August 10, 2026
How to read an ingredient label without a chemistry degree
Ingredient lists are ordered, not ranked. Four things worth knowing before you decide anything about a product.
Read →Blog
Notes on ingredients, additives, and how to read a label without needing a chemistry degree.
August 3, 2026
The fiber in your bar may not behave like the fiber in your vegetables
Inulin and chicory root count as fiber on the panel and are the most common reason a high-fiber bar causes trouble.
Read →July 23, 2026
Protein isolate, concentrate, and what the word actually buys you
Isolate means a purity threshold, not a quality grade. The difference matters for some people and is close to irrelevant for most.
Read →July 16, 2026
What an additive count tells you, and what it flattens
Counting additives is a real signal and a bad verdict. Eleven additives can be worse than three, or entirely fine, depending on which eleven.
Read →July 9, 2026
Titanium dioxide is banned in the EU and legal in the US. Both looked at the same data.
The most instructive disagreement in food regulation is not about evidence. It is about what to do when a question cannot be closed.
Read →July 1, 2026
Carrageenan: the ingredient with the longest-running argument
Two decades of disagreement about a seaweed extract, most of it turning on a distinction between two forms that share a name.
Read →June 24, 2026
What we mean by processing level, and why it is not a safety score
Every report carries a processing level. It answers how far an ingredient travelled from its source, which is a different question from whether it is harmful.
Read →June 17, 2026
Soy or sunflower lecithin: does the source change anything?
Sunflower lecithin is marketed as the cleaner choice. The functional difference is smaller than the positioning suggests, but it is not zero.
Read →June 9, 2026
Erythritol had a bad news cycle. Here is what the study actually measured.
A 2023 paper linked erythritol to cardiovascular events and the headlines wrote themselves. The design supports a narrower claim than the coverage did.
Read →June 2, 2026
Why a protein bar lists three different sweeteners
Ingredient order is by weight, and that creates an incentive. Splitting one sweetening system across several entries moves all of them down the list.
Read →May 25, 2026
Sugar alcohols and the tolerance problem nobody warns you about
Maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol and erythritol are not interchangeable. The differences show up in how much you can eat before you regret it.
Read →