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Earlier today, Panera Bread vowed to remove more than 150 artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives—all of which were named in its “No-No List”—from all locations by the end of 2016. It’s an unprecedented move in the restaurant world. “Last year, we unveiled our food policy to hold ourselves accountable to long-held values and set the future vision for our menu,” founder and CEO Ron Shaich said in a press release issued this morning. “The ‘No-No List’ is the latest step on our journey to clean food and a transparent menu.”

You’ve probably heard of some ingredients on the list—like aspartame, lard, and caffeine—while others may sound unfamiliar, like ethoxyquin (a preservative) and neotame (a sugar substitute). 

We’re definitely in favor of choosing whole, natural ingredients whenever possible—but does this mean that all of these ingredients are actually harmful to consume? Not necessarily, says Alexandra Caspero, R.D., founder of Delicious Knowledge. “I think most people hear the word ‘artificial ingredients’ and automatically assume that they are dangerous,” she says. Does the saying, “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it” ring a bell? “It’s a good catchphrase, but it doesn’t take into account the chemistry behind food,” says Caspero. “Artificial ingredients were not created to make food harmful to us, they came about to help stabilize and preserve food on the shelves for extended periods of time. That being said, there are many artificial ingredients that have proven to be harmful, especially in larger doses.”

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Caspero says that if your diet is mainly whole foods—like produce, whole grains, and unprocessed proteins and fats—you probably don’t have to worry too much about the artificial ingredients in the rest of what you eat. It’s when your diet consists of mostly packaged foods—and you therefore start taking in higher quantities of these artificial ingredients—that they become worrisome. “You can drive yourself crazy if you worry about every. Single. Ingredient,” says Caspero. 

“Some of the ingredients listed here I do not recommend to my clients, like acesulfame potassium,” she says. “Poorly done studies in the 1970s suggested that it may cause cancer. There haven’t been many better studies, but still, I avoid it.” Additional ingredients she suggests steering clear of include butylated hydroxyanisole or BHA (it may also be carcinogenic) and partially hydrogenated oils (which raise your bad cholesterol and lower your good cholesterol).

Other ingredients that are called out on Panera’s list, including high-fructose corn syrup, have a bad public perception—but aren’t necessarily dangerous. “It does promote obesity, tooth decay, and high triglycerides, but so do all sugars,” says Caspero. The bottom line? While “the less processed, the better” is a good rule of thumb, you don’t need to stress yourself out about every single artificial ingredient that goes into your body—you’d drive yourself nuts.