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DoritosAugust 05, 2006 Rhodry and I are both big Doritos fans. I buy a 99-cent bag at Cumby's or Our Market and we drive home eating "one for you, one for me." It's honor system, sort of: I do the distribution because his paws won't fit in the bag. Some people doubtless believe on the basis of the previous sentence that I am an unfit parent and Rhodry would be better off at the MSPCA. These people are doubtless not reading my bloggery. If you know any of these people, dear readers, pray do not tell them that I enable my dog to eat Doritos. Nacho Cheese has been my favorite flavor since I first discovered Doritos as a college student at the University of Pennsylvania, circa 1972. Back then the only flavors available, at least in Philadelphia, were Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch. Why do people who prefer Cool Ranch eat Doritos at all? Why don't they just eat bland old Fritos or plain potato chips? When there's nothing but Cool Ranch on the 99-cent shelf at Cumby's, Rhodry and I go hungry. Used to be it was easy to tell Nacho Cheese and Cool Ranch apart: N.C. came in a mostly red packet, C.R. in a mostly blue. Not long ago the packaging was revamped. In the upper left corner it says: NEW LOOK Around the same time the flavors started proliferating. Hands down the most disgusting was guacamole. Guacamole Doritos didn't taste a bit like guacamole or like Doritos either, and anyone who would ingest a green chip would probably eat yellow snow without thinking twice. Of the new flavors the best is Black Pepper Jack. That isn't just my opinion: Rhodry likes them too. Spicy Nacho isn't bad either. The new flavors aren't color-coded. The old ones aren't anymore either. All the new bags are identically gray with a fiery electrical charge at the top, Doritos in big letters underneath, three triangle-shaped Doritos marching across the bottom half ("Chips enlarged to show texture"), and measurements down below. The flavor is printed across the middle in no better than 30-point type. Probably the Doritos people are trying to camouflage the flavors and encourage people to buy ones they don't like. I am a copyeditor; I notice these things. I will never buy a bag of Cool Ranch flavor Doritos. Lately Cumby's has been running a two-for-$5 Dorito sale on 13-ounce bags. I hardly ever buy the big bags because (a) the price is now up to $3.49, and (b) I like them too much. Two for five bucks I couldn't refuse. The options were Black Pepper Jack and Spicy Nacho. Either Cumby's overordered or these flavors are not popular on Martha's Vineyard. There's no accounting for taste; if the island's taste were anything like mine, Cool Ranch would be perpetually overstocked or out of stock indefinitely. I like Spicy Nacho and I love Black Pepper Jack. I bought one of each. So for the last week I've been enjoying Doritos in the privacy of my apartment. Rhodry is usually outside and not in a position to mooch, although if I rustle the bag too loudly he scratches at the door and wants his share. This is how I know that most of his apparent deafness is selective: He can't hear "Come here, Rhodry" when I'm standing 10 feet away but he can hear the rustle of a Dorito bag or a cheese wrapper at 50 paces, and through a closed door. The 13-ounce bag is considerably bigger than the 99-cent one, so I have also been reading the words on it. Who would have known that Doritos have 0 GRAMS I don't know what "trans fat" is but every label I've seen lately claims that the food within contains 0 grams of it and from that I infer that trans fat is a Bad Thing. Conversely, containing 0 grams of trans fat makes your product a Good Thing. In the case of Doritos, this seems to be borne out by the Nutrition Facts on the back. Doritos contain no trans fat and no cholesterol. You can even get 2% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin A, calcium, and riboflavin; 4% of your vitamin E and vitamin B6; and a whopping 10% of your phosphorous from a serving of Doritos. Serving? Surely they jest; no self-respecting junk food comes in servings. But no, up at the top of the chart it says Serving size 1 oz. (28g/About 12 chips). I don't count calories, I don't count pounds, and I'm not about to start counting my Doritos. Thirteen servings per container? Muwahahahaha . . . Just for fun, though, I got out my calculator. How many Doritos would I have to eat to get my entire recommended daily intake of calcium from Doritos? Let's see: If I get 2% from 12 chips, it would take 50 times 12 chips to get 100% -- 600 chips. 12 chips equals 1 ounce; 600 chips equal 50 ounces. That's nearly four whole bags, more than I could have snarfed in a day even at the height of my binge-eating career. Not to mention that even at two bags for $5 that's a pretty expensive source of calcium. On the other hand, compared to little teeny bottles of bad-tasting supplements, maybe it's not so bad. That's one supermarket aisle I never venture down. One 13-ounce bag of Doritos does contain more than a daily dose of phosphorous, but does that make Doritos a plausible source of nutrition? I think not. And a good thing too. I prefer my junk food with no redeeming nutritional value whatsoever.
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