“Chemicals,” Food, and You

“3-methyl butyraldehyde is a compound in a blueberry. Think about that.”

Somebody threw this into the ether recently in an argument about whole foods. You know how wise and restrained online debaters are. This person seriously believed they’d made a meaningful point about why people who insist on whole foods and minimal processing were wrong. Because whole foods have chemical compositions which are difficult to pronounce, this person apparently believed all arguments for plant-based whole foods are, a priori, wrong.

In full fairness, the other person in this debate (not me) said something equally unfounded. “If you can’t pronounce an ingredient,” the other person wrote, “DON’T EAT IT!” This person apparently believed in the honest wholesomeness of “natural” ingredients, presuming that naturally occurring, plant-based substances must necessarily be healthful. The other person responded with complete trust in science and technology.

I’ve written about this before; this double-sided fallacy doesn’t bear another unpacking.

However, the 3-methyl butyraldehyde argument deserves some exploration. This person, hidden behind an anonymous sign-on handle and a cartoon avatar, claims that abstruse chemical constituents within whole foods are essentially equal to additives used in manufacturing processed foods. 3-methyl butyraldehyde, which has both naturally occurring and synthetic forms, is found in many commercial foods, both whole and processed.

Blueberries have several naturally occurring chemical constituents. Some are easy to pronounce, including protein, fat, and especially water. Others are more abstruse, such as hydroxylinalool, linoleic acid, and terpinyl acetate. Though most of these chemical compounds are harmless in naturally occurring proportions, some can be harmful if isolated and hyperdosed. Like most organisms, blueberries comprise a subtle, nuanced combination of substances.

However, no combination of these substances, in any quantity, will come together and form a blueberry, not with current science or technology. One can only grow a blueberry by carefully cultivating a blueberry bush, a commitment of time and effort, as blueberry bushes only produce fruit after two or three years. Chemical fertilizers can sometimes hasten fruiting, but at the cost of starchier fruit, which displaces both nutrients and flavor.

One recalls the common counterargument whenever hippies complain about “chemicals.” Some wag, occasionally but not often a scientist, responds: “Everything is chemicals!” To take this argument seriously, the respondent must not know (or pretend not to know) that people say “chemicals” as a synecdoche for synthetic chemicals of an unknown provenance, which, under America’s light-touch regulatory regime, are assumed safe until proven otherwise—cf. Rampton & Stauber.

Though the FDA tests and regulates pharmaceuticals (for now), many food additives, cosmetics, chemicals used in haircare products and clothes, and other things we put on our bodies, are presumed safe. This despite years of evidence that this isn’t good practice. Ethelyne glycol, cyclamate, and several food dyes were regularly used in American foods before being demonstrated as unsafe.

Even beyond safety concerns, the reduction of whole foods to their chemical constituents preserves a dangerous idea. Futurists once posited that food scientists would eventually isolate the basic nutrients in food, and effectively replace the tedium of cooking and eating with the simplicity of gelatin capsules. One finds this reasoning behind the mythology of vitamin supplements, now known to be useless for most people most of the time.

Human digestion doesn’t simply extract chemical nutrients from food like a Peterbilt burning diesel. We require the complexity of food, including fats, fiber, roughage, and limited amounts of sugar. I generally side with Michael Pollan’s ubiquitous advice: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Food doesn’t mean chemical constituents. You don’t make a blueberry smoothie by adding 3-methyl butyraldehyde, you make it by adding blueberries.

Please don’t misunderstand. I want to avoid the trap of assuming that “natural” equals good. Reasonable adults know you shouldn’t pick wild mushrooms or handle poison ivy. That’s an exaggeration, but the point remains, that nature requires respect, like any other tool. But human agronomists have selectively bred food crops for 5,000 years to maximize healthful content, and apart from occasional allergies, agriculture is broadly trustworthy.

And pretending that food only consists of its chemical compounds is bad-faith argument. You wouldn’t describe your friend by listing his tissues and internal organs, because humans are more than the sum of our parts. The same applies to food, including fresh ingredients. Cooking natural ingredients, then processing them with synthetic additives to make them tasty and shelf-stable, does change the food.

Pretending not to understand the other person is smarmy and disrespectful, and if your argument requires it, your argument is probably bad.