> This is counterintuitive and sounds like it is trying a bit too hard to be clever.

Indeed.

You could make the same counterintuitive and clever point about any bad thing, pointing out that there are things one might do to reduce that thing, which have other costs, and aren't worth it, but for many bad things that would not sound counterintuitive and clever, but deranged.

Consider the following statement:

> The optimal amount of salt in food is non-zero.

That's true, and it's not clever at all, we need salt. It's not that trying to remove all salt from food would be too expensive.

But consider also:

> The optimal amount of radioactive material in food is non-zero.

We might defend this in a similar clever counter-intuitive sense. But it's a completely different statement, and it's wrong.

EDIT: The three replies making the same point about bananas are a great illustration of the desire (and failure) to be clever and counter-intuitive that's also evident in the article. We don't eat bananas for their radioactive material. We don't need to eat radioactive material.