American Thought Leaders - Americans Are Not Eating ‘Real Food’—Here’s What You Need to Know: Vani Hari

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2“Our bodies are not meant to handle these man-made chemicals that have been invented in the last 50 years. These chemicals are invented for one sole purpose, and that’s to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve our health.”In this episode, I sit down with author and activist Vani Hari, popularly known as the “food babe.” For over a decade, she has been exposing toxic ingredients in America’s food—and getting companies to stop using them.“[The FDA has] not reviewed the safety data of these artificial dyes in over 10 years. However, children’s consumption of these artificial food dyes have increased 500 percent,” says Hari. “We’re not trying to stop fast food or get rid of fast food. We want to make it the same as they do in Europe. McDonald’s french fries: 11 ingredients here in the United States, including dimethyl polysiloxane, an ingredient you would find in silly putty ... but in the UK, there’s three ingredients, and the fourth ingredient is optional. It’s just salt.”Hari argues that food companies should add a warning label to every product that uses artificial food dyes, as they already do in Europe.“That would automatically almost force the food industry to remove them here as well, because they do not want parents to be concerned about their products,” she says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Our bodies are not meant to handle these man-made chemicals that have been invented in the last 50 years. These chemicals are invented for one sole purpose, and that's to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve our health. In this episode, I sit down with author and activist Bonnie Hari, popularly known as the Food Babe. For over a decade, she has been exposing toxic ingredients in America's food and getting companies to stop using them. They admitted they have not reviewed the safety data of these artificial dyes in over 10 years. However, children's consumption of these artificial food dyes have increased 500%.

We're not trying to stop fast food or get rid of fast food. We want to make it the same as they do in Europe. McDonald's French fries, 11 ingredients here in the United States, including dimethylpolysiloxane, an ingredient you would find in silly putty. But in the UK, there's three ingredients, and the fourth ingredient is optional. It's just salt.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Kellek. Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this podcast, American Hartford Gold. As you all know, inflation is getting worse, job numbers are a lot worse than previously forecast, and many Americans are worried about a coming recession. But there is one way to protect your savings. American Hartford Gold makes it simple and easy to diversify your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver. With one short phone call, they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside your RRA or 401k.

American Hartford Gold is one of the highest- rated firms in the country with an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and thousands of satisfied clients. If you call them right now, they'll give you up to $2,500 of free silver and a free safe on qualifying orders. Call 855-862-3377. That's 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. Again, that's 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. Again, that's 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. Bonnie Hari, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you so much, Jan. So I was recently in Canada and actually I thought of you because we were at the supermarket

and we thought, let's actually take a look at what Fruit Loops, what the ingredients are in Canada. And actually, I thought of you because we were at the supermarket and we thought, let's actually take a look at what Fruit Loops, what the ingredients are in Canada. And we were kind of shocked to discover it's quite different. Yeah, it's quite different. It's different in Canada. It's different in Australia. It's different in India. It's different in all of Europe. And actually, in Europe, there's a cigarette-type warning label that warns parents that says it may cause adverse effects on activity and attention to children when a product does have an artificial food dye. So Kellogg's and many other American food companies simply removed the artificial food dyes from these countries that have stricter regulations, and they didn't make the change across the board. They didn't decide to make their products safer for all their customers. Instead, they used the regulations to their advantage,

their financial advantage. So here in the United States, because our regulatory system allows them to, they're using the more poisonous ingredients here. Because you would think once you realize that there are these serious problems, you know, Bobby Kennedy recently was talking about the yellow food dye, right? That we would remove them, right? Just on principle.

Yes, absolutely. But unfortunately, our FDA is asleep at the wheel. And they're actually driving a bus right now through the gates of unhealthy hell with big food, big chem, and big pharma all in the passenger seat, driving the shots Califf, just saying in a Senate testimony that he will not criticize the food industry. Are you prepared to tell us that this committee, this Congress needs to take on the food and beverage industry whose greed is destroying the health of millions of people? Well, I'm not going to castigate the people that work in the food and beverage industry. You're not. No.

That is your job. No, it's not to castigate. It's to point out how to make progress in this area. If the FDA will not criticize the food industry, who's going to do it? They admitted they have not reviewed the safety data of these artificial dyes in over 10 years. However, children's consumption of these artificial food dyes have increased 500%. So, well, okay, I have to ask you the question. So what do you make of these new appointments in HHS, of course, Bobby Kennedy and Marty McCary as the prospective incoming FDA commissioner.

