I agree of course that it's simpler. This reasoning reminds me of the "nutritionist" argument (as I understand it from Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Foo

I agree of course that it's simpler. This reasoning reminds me of the "nutritionist" argument (as I understand it from Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food), in which individual nutrients are presumed to contain in toto the benefits of the foods in which they are found. Sure, a leaf of spinach may contain some inert matter that is irrelevant to your body from a chemical point of view. But it has not been convincingly demonstrated (he argues) that "the good parts" can be extracted or understood separately from the whole. My gut reaction, and I'm sticking with it, is that this is the reductio ad absurdum of a beautiful, human mystery. But take that with a grain of sea salt, as I was a student of "letters" before I was a hacker.