Credit: SciBabe Anyone who follows me on twitter knows that the 'real food' movement and their many meme-worthy sayings tend to annoy me. The one that seems to get the most play, coined by the FoodBabe, is something to the effect of "don't eat it if a third grader can't pronounce it". To anyone who has ever taken a chemistry class, this will sound ludicrous; alas, it's a popular saying in the lay media, and even something I've heard reiterated by healthcare professionals. I get the saying (a very long list of ingredients can be a marker for a food that isn't particularly nutrient dense), but I personally find that it spreads fear and contributes to scientific illiteracy more than it does educate the consumer. As I've covered in a couple posts here, and others have done as well, many of the ingredients added to foods serve a very functional purpose, and believe it or not, food scientists are not putting them there to kill you. That a
Nutritional Sciences: Basic Science and Clinical Perspectives