The key to reversing our number one health crisis (obesity, heart disease, and diabetes) lies in the overlooked link between nutrition and flavor. Obesity is not due to the overabundance of fat or carbs or any other specific nutrient in our meals. Instead, we have been led astray by the growing divide between flavor -- the tastes we crave -- and the underlying nutrition. Since the late 1940s, we have been slowly leeching flavor out of the food we grow. Those perfectly round, red tomatoes that grace our supermarket aisles today are mostly water, and the big breasted chickens on our dinner plates grow three times faster than they used to, leaving them dry and tasteless. Simultaneously, we have taken great leaps forward in technology, allowing us to produce in the lab the very flavors that are being lost on the farm. We have unknowingly interfered with an ancient chemical language -- flavor -- that evolved to guide our nutrition, not destroy it. Mark Schatzker is a radio columnist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is the author of Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef.

The Dorito effect -- "Things" and "flavors" -- Big bland -- Big flavor -- Big people -- If food could talk -- The wisdom of flavor -- Bait and switch -- Fried chicken saved my life! -- The delicious cure -- The tomato of tomorrow -- The gospel according to real flavor -- Appendix: How to live long and eat flavorfully.