We feel so proud when opting for a banana instead of a bag of jalapeño cheddar chips for our afternoon snack. All we have to do is turn over that bag and see the long list of hard-to-pronounce ingredients to know it’s bad for us. But as our friends at AsapSCIENCE point out in their latest video, the rule about avoiding foods with obscure-sounding ingredients doesn’t hold up once you realize bananas are made up of chemicals too, including oleic acid, methionine, and ethyl hexanoate.
This doesn’t mean you should do a happy dance and stock up on all the processed food in sight: Fruits and veggies are more nutritious than most chips you’ll find. But it’s worth pausing to think about how labels like “all-natural” and “chemical-free” are marketing jargon rather than scientifically accurate descriptions.
