SYSK TRENDING - Are The Added Ingredients In Food All That Bad?

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1:23Take a look at the ingredient list on almost any packaged food and you'll probably find a few things that sound more like chemicals than food. Preservatives, artificial colors, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and ingredients with names you can barely pronounce. And we're often told that all that stuff is bad for us. But is it really? That's why today's SYSK trending topic is, are the added ingredients in food all that bad? My guest is George Zaden. He's a chemist and author who has taken a close look at what's actually in the food we eat and what science says about those added ingredients. He'll explain why some additives may deserve your concern, while others probably don't, and why a scary-sounding chemical name doesn't necessarily mean something is dangerous.

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3:59I know you've heard this advice that when you buy a food product at the store, it's a good idea to look at the ingredient label. And the general wisdom is that the fewer ingredients, the better. And if there are a lot of hard-to-pronounce ingredients, well, that's a bad sign. So how accurate is that advice? And why are all those ingredients in some food products? And what are they in there for? Here to discuss this is George Zaden. He is an MIT-trained chemist who created National Geographic's web series, Ingredients, the Stuff Inside Your Stuff. He co-wrote and directed MIT's web series, Science Out Loud, and he is the author of the book, Ingredients, the Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us.

4:50Hi, George. Welcome. Mike, thanks for having me. So the advice that I think many of us have heard that, you know, if you're looking at a food product to buy and there's ingredients in there that your grandmother didn't use or that you can't pronounce that you shouldn't buy it. Are you in agreement with that? So I know a lot of people who swear by that advice, and I don't. First of all, your grandma probably ate a lot of stuff that may have been easy to pronounce, which I think was another part of that advice, but not great for you, like, you know, spam or pound cake or snickerdoodles. And your life expectancy is probably higher than your grandmother's was.

5:30So I'm not really sure why people think idolizing grandma's diet is a good idea. I'd listen to her wisdom, sure, but I would not try and copy her diet. Yeah, I get that. But I'm not so sure that I idolize my grandmother's diet so much as I have a concern. And I think a lot of people have a concern for the way food is seemingly overengineered. I mean, things are artificially colored in colors that you don't find anywhere in nature. There are ingredients in the ingredient list of big, long words I've never seen before. I don't know how to pronounce them. I don't know what they are. So why am I eating them?

6:12Yeah, that's a great question. I think it helps to know a little bit about the different types of ingredients, of additives. There are things like vitamins and minerals, which are added to try and prevent nutritional deficiency diseases. Classic example there is iodine is added to almost all salt to try and prevent goiter. There are flavorings, which are added obviously to make food taste better, and that's a whole other debate we can have. There are lots of different types of texture-modifying additives. So, for example, most peanut butter you buy will contain emulsifiers to prevent the peanut solids from separating out from the peanut oil.

6:51And then, of course, there are preservatives, which if you didn't have those, your food would go bad a lot faster. So, you know, those are just a few of the categories. And if you're interested in seeing the entire long list, you can find that the FDA has a list. But the question is, you know, why is all this stuff in there? Does it need to be in there? we all want foods that are healthy, delicious, convenient, and cheap. But it's really hard, if not impossible, to have all of those things at once. If you want peanut butter that doesn't separate, you can either buy the all-natural stuff and put it in the fridge, which I personally think makes it taste not as good, or you can buy a peanut butter with an emulsifier in it.

7:29It is a trade-off. The other part of the trade-off is if you want everything to be all-natural, be prepared to spend a lot more on your groceries, and spend a lot more time preparing food. It really is a trade-off. The whole idea of added ingredients gets a bad rap because there is this just idea that the fewer ingredients, the better. And I guess it's because like when you eat an apple, the only ingredient is apple. And that's a very, you know, natural, easy to understand concept. And so when you have some something else, applesauce, and there's 18 added ingredients, people are suspect of that.

