breakfast. - Breakfast.
- Break-fast!!
- A couple of a years ago I made several videos
condemning American breakfast for being too sweet.
And then proceeded to tell you about how cultured I was,
because I discovered other breakfast traditions,
and integrated them into my life
in order to stop hating breakfast.
And it worked.
But, one thing I failed to mention during
all of this breakfast commentary,
is that I eat Doritos for breakfast.
(music slo-mo to halting) Like all the time.
(lively music)
Doritos.
(multiple voices chanting "Doritos.")
(Doritos crunching) (lively music)
(lively music) (Doritos crunching)
Yes, I eat them with chopsticks for obvious reasons.
See my fingers? Squeaky clean.
(lively music)
Wait! I gotta tell you something really quick.
I made a video about China and the United States
and their economic war over microchips.
It's really insane.
That video is live right now.
You can go watch it on Nebula.
In fact, you can watch every one of my videos a week early.
And it costs you just over one U.S. dollar a month,
using a hack that I will explain at the end of the video.
For now, let's just keep swimming in a sea of Doritos.
(lively music) (echoing voices)
(lively music slows down)
but no, I'm serious. This is a real thing.
One of Nick's jobs, our studio manager,
is to make sure that there are Doritos always stocked
in the studio.
And to be honest, he does an excellent job.
- [Interviewer] Do you like you job, Nick?
- I love my job.
- [Interviewer] You better (censor beep) your job, dude.
- Yeah.
I work every day. Psych!
- Nick has another part of his job that's slightly related,
I'm now realizing.
I'll tell you about that later.
I was recently at a wedding in Canada,
getting slightly rowdy.
And during the party, I had a conversation
with my friend, Becky.
I was telling her about how much I love Doritos.
And especially for breakfast.
The first thing Becky did was tell me how much better
Canadian chips are, especially Canadian Doritos.
She promised that she would send me Canadian Doritos.
And indeed, she did.
(wrappings crackling) Oh, yes! (chuckling)
We have Doritos from Canada, and we have chopsticks.
Thank you, Becky.
But then she also asked me why the breakfast snob,
over here who's like condemning
all things American breakfast,
eats Doritos for the first meal of the day?
But it turns out there's an answer to this.
One that required a little bit of research,
some expert interviews,
an a conversation with the internet's best
food science explainer.
- And this is just me spit-balling.
And I'm not a scientist, I just play one on the internet.
- The answer to this is yet another stop
on my long, strange journey
of trying to understand breakfast.
And its connection to human evolution,
and ancient traditions.
And perhaps most importantly, today's economy.
Where we live in a world where literal scientists
sit around and engineer food,
so that we can't get enough of it.
- [Announcer] Try Doritos. (man crunching)
They taste as good as they crunch.
- He's in a better place now.
- It's corn, tomato, onions, and spices.
- Doritos!
(Dorito dust blowing)
(upbeat music) (man humming)
- Oh my God, look at this.
(upbeat music)
(items in box crackling) Oh-ho, yes!
Dear Johnny, hope you like cheese.
P.S., congrats again on the Emmy.
Thanks, Becky.
(bag crinkling)
Today we got Zesty Cheese.
(speaking in foreign language)
(bag tears open)
Zesty cheese.
(crunching Doritos)
Oh my God! It's like nacho cheese with a kick.
Oh, yeah.
This is good.
(crunching Doritos)
Dude, they're extra salty, too.
- The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.
- This is amazing.
Canada kills it with chips.
Okay, let's get this started.
I think first we need to talk about Doritos.
(upbeat music)
- [Announcer] Cool Ranch flavored
Doritos brand tortilla chips.
One heck of a crunch.
(bag crinkling)
- This is a Dorito.
It is a triangle of mashed up corn, that is baked, fried,
and coated with a magical cheesy powder.
(blowing on dust)
This orange dust is a mix of garlic, Romano cheese,
and cheddar cheese.
We got a total of 25 different ingredients on here.
And in the case of Cool Ranch-
- No other chip tastes like Cool Ranch.
(bag crinkles)
- Basically the same ingredients.
Like Cool Ranch has a couple of things
that I can't really pronoun here.
Like Sodium Acetate,
Disodium Inosinate, Inosinate.
Disodium Guanylate.
Guanylate.
And crucially,
both of these bags,
plus Becky's Canadian flavor, contain a magic powder
called Monosodium Glutamate.
