On the stuff page today, Dr Libby was asked how someone could reduce their exposure to chemicals.
While she distinguished between ‘natural’ & ‘synthetic’ chemicals, sadly, ‘natural’ doesn’t always equate to ‘safe’ or ‘good for you’ (as the list of plants growing in the Poison Garden in the UK makes clear).
Similarly, there may be no difference between the natural and synthetic versions of a particular chemical, as the author of this article makes clear (it’s an excellent read).
However, this statement in particular annoyed me rather a lot:
Eat foods with ingredients you would find in nature. If a food item has ingredients/additives you cannot pronounce, your body likely cannot deal with it either.
Oh please! This is the sort of foolishness that the Food Babe promotes. If bananas came with actual ingredient labels, would Dr Libby suggest that anyone who couldn’t pronounce “palmitoleic acid” or “ethyl butanoate” should steer clear of this particular fruit? Or perhaps we should renounce that morning cuppa, just to be on the safe side?
Or perhaps we should stop encouraging people to be chemophobic. That would help.
Banana infographic by James Kennedy.
4 Responses to “Nomenclature nonsense, chemical fail”
Sigh… I think that a printout of that infographic needs to be in the wallet of every food technologist and food scientist etc etc ready for use to shut the mouths of the idiots. Perhaps that could be a good start to the campaign, a billboard campaign “Beware the (insert whatever ‘natural’ food you like) with a similar infographic. Now, who can we get to fund that?
Anne
And seeing as you mentioned tea: https://www.wired.com/2009/09/st-coffee/
Haha I love it!
That’s the trouble with having taken a few classes in chemistry, you are not prepared for this modern world.
What am I to make of chemical-free shampoos, or “organic” table-salt, or even a carbon-free world?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_free
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_salt
http://tracinskiletter.com/2012/09/10/carbon-free-sugar/