Recently, health-conscious gurus with good intentions have suggested that any compound that cannot be easily pronounced or recognized is a harmful substance and should be avoided. While there is some merit to this, it is not always the Nutrition case.
Scientific names of compounds can be scary. Below are some examples of natural compounds with scary names:
Our body makes lipoic acid; its scientific name is “1,2-Dithiolane-3-pentanoic acid”. Pretty scary, huh?
Or how about “inositol hexanicotinate”? That’s the common name for non-flushing niacin, or vitamin B3; its proper name is “hexanicotinyl cis-1,2,3,5-trans-4,6-cyclohexane”! Yikes!
Lactose: the proper name is 4-O-beta-D-Galactopyranosyl-D-glucose.
There are far more scary looking names than that, and they are all considered natural substances.
When reading labels, if you really want to know what an ingredient is, the best thing to do is search it out on the internet. The last thing you want to do is think you can’t eat anything just because you can’t pronounce an ingredient… you may be cheating yourself out of a good thing!