There's a great deal to discuss here, but frankly, two glaring points stick out that must be addressed.
Many books full of psuedoscience use complex terms unnecessarily. When physicians, nutritionists, and scientists speak to the public, they generally try to avoid using field-specific terms to avoid confusing the public. Likewise, when psuedoscience is written, they love to throw out large words which are purposefully misleading.
Second, the complex chemical names of organic compounds are due to the complexity of chemistry. Would you eat (3R,4S,5S)-6-(Hydroxymethyl)oxane-2,3,4,5-tetrol? The official name is based entirely off a method of naming compounds created by an international body called the IUPAC. From there, official names get sawed down to something more useful. Any organic chemist of biochemist could, with a lot of pain, draw the structure of (3R,4S,5S)-6-(Hydroxymethyl)oxane-2,3,4,5-tetrol from the name alone if you asked. Then they'd probably growl out, "Why the hell didn't you just say glucose?!" The official name specifies the position of every atom. Modified, shorter names are used which still sound alien, but hint at structure. For example, blood sugar is how I'd inform a patient about glucose. I'd say glucose to a fellow med student. I'd say dextrose to an anal-retentive organic chemist who wants us to remember there's a D, right-handed, form which living things use, and an L, left-handed form which is only found in a lab. (Dextro, right, levo, left). Finally, I'd only use the IUPAC name to prove a point about how organic compounds are named.
N-acetyl-galactosamine sounds horrifying, but it's a modified sugar found in many body tissues. Your body synthesizes it because it's needed for tons of specialized proteins and other uses. It's "all natural," but man does that name sound "terribly chemical." The name tells someone with the correct background exactly what the compound's structure is, but only if they've memorized the structure of galactose and have a background in the field. Examples could go on all day. Just look up any "all natural" substance, such as curare, thiamine (Vitamin B1), cellulose, and quite a few others. They all have scary, chemically names.
Now, onto the psuedoscience of the sourcebook cited. My comments are in parenthesis or inserted into the text.0
"The corn fed chicken; corn starch (Glucose bound into a chain); modified cornstarch (more of the same); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (basic, normal fats); dextrose (Glucose under a more specific name); lecithin (these are the basic building blocks of cell membranes and are in literally everything you eat; it's a catch-all group for perfectly normal parts of your cell membranes. These things with scary names like phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine); chicken broth (yum!); yellow cornflower; vegetable shortening (fat); partially hydrogenated corn oil (more fat); and citric acid (a compound found in almost every cell in your body which is used when you burn sugar, fats, etc)."
Ok, stop trying to scare folks with names for stuff that makes up, well, food.
"A few other plants are used as ingredients, wheat in the batter, and sometimes hydrogenated oil from soybeans (fat), canola (fat), or cotton is used in place of that from corn (Citation Needed - I want proof given how much snow this has already tried to throw. Cotton Seed Oil, maybe? That's just...fat). McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients: sodium aluminum phosphate (a salt, and all the components are "natural"); mono-calcium phosphate (ditto, plus all essential); sodium acid pyrophosphate (as above); calcium lactate (see above); dimethylopolysiloxene (which, according to the Handbook of Food Additives, is a suspected carcinogen, as well as a confirmed mutagen, tomorigen, and reproductive effector, it is also flammable);
I checked the MSDS, and none of those claims bore out. Flammable is great; did you know sucrose, ethanol (the kind of alcohol we like), and many triglycerid-...fats...hell, most foods burn?
"and tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) [which, according to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, is a form of butane (lighter fluid)"
This is a common sort of error. In organic chemistry and biochemistry, compounds often have a "group" which is where things tend to happen. These are called functional groups. It contains a BUTYL group, which is a chemical term for a four carbon chain. Butane, lighter fluid, is only a four carbon chain with all its spaces filled with hydrogen. Having a butyl group confers certain chemical properties of interest, but doesn't make a substance lighter fluid.
Consider sucrose, table sugar. It has eight alcohol groups. Table sugar, in chemical terms, is indeed laden with alcohol groups and this confers a lot of properties to it. However, it's not going to get you drunk as a skunk, since it has many alcohol groups on its two sugar components. Glucose itself has no fewer than four alcohol groups attached. Ethanol has only one; alcohol as most folks know it has less alcohol groups per carbon than table sugar.
"that the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in food: it may comprise no more than 0.02% of the oil in a nugget. Ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, and a sense of "suffocation and collapse." Five grams of TBHQ can kill.]
The LD-50 studies I saw on MSDS' came no where near suggesting that, unless you weigh a bit less than 13 pounds. And really, are you drinking the oil? Everything has an LD-50, even water.
The nugget is responsible for chicken having passed beef as the most consumed meat in America."
In Wikipedia's phraseology, Citation Needed.
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