Banner by Elizabeth Gilfeather

The Buzz: To Eat or Not to Eat?

By Sanjana Chittimalla

Eating an apple is simple. Apples grow on trees, can be picked in a couple of seconds, and eaten soon after. But apples themselves aren’t quite so simple. In fact, apples more closely resemble a maze built from thousands upon thousands of chemicals, one of which is hydrogen cyanide.

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), just like the name suggests, is a common poison. But while cyanide poisoning can be acute with a lethal dose, small doses are relatively harmless. In fact, you’d probably be surprised by just how many toxins can be found everywhere, not just in apples.

You may now look down at your daily fruit salad and think: Oh no!

However—Don’t worry!—drawing negative conclusions from the previous information alone is fruitless, because while apple seeds do contain hydrogen cyanide, the amounts are trace, meaning that instead of wreaking havoc on your body, they are safely detoxified and exerted. So, while picking out cyanide-containing apple seeds and eating them by the spoonful might not be the best idea, eating some won’t actively harm you.

When looking at this example through a much larger scope, this sentiment holds true for daily food consumption and diet. While certain chemicals, ingredients, and foods are objectively better to consume than others, no one food or ingredient is inherently bad when eaten in moderate amounts. So while exclusively seeking out foods that might not be the best for your body isn’t the greatest idea, having some apple seeds, or even a large slice of cake, won’t affect your greater health.

This principle is easy to understand in theory, but applying the practice of eating everything in a balanced manner (no matter “good” or “bad”) is much more difficult in today’s world, mostly due to the overwhelming amount of misinformation found in health advice. In the end, how can you be expected to make good decisions regarding what you eat if you are constantly being fed differing opinions on whether the food is “good” or “bad”?

One of the most common examples of people being affected by other’s views on certain foods was likely just acted out; when you found that hydrogen cyanide is in apples, you likely were put on alert because you learned that a chemical you’ve only ever been told was bad is in the common apple. This is because people are very commonly told that chemicals as a whole are bad for the body, and while hydrogen cyanide does have a larger negative reputation than many other chemicals, the fear of chemicals as a whole is still very prevalent in society. One very popular saying regarding ingredients is that “If you can’t pronounce it, you shouldn’t put it in your body.” This test is incredibly subjective and not supported by any correlation regarding complexity of a chemical name and its complexity as a molecule. But still, the fear of chemicals lives on. 

So when one goes to the grocery store, while it’s easy to get swept away in a sea of colorful packaging and bold fonts, it’s even easier to feel overwhelmed when looking at the ingredients label with small compounds sounding a lot more fearful than they really are. Especially when all you can see on the back of a container is the following:

Before you just realize that it’s just a tub of Vanilla Ice Cream. Some ice cream can’t really be that bad, right?

Right. Once again, eating some vanilla ice cream is not inherently bad for a large majority of diets. Not only does it taste good, but if it makes you happy to eat it, consuming some will more likely make you feel better than not eating it altogether. However, what about all the chemicals on the ingredient label?

Chemicals, and all ingredients, are complicated. Chemicals aren’t inherently just reagents in a lab; they can range from very good for you, all the way to very bad. So being told to avoid all complicated-sounding chemicals because they’re all bad for you is a massive overgeneralization. After all, some chemicals are present in food just to improve the shelf life and do little else. 

Knowing what purpose each ingredient in your food serves is a largely unattainable task. So how one interacts with a lack of whole knowledge when it comes to food consumption is the most important factor in drawing the line between a healthy and balanced diet, versus a much more harmful one. In the end, remember that no matter how much people try to sell you a diet of fear, you should never be intrinsically scared of something without at least knowing a little about what it is.

When people try to sell a diet of fear, one built on “Eat this, never eat that,” it oftentimes has to do with creating a “buzz” around food to get people to eat a certain type of thing or type of way. While this may sometimes be done with good intentions, when not backed by actual research, information like this is oftentimes widely variable and unreliable. One example of this in practice is found in the health halo. The health halo effect happens when marketing and presentation techniques work to convince the consumer that a certain food is good for your health, though there is very little evidence of this. This can be easily managed by using keywords and phrases, such as gluten-free, low-fat, etc. that many people associate with being healthy even if it may not be. For example, for people with Celiac disease, consuming gluten proves to be very harmful for intestinal lining, so gluten-free alternatives are healthier for them to eat. However, gluten free alternatives for the gluten tolerant doesn’t prove to be much healthier at all, even though the label may make it seem so. 

The best way to combat falling into this frenzy of buzzwords is to make the effort to do one’s own research. Make sure you are actually listening to the information given from licensed and registered Dieticians as opposed to non-licensed “Nutritionists.” Look for scientific explanations as to why to avoid, or look out, for certain foods, and try to not simply cut out food from a diet because of a general buzz going around. In other words, try to not be reactive to dietary information given by others.

If you do find out that a food that you’re consuming isn’t the best for you, try to create a distinction between how “bad” it is and how you feel about it. If you find that you crave or like the food, try to include it in your diet while not tying guilt to consumption, but instead by balancing it out with other foods. The key to a well-balanced diet is to find a healthy medium with what you put in your body. 

In the end, one bad apple doesn’t always ruin the whole barrel.