Say It, Don't Spray It

A recent BoingBoing item featured a post by neuroscientist-blogger Very Evolved in which V.E. translated a University of Michigan study into accessible language.

The study asked people to read a list of made-up food ingredients, and then rate how dangerous each was on a scale from 1 to 7. The researchers found that ingredients that were hard to pronounce were thought to be more dangerous.

This provoked many comments on Boing Boing about dihydrogen monoxide (i.e., water) as well as this one that I particularly liked: "Water, high-fructose corn syrup, hemlock, arsenic, cyanide, natural flavoring. This sports drink seems safe."

V.E. goes into some detail about how this phenomenon is a product of our evolutionary history (it's basically the same thing as xenophobia, really, which is generally thought to have conferred a survival advantage).

It always amazes me how much food manufacturers don't come up with friendly names for things. I imagine it's because they aren't allowed to. Here are a few of the ingredients listed on a box of Pop Tarts:

• sodium acid pyrophosphate
• niacinamide (don't they know that the ending "ide" means to kill?)
• pyridoxine hydrochloride

And from Campbell's Soup at Hand Chicken with Mini Noodles:

• disodium inosinate
• mixed tocopherols
• disodium guanylate

Of course, a lot of the really scary-sounding ingredients (like pyridoxine hydrochloride) are actually the chemical forms of one of the B vitamins. But I guess if the makers of all these processed foods hadn't removed the vitamins in the first place, they wouldn't have to add them back in, and therefore wouldn't have to list them on the label.

The idea that something that's fake familiar is perceived as safe is a disturbing thing indeed -- although totally obvious to anyone who's paid any attention to marketing and an particularly naming strategy.