If You Can’t Pronounce It, Don’t Eat It.
Examining the logic behind the popular dietary adage
A while back I joined a clean eating Facebook group out of curiosity and was shocked to read how confidently users would hand out poor dietary advice to others. I’m no dietician or doctor, but I am a professional cook who’s been published in a peer-reviewed journal and prides themselves on their ability to research trustworthy information. Sometimes I see health advice that is so logically flawed that there’s no need to look it up before confidently throwing it out the window. In this article, I want to talk about one of the most popular pieces of health advice that I see repeated on the internet and how it makes no sense.
I got the inspiration to write this article in the same manner as a lot of my other articles: someone said something I disagreed with on the internet and I needed a more in-depth way of writing about my feelings than leaving a comment. For this particular piece, this occurred on a video where a doctor asked their audience if they thought vaping was better for you than smoking cigarettes and to explain their reasoning in the comments. One user commented that vaping was healthier because they could pronounce the ingredients in their vape juice while cigarettes were full of ingredients that they couldn’t pronounce. Vaping vs cigarettes aside, this comment reminded me of all the times I’ve seen the exact same train of thought applied to food and I’ve always believed it to be fundamentally flawed.
Flawed Logic
The adage that you shouldn’t eat something if you can’t pronounce it makes two assumptions: 1) If you cannot pronounce an ingredient, then it is unhealthy and should be avoided, and 2) if you can pronounce an ingredient, then it is healthy and perfectly safe to consume.
The main flaw with these assumptions is that whether or not an individual can pronounce a certain ingredient has no connection to the dietary properties of said ingredient. Names are things that we make up as humans to better communicate with each other. We could easily start calling apples “deadly death balls” or even “asdfasdfasdjjmnds” and it wouldn’t change a thing about the chemical reactions that take place inside our bodies when consumed; only our perception of them.
Why Chemists Choose Scientific-sounding Names
In chemistry, things are given long names that tend to sound less natural than “apple,” but there is reasoning behind it. These names allow other chemists to understand whatever they’re talking about at a glance. When I was studying organic chemistry in college we had the task of drawing the structures of various molecules from their names alone. These were completely new molecules that we had never seen before but thanks to popular naming conventions we were able to determine and diagram their structure.
Take the organic molecule 3-methyl-2-pentanol. It sounds really unnatural and scary right? Well, let’s break down exactly what this name is telling us. Organic molecules are characterized by chains of carbon and hydrogen atoms bonded together. The “pent” portion of the name refers to “pentane“ and tells us that there are five carbons in the molecule’s main (parent)carbon chain. The “anol” ending let’s us know that there is an alcohol group (an oxygen bonded with a hydrogen) attached to the parent carbon chain. The “methyl” portion of the name tells us that there is a single carbon attached to the parent chain, and the numbers tell us exactly where the single carbon and alcohol groups are attached. The single carbon is attached to the third carbon in the parent chain and the alcohol group is attached to the second carbon in the parent chain. Using these naming conventions, we can understand the diagram of 3-methyl-2-pentanol.
In the above diagram, the 5-carbon parent chain (“pent”) is represented by the zig-zag line going horizontally through the center. Each kink in the chain is a carbon atom and there are five in total counting the kinks and the carbons on the ends. The vertical lines represent groups which are connected to the parent chain. The single carbon group (“3-methyl”) is attached to the third carbon in the parent chain when moving from right to left and the alcohol group (“2…anol”) is attached to the second carbon in the parent chain when moving from right to left. With a short chemistry lesson, we see that “scary” scientific-sounding names are just chemist’s way of telling us some of the properties of what we’re reading.
By the way, what is 3-methyl-2-pentanol? It’s a molecule found in hops, one of the main ingredients in beer. People know what hops are so they wouldn’t be worried if they saw them listed as an ingredient in their favorite beer. People would probably be a bit worried if they saw “3-methyl-2-pentanol,” even though we’ve just discussed how the molecule is found in hops and is therefore present during the brewing process. Some people even cook with hops for their bitter herbal taste so clearly this molecule is not inherently as dangerous as its name may make it sound.
The Fear of Chemical-sounding Names
The fear of chemical-sounding names comes from a fear of the unknown and a fear of the unnatural. There’s a tendency for people to assume that anything unnatural is bad, especially when it sounds like something concocted by scientists in a lab, and natural things are good because they were produced by the purity of Mother Nature.
As anyone who has studied medicine can tell you, this is far from the truth. There are plenty of perfectly natural things that are terribly unhealthy. Ricin is a natural substance found in castor beans, yet it is incredibly poisonous when concentrated. Georgi Markov was famously assassinated with ricin in 1978 and it has been studied as a warfare agent by the U.S. military. There are also unnatural things which are perfectly healthy, as in the case of some life-saving medications. Sucrose (a type of sugar) made in a laboratory is the same molecule as the sucrose naturally found in oranges and therefore behaves the same in chemical reactions.
Let’s take a look at another substance: dihydrogen monoxide. Would you let your kids eat foods containing dihydrogen monoxide? What if I told you that dihydrogen monoxide is responsible for thousands of deaths every year in the U.S.? In reality, dihydrogen refers to two hydrogen atoms and monoxide refers to one oxygen atom. 2 hydrogens + 1 oxygen = H2O or water; practically the healthiest substance on the planet. Water can also be called hydrogen hydroxide, hydroxilic acid, or a handful of other chemical-sounding names depending on which characteristics of the molecule are being presented. Just because something has a chemical-sounding name does not mean that it is unnatural or unhealthy. Everything in nature is made of chemicals and nature runs on chemistry. There is no need to fear chemical-sounding names.
The Ability to Pronounce Words
Perhaps the biggest flaw with this advice is that an individual’s ability to pronounce words is entirely dependent on education and experience. Someone who has extensively studied chemistry will be able to pronounce almost all chemical names they come across while someone who hasn’t studied chemistry may not be able to do the same. By the logic present in the adage, a substance in question could be construed as healthy by the person proficient in chemistry, but unhealthy by the person who is not proficient in chemistry. Clearly, this is not a good technique for determining the dietary value of a particular ingredient if the outcome can flip flop between healthy and unhealthy depending on who’s reading the label. Plus, having the ability to pronounce a chemical name does not guarantee that the reader has any knowledge of the substance or its properties.
How to Tell What’s Healthy
The only way to determine whether an ingredient is one you should be eating is by researching the ingredient as it relates to diet and wellbeing and making your own informed decision. If you don’t know what an ingredient is, look it up. Try to find trustworthy sources of information such as peer-reviewed papers, doctors, and dieticians. Don’t trust ingredients that sound natural and don’t distrust ingredients with chemical-sounding names for those reasons alone. Simplistic rules like “don’t eat it if you can’t pronounce it” are not good health advice because health is not that simple.
Note: The author of this article is NOT a medical professional, and this article does not contain medical advice. The ideas presented in this article are simply the opinions of the author, a cook by trade. It is always advised that you consult your doctor before changing your diet in any way, and you should always follow the advice given to you by medical professionals.