A mysterious thing that I think
is at the center of why I love this so much.
And why I want it for breakfast.
- My precious.
(snapshots flashing) (lively music)
- This is really delicious.
(lively music) (crowd & Mrs. Biden giggling)
- This magic ingredient was invented in Japan
a hundred or so years ago.
When this Japanese chemist was supposedly trying
to figure out why his wife's soup tastes so damn good.
He did a bunch of science,
and realized it was this strip of kelp,
which is basically like seaweed,
but technically it's not seaweed, it's kelp.
This was the key ingredient.
He saw his wife put this strip of kelp in boiling water
at the beginning of soup-making.
And then taking it out.
And whatever happened during that short time
made all the difference.
Wait a minute.
This same thing happens every Monday in my studio.
(upbeat music)
Oh, it smells good in here, Nick, what you making?
- Miso soup for miso Monday.
- Miso Monday.
Every Monday we have Miso soup in this office.
Because like Doritos,
Miso is a very important part of my morning.
- Yeah, makes the whole week good.
It really does. - [Nick] A big pot of miso.
So now with Japanese kelp.
From (speaking in foreign language).
I bought it at my local Japanese market,
Hanna Japanese Market.
Love you guys.
- [Host] And what do you do with it?
- [Nick] Put it in there like while it's hot,
growing boil, for about 20 minutes.
(quick musical interlude)
Take it out, adds that essential sea flavor.
We got the spigot on the o there side.
So when the soup's done, we're gonna dispense it.
Ow, it's very hot.
- We will be back for the miso.
Thanks, Nick. - [Nick] See you guys.
(record scratching) - Wait!
But what does this have to do with Doritos?
(record scratching)
- Everything.
This has everything to do with Doritos.
Let me explain. (serious violin music)
- Hm, I really want some miso soup.
(quiet explosion and tiny bell ringing)
Oh my God! Miso soup!
- Everything is.
Because this Japanese chemist discovered
that this seaweed, or kelp,
contained a bunch of one special molecule
called glutamate, or glutamic acid.
It's actually an amino acid.
And, it's actually the most abundant amino acid
that you find in breast milk.
Like the first thing you taste (baby cooing)
when you come into this world. (baby cooing)
When glutamate is present in your mouth,
it makes everything you're eating taste more delicious,
and more substantial.
Meaty and more savory.
The guy kept poking around,
and discovered that this delicious chemical reaction
was not just happening in his wife's soup
from the kelp she was putting in,
but also in a bunch of other delicious foods.
Like ripe tomatoes,
meat and cheese.
Broths, mushrooms, asparagus,
fish sauce, parmesan cheese.
The Japanese chemist claimed that glutamate
had such a significant impact on taste,
that it deserved its own classification.
At the time,
there were four major classes of taste.
Sweet, sour, salty, and bitter.
He said there should be a fifth.
Oh and by the way,
if you've ever had this taste map in school,
like I did,
of where your taste buds taste things.
That's kind of BS.
Your taste receptors overlap,
and they're sort of all over on your tongue.
Anyway, that was a kind of annoying side note.
Let's get going.
He called this taste "Umami."
Which beautiful in Japanese,
roughly translates to "Deliciousness."
Why call it some technical thing,
when you'd just be like,
"It's deliciousness."
That is what it'll be classified.
Umami, the taste experience,
was officially recognized by scientists in the 90s.
And there's been a lot of really amazing work on it.
But story is really just beginning.
Because this Japanese chemist found a way
to extract this delicious flavor from the kelp,
and to mass produce it in the form of a flakey white salt.
He called it monosodium glutamate,
or M-S-G.
Pure glutamate put into the form of a salt.
And this is the key ingredient that coats all of our Doritos
and makes them delicious.
(Dorito crunching)
And this is where it all comes together.
Linking my Dorito craving to my love for miso soup.
One, a wholesome soup with countless benefits to my health.
And the other, a strip of fried corn paste
with really no nutritional value.
And yet, I crave both of them when I show up
to work in the morning.
Because what I'm really craving here,
is the chemical reaction that produces umami
in a savory deliciousness.
Either from the glutamic acid in Nick's kelp,
or from the special white powder
that I often sniff up.
I mean that coats my, the surface of the Doritos.
(bag crinkling) (Doritos crunching)
(upbeat music)
I think it's ready. C'mon.
It's ready! Here we go!
Mm.
Okay.
Don't mind if I do.