8:11Yes, that comes part and parcel with the other piece of this, which is if the ingredient is really hard to pronounce, it must be bad for you. You know, I have I have issues with that, too. My main issue with the pronouncing thing is like, you know, one chemical can have 40 different names and they can range from really easy to pronounce to impossible to pronounce. So if I tell you that a food contains one alpha D glucopyrinacil, two beta D fructofuranicide, you'd think I was trying to poison you. But that is just sugar. That's another name for sugar. The name of the chemical doesn't tell you anything about whether it's good or bad for you.

8:50It tells you how the FDA regulates ingredient labels. And your other point of, you know, the more ingredients it has, the worse it must be for you. That's I think that's a side effect of the wellness industry basically brainwashing us or trying to to believe that chemicals are somehow bad for you or that just because something is a chemical, it must therefore be bad for you. So the more chemicals you have, the worse of food is. And, you know, that couldn't be further from the truth. An apple, for example, seems really simple, but it has hundreds if not thousands of chemicals in there. It's made of living cells with proteins and genomes and small molecules and, you know, polysaccharides, all kinds of things that are hard to pronounce.

9:32But, you know, no one would ever argue, oh, an apple has a thousand chemicals, so therefore it must be bad for you. So here's the concern I think people have that seems pretty obvious, that the amount of processed food being manufactured and eaten is on the rise. I mean, the store is full of processed food products. Every corner has one or two or three or four fast food places. There's a lot of processed food being consumed. And in addition, we have an obesity problem, a growing obesity problem in this country. People are getting heavier. And I don't think it's going out on a limb to say these two things are probably connected.

10:16Yeah, so that's another great question. You know, trying to work out what caused and what is continuing to cause the obesity epidemic that we are all living through is really difficult. Ultra-processed foods could very well be responsible. It could be that by over-engineering these foods, we've made them addictive, so people eat more of them, and then they become obese. I talked to many scientists who totally buy that theory. I think it sounds very plausible. I also talked to a few scientists who had different ideas. They said, look, it may not just be one thing that's doing that. Um, one person said that, uh, he thought the obesity epidemic could be explained partially by the decrease in smoking rates.

10:59Now, how might that have a role? Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. So, you know, if you, if a large number of people stop smoking, they're going to start eating more food. Um, another scientist I talked to thought that architecture might play a role. He said that, you know, the, the way kitchen, the way homes are designed these days, kitchens are the hub of the home. And if you spend a lot of time near a kitchen, you know, that's going to make you want to eat more food. So my belief here is that the obesity epidemic has many different causes. One major one may very well be ultra processed food, but there's not going to be one silver bullet to ending it.

11:36One of the processes of processed food seems to be everything has added sugar. It's hard to find food that eats foods that you wouldn't necessarily even think would have sugar have sugar. There's a lot of added sugar in an awful lot of foods, and people have demonized sugar, whether right or wrong, that that is a real culprit. That is one theory. I find it a little slightly hard to believe that one chemical is the only responsible party for an entire epidemic across large parts of one country. I think it's more likely that there are multiple causes at play. It's funny, the other part of that is sugar is completely natural.

12:21It's sort of funny to me that some of the same people who are saying sugar is the devil are also some of the people who are saying only natural things. It's, you know, that's conflicting advice. Yeah, but for example, if you make, I don't know, crackers at home, there probably isn't much sugar added to it. But if you look at a package of crackers you buy at the store, there's sugar in it. Well, why is there sugar in, crackers aren't sweet, so why is there sugar in it? I'm not sure exactly. My suspicion is that if there is added sugar in something, it will cue you to eat more of it, or it will cue you to take that next bite.

12:58There was a study that came out one or two years ago that was done at NIH, and it was a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard of these kinds of studies. And basically what they did was they took two groups of people and fed one group a diet high in ultra-processed foods and fed another group a diet low in ultra-processed food. Now, this was not looking at sugar specifically. This was looking broadly at a diet that was more processed versus a diet that was less processed. And they found that the people who were given the ultra-processed diet did eat more. It wasn't, You know, it wasn't double, but it was a measurable amount more that, you know, over time does lend weight to the theory that ultra processed foods could be partially responsible for the obesity epidemic.

