I recently read The Dorito Effect. It's one of the best I've read in the ag/food politics genre. It's about what happened when food scientists figured out how to manufacture thousands of flavours at the same time that the flavour and nutrition of real food began a steep decline. It turns out that the flavour and nutrition of food are intimately linked, and that when we figured out how to divorce the two, the consequences were, and continue to be, pretty negative.
In this episode I interview the author of The Dorito Effect, Mark Shatzker. It's a good one.