Hey Nick, by the way, is MSG bad for you?
- I don't know.
Why don't you ask Adam Ragusea?
- Yeah, Adam Ragusea.
- [Nick] I don't know.
- Hey, Adam!
Oh, there we go.
Hi! - [Adam] What's up?
- Oh, maybe I'm not mic'd.
Oh, hold on.
Sorry, I can't hear you. - [Adam] you are mic'd,
I can hear you. - It's probably the out-
- Checkity, checkity, check.
- I've watched your face for many hours.
And it's always surreal to be like.
And now the guy who I just watched talk to me,
is talking to me.
- That's what you think.
Actually, I'm gonna talk right past you.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- Anyways-
- So, MSG.
- I got some right here.
- Oh, you have MSG with you?
I do, too. Look.
- There you go. Oh, yeah.
- Do you have any aversion to MSG?
- No, no, no, no, no.
It's just one of the chemicals that you need.
It's not essential.
Because your body can make it out of other things.
But you still like it for a reason.
You gotta have it.
But too much of anything is not good for you, baby.
Except Barry White.
- Too much of anything is no good for you baby.
- Come to think of it,
he said that for the purposes of refuting it in the song.
- Oh!
- Because he was saying in fact,
he can't get enough of your love, baby.
- There is no too much. - There is no too much.
- And that particular highly-rarefied case
of your love, babe.
But in all other cases,
too much of anything is not good for you, baby,
and that includes glutamate.
- Talking to Adam Ragusea for an hour,
the guy's deathly smart on this.
And he has an entire video about MSG.
The whole story, the chemistry, all of it.
It's like way deeper than I will ever go
on anything food related.
Go watch that if you want the deep dive on MSG.
But the (indistinct), is that MSG got branded as dangerous.
Because of one short letter to the editor
that spread a rumor.
A rumor that Chinese restaurants were very dangerous
because they were putting MSG in their food.
Even though there wasn't evidence for that,
it created this rumor that has sort of stuck
with all of us today.
- [Announcer] MSG causes migraines
for literally millions of people.
- This is really, really scary.
And we do not understand the impact of MGS.
- [Announcer] An MGS can cause swelling,
as well as chest pains.
A burning sensation,
and an overall feeling of weakness.
There may be more to this public poison.
- The child will have permanent impairment of the brain,
according to some of these studies.
And will grow up like 10 years old, stupid.
Not to mention fat.
- The whole thing became kind of racist, and panicky.
And it was also based on the fact that we called it.
We called it MSG, monosodium glutamate,
instead of calling it Aji-No-Moto.
When you get, when you refer to anything
by it's chemical name, it sounds scary.
- Aji-No, whatever.
- But I'm talking to Adam for one question.
Which is why do a crave this stuff in the morning?
- We crave all kinds of things that our body needs.
We are evolved to seek out the things
that we need to survive.
It's just the simplest form of evolution
you could ever imagine.
The taste of umami in food signals to us
that we are eating something that is protein rich.
And we need protein in order to replenish our muscles,
and do all kinds of other important things in our body.
We were programmed to love it and gobble it down,
because we need it.
- And this is what I've learned
about my craving for Doritos in the morning.
It's a big trick.
What I want in the morning is the salty, savory experience
of umami.
I don't want the sweet fluff that comes from
traditional American breakfast,
with sweet liquid sugar poured on it.
Again, this what has lead me to bitch
about American breakfast for several years.
But a very uncomfortable reality
is that in a busy life,
making all of this food is kind of hard.
It takes time, it takes effort.
Shout out to Nick.
Thanks, Nick!
- [Announcer] Nacho Cheese Doritos Brand Tortilla-
- How much is enough? How big does this pile have to be?
- I happen to live at a time in history
where food scientists sit around
and use their brilliant science knowledge
to engineer food that somehow tricks my brain
into thinking it's getting the food
that evolution has trained my brain to crave.
In other words,
these chips are actually tricking my brain
into thinking I'm eating some protein-rich, wholesome meal.
But clearly, I'm not.
- There's a historian of science named Dr. Sarah Tracy
in Canada.
Her central thesis is that all the conversations we have
about whether or not MSG is bad for you,
that all kind of misses the point.
All of that is small potatoes.
Like the big potato is that MSG is really, really good
at making garbage foods taste delicious.
- Whoa.
- Making you want to eat the most refined corn paste
that really should be used like as a packing material,
rather than a food.