13:44So, yeah, I mean, I buy that sugar might play a role. I'm just not sure it's the only thing playing a role. We're talking about the foods you eat and the ingredients in those foods, what they are, what they do and what they don't do. My guest is George Zaden. He is an MIT-trained chemist, and he is author of the book, Ingredients, The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years.

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15:51For licenses, see homedepot.com slash license numbers. So George, it sounds like you're saying, you know, there's a lot of factors here and we can't really figure out or find a silver bullet. So, so don't worry about it. Is that what you're saying? Broadly, I would say, yeah, worry a little bit less, but, but it also depends on who I'm talking to. So I'm talking really to the person who is worried a lot about food and spends a good chunk of time on the internet researching individual ingredients. If that's you, or if you've found, if you've, you know, if you've changed your diet five times in the last year because of news you've seen, then I would say, yes, you know, go ahead and worry less about food.

16:34You can relax a little bit. On the other hand, if you are overweight or obese, or if you've got a medical condition of some kind, there I would say you're probably worrying the right amount or maybe you should worry a little bit more. Do you think that if a processed food is sold in the United States that whatever is in it is probably okay? I believe that we can all be fairly confident that unless something is contaminated or something has gone wrong somewhere in a production process, foods sold in the U.S. are not going to be immediately toxic or poisonous. Now, where things get tricky is when you start extending that time horizon.

17:14So yeah, okay, those ingredients may not be poisonous immediately now, but are they going to raise your risk of a heart attack or cancer? That is a lot harder to figure out. You have to follow a large group of people over a long period of time. You have to accurately record what they eat. You have to track what diseases they get. And so using these methods, scientists have estimated that eating 10 % more ultra-processed food is associated with roughly a one-year shorter lifespan. And there's a lot of disagreement about that result. It's not ironclad. But I do think we have to be comfortable with the idea that we know less than we think we do about the longer-term health effects of most foods and ingredients.

17:56Then doesn't that circle back to and support the idea that if we don't know the long-term effects of all these ingredients and all these things we're eating, that we should eat a simpler diet and that that would be safer in the long run? Or you could argue, you know, you could argue the opposite. If we don't really know, why don't you just eat whatever you want? There's a lot of factors that go into your decision about what to eat. Some of it is health effects like we've been talking about. Other parts of it are, what do I enjoy? I mean, the sort of more European or the more French way of eating is we don't worry about whether a food is particularly good or particularly bad.

18:35We just eat what we like, what makes us feel good, what we eat with company. And that, I would argue, is probably – I hesitate to use the word healthier. But that's maybe a more sane way of looking at foods rather than worrying about, well, is this one particular ingredient bad for me because I can't pronounce it? Well, I think there is a suspicion that people who, the companies that make processed foods are up to something. I mean, why do we need to have caffeine in orange soda? I mean, oranges don't have caffeine. Why does the soda have to have caffeine? The suspicion is to hook people on it and that there's just trouble afoot here, that manufacturers are manufacturing addicting foods, making us fatter, making us unhealthy, and that's the problem.

19:28Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think that's a philosophy that actually France does share with us because they are quite vigilant about certain things over there, especially how, quote unquote, natural a food is or how natural it's perceived to be. I think part of the problem does come down to the food industry there. I mean, they have made no bones about the fact that they have engineered foods to be delicious. I mean, on the one hand, why wouldn't you engineer, if you're trying to sell a food, you would want it to taste as good as possible. So why wouldn't you engineer it to be delicious?

20:01But on the other hand, you know, you can argue that they've gone too far, that things are too good, that we eat too much of them. And so that suspicion is probably a natural reaction to that perception. Well, you know, in every story, there has to be a bad guy. And so it's easy to point fingers at the food manufacturers and point at things like, you know, why do cheese puffs have to be that bright orange color? What is that and what is it doing to us? I think everyone's heard that, you know, the artificial strawberry flavor is actually, you know, crushed up bugs. Well, why don't they just use strawberries?

