I don't think there's any truth in it. We developed taste buds to guide us to what we should eat and what we should avoid. That evolution has been usurped by food science.

On the other hand, "if it has an ingredient list, it's not food" is much closer to a truism. It's obviously an exaggeration as well; nonetheless, I tred cautiously with ingredient lists.

And now the situation we use our taste buds in is so different from the situation they were trained in that our taste buds are behind the biggest health issue in the world after aging.