But, it's unbelievably cheap to make,
and lasts forever in bag.
And you can make a person to actually want to eat it.
If you put MSG on it.
- This was one of the original aims
of the Japanese chemist who invited MSG.
He looked around and saw all these poor farmers
who only had plain rice and vegetables to eat.
And he marketed his MSG as a way to
allow these farmers to elevate their meals.
For them to taste more savory and more delicious.
More fulfilling, more satisfying,
if they just sprinkle this magic powder on top.
- Cool Ranch! (Doritos crunching)
(upbeat music) (goofy spring coiling)
- So yeah, that is why I eat Doritos for breakfast.
Because some brilliant corporation
invented a substance that tricks my brain into thinking
that I'm eating miso soup, or stew,
or parmesan cheese, or whatever.
And in the process, they perfected it.
Everything about this thing is engineered.
The powder is so finely-ground
that it fills every nook and cranny of your mouth.
And literally triggers the release of more saliva.
Literally making your mouth water.
They're crunchy, yet light.
They seem to melt in your mouth
after giving you that satisfying crunch,
which tricks your body into wanting more.
To be honest, I feel like this is just yet another way
that corporate America dupes me
by high-jacking my physiology.
But that doesn't mean
that I'm gonna stop eating Doritos for breakfast!
Plewf!
Thanks for watching everyone, see you on the next one.
("Seinfeld-inspired" type closing music)
(snoring and deep exhale/inhale)
Whoa!
Yeah, it's me again.
Hi, everyone.
I'm sitting in a sea of Doritos.
Something I thought I would never do
for my professional career. But, here I am.
So, as I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the video,
I have made a video that is an insanely deep-dive
into the geo-politics of China and the United States.
Who are currently at war over semiconductors,
or microchips.
A piece of technology that is basically the future.
And the TLDR is that if you have good microchips,
you can do really cool military stuff.
Anyway, I don't wanna give it all away.
That video goes live here on the channel next week.
But, I have started publishing
everyone of my videos a week early on Nebula.
Nebula is a creator-owned streaming platform.
No ads.
It is a place where you subscribe for very, very cheap.
And you get to watch tons of amazing creators
that focus a lot on learning about the world.
I am now on Nebula,
and my whole library is on Nebula at free.
And everyone of my videos
is going up a week early on Nebula.
Nebula is the streaming service that literally I watch.
Like it's the one that I'm into.
Creators like Legal Eagle, or PolyMatter,
or "RealLifeLore, have exclusive content
that you can't get anywhere else.
Like this one from RealLifeLore called "Modern Conflict."
Which is just awesome.
Super high-quality stuff
that you can get if you a subscriber to Nebula.
So the big question is how much does it cost?
Everyone wants to know how much it costs.
The answer is if you go through the front door,
it's like five bucks a month,
or 15 bucks a year. Pretty good deal.
But you can get it for just over a dollar a month
if you use the hack that I'm about to explain.
Go to the link in my description.
And it will take you to Curiosity Stream.
Which is a partner of Nebula.
Curiosity Stream, itself,
is a huge repository of amazing high-quality documentaries,
which big names like David Attenborough,
and tons of really interesting stuff.
But the point here is if you sign up for literally
the cheapest plan on Curiosity Steam,
using the special link,
and use my code.
You gotta use my code in order to get the discount,
and to support my channel.
You will get an email from Nebula saying,
"Hey, you now have a Nebula account, make a password."
And now you have access to
every one of my videos a week early.
Plus, tons of other exclusive content from other creators,
all ad-free.
It's an insanely good deal.
And what I love most about it,
is it's all creator-owned.
These are a bunch of creators who got together
and made a streaming service.
It allows us to make really cool ambitious stuff.
You don't have to worry about like ad-friendly guidelines,
like we have to adhere to here on YouTube.
Anyway, this is an insane deal.
And it's a way to support this channel, too,
when you click that link and use that code.
I'm trying to establish a presence on Nebula.
Not only with publishing a video a week early.
But, if enough people sign up using my code,
and they see that there's a lot of interest
from my audience,
they will fund a documentary project
that I've been wanting to work on for a really long time.
A really deep, ambitious original
that will live only on Nebula.
So, the link is in the description.
The code is Johnnyharris with no spaces.
And I am sitting in a sea of Doritos for some reason.
Thank you all for being here.
I hope you enjoyed this Doritos piece.
And I'll see you soon. Okay, bye.
(reflective music)