20:40Why do they have to crush up bugs? There's this suspicion that somebody's manipulating this. Crushed up bugs are completely natural. I mean, that's the funny thing about it, right, is that part of it is a perception issue. You know, natural bugs are not OK, but adding caffeine to cola, for example, you know, is fine. The other thing I would say there is bad news tends to sell. And so if you have a headline that says, for example, you know, coffee raises your risk of a heart attack or whatever it may be, that is much more likely to get clicks and traction and media coverage than a headline that says, you know, coffee is probably fine.

21:18and there's maybe one group of people who should avoid it, but most of the time you're okay. Let's go back to crushed up bugs for a sec. Crushed up bugs are there to make strawberry flavor. Why isn't there just strawberries in it? And it's fine if you want to put natural crushed up bugs, but say it's natural crushed up bug flavored whatever, not artificially strawberry flavor and put in crushed up bugs. So I think the crushed up bugs are actually for color. if I remember correctly, not for flavor. But your point is well taken. It's like, why would you add artificial strawberry flavor instead of actual strawberries?

21:56And basically there, the answer is cost. I mean, it is way more expensive to, if you want to make strawberry ice cream, to make it out of freshly harvested, delicious, ripe strawberries than it is to take one or two of the chemicals in strawberry flavor, isolate them, and add them to ice cream. So again, you know, you can have healthy, cheap, delicious, and convenient food. You can't have all four of those things. Occasionally, they're going to have to be trade-offs. Well, and I think that's really where it comes down to, isn't it? It's really trade-offs, because you can get naturally flavored just about anything, but it's going to cost you more.

22:37Organic is going to cost you more. It's just, if you're willing to pay for it, go have it. But if you want cheap strawberry ice cream, well, it's probably going to have some artificial flavors in it. Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of people, though, who write books and go on TV and they wear white lab coats and they demonize a lot of foods that they say that, you know, you should eat an all-natural diet and explain why all these horrible foods are going to kill you. And they have science to back it up. they publish a lot of either unsubstantiated stuff or they'll read a study and over interpret it or not say things about the study that were counterintuitive or weaknesses of the study.

23:25They won't give you the full picture. You know, a lot of the stuff you read on blogs is basically blueberries are a miracle food or, you know, I don't know, kale is poison or things like that, extreme statements that aren't necessarily grounded in fact. Well, I've noticed that there is a lot of nutrition advice that is based on assumptions, based on philosophies that, you know, humans are naturally vegetarian. Oh, no, they're not. No, humans are naturally carnivores. Well, they can't both be right, but they take that one of those positions or some other position about what humans should or shouldn't eat and run with it based on the philosophy.

24:05Yeah, exactly. And much of that advice, if it is tested at all, it's tested in a way that really doesn't actually test what the person is claiming was tested. You know, if they say, listen, you should avoid every single gram of processed food and never eat anything unless it's completely all natural. Well, no one's ever done that experiment. You know, we've done experiments where we've incrementally increased someone's processed food intake, but we have not had two groups of people and, you know, released one group into the forest to fend for themselves and fed the entire the other group, you know, a diet entirely of Cheetos and Coke.

24:42That just doesn't just doesn't happen like that. But reading these blogs, you'd think it does. Well, I like having these conversations about food and nutrition because there is so much conflicting advice and some of it is very extreme. But every single person has to figure out and sometimes struggle with what should they eat, what should they not eat. And it's good to get some solid information about it. My guest has been George Zayden. He is an MIT trained chemist. He created the National Geographic web series Ingredients, the Stuff Inside Your Stuff. And he is author of the book, Ingredients, The Strange Chemistry of What We Put In Us and On Us.

25:23There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, George. Cool. Thank you very much, Mike. And that's our SYSK trending topic for this week. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know.