Well, those two appointments that you just mentioned are phenomenal. Those two gentlemen get it. They understand that American companies should not poison us with ingredients they don't use in other countries. They understand the failure of our regulatory system allowing over 10,000 chemicals in our food supply here in the United States versus only 400 in Europe. They supported my campaign to take petitions to Kellogg's headquarters. We took over 400,000 signatures to Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg's headquarters, and they basically told us to get off their lawn. So we started a national boycott and now we have one of the largest grassroots movements and we are affecting sales at Kellogg's. Right now

over the last 12 weeks Fruit Loop sales on grocery store shelves have gone down 54%. Their stock price of Kellogg's has gone down 14%. So we are making a fundamental change. We're saying, hey, dear food industry, if you continue to poison us with ingredients you don't use in other countries, we're going to bankrupt you into oblivion. What does good policy look like? Let's start with this area. But of course, your interests are much broader than just food dice. I think good policy looks like doing common sense things. For example, red number three was banned in cosmetics over 30 years ago because it causes cancer.

You can't apply red three to your skin, but you can still consume it. And the reason is, is that the alcohol industry conspired with the government to continue to allow it because you know what Red 3 is in? It's in maraschino cherries. And that would reduce alcohol sales because they couldn't put that bright red cherry in their drinks anymore. These are the common sense policies we need to fix. And we need to get the conflicts of interest out of the government so that we can get this solved.

What would be some of the things an FDA commissioner should do on day one from your viewpoint? I mean, the first thing they could do is add a warning label to every product that has artificial food dyes, just like Europe has. That would automatically almost force the food industry to remove them here as well, because they do not want parents to be concerned about their products. You know, informed consent. We need to know what we're consuming. We need to know what we're putting in our bodies. We need to know what's happening in the healthcare system with medications, with pharma. We need to have this information. We need transparency into the things that are causing the chronic disease rates to skyrocket. What other kinds of chemicals are

commonly found here that have been removed from food systems in other countries, like say Europe, for example? Well, there's one in particular that I petitioned Subway to remove, and it's called azodicarbonamide. It's found in yoga mats and shoe rubber. And actually, when you turn a yoga mat sideways, you kind of see little air bubbles. Well, it does the same thing in bread, and it makes it very uniform. It's banned in Europe, in Australia. If you get caught using it in Singapore, you get fined and put in jail. But here in the United States, bread manufacturers are allowed to use it. The problem with it is when

it's heated it turns into a carcinogen and even more so when the factory workers use it to mix in the bread it can get in their lungs and cause lung issues. So this is a very hazardous chemical that again is still allowed for use by our FDA but banned almost everywhere else across the globe. So these are the kind of things we need to look at and see what makes sense to let the food industry know that they can't continue poisoning us with man-made chemicals, taking our God-given fruits and vegetables and all the things he gave us to eat and making them less nutritious, more addictive, full of additives so that they can make more money, that's got to stop.

In terms of, you know, all of these additives, right, you're really talking about highly processed food, right? I actually own a company that produces processed food, but we're using real ingredients, ingredients that you would find in your own kitchen. We're sourcing organic ingredients that haven't been sprayed with pesticides or grown with antibiotics and growth hormone, right? We're using real food that nourishes the body, that you can recognize, that came from God and earth. And that's the kind of processed foods we need in our world. And that's the products I wish to see in the world. And that's why I started my company, Truvani, because there were so many products out there that just literally are poisoning us to death. You know, one company, which I think a lot of people at this event would be big fans of, right, is Chick-fil-A. But you also have raised some criticisms from what I

understand. And how has that whole process gone? They should actually call it chemical filet because it's full of chemicals. You know, after I consulted with the company to remove several different toxic chemicals, which they did, which was fantastic, there's one ingredient they told me they couldn't remove, and that's the MSG. Well, MSG is fed to rats in obesity studies to make them fat. And we have an obesity epidemic in this country where three-fourths of our nation is overweight. We have to look at what the food industry is doing to make us eat more than we should.

When you look at studies where they put people on a real food diet versus a processed food diet, every single time the processed food diet group eats more. Why is that? It's been engineered to be addictive and we've got to stop that. Okay, that's really interesting. I've heard this and I kind of believe it. Let's say what I eat Cheetos or I used to. I'm trying. You know, Cheetos has yellow six in it, which is linked to rats getting tumors. And in lab studies, they just reported in the Wall Street Journal, I mean, I'm not making this up, very recently, that it will turn the skin of mice transparent.

I mean, it's like a science experiment, what's happening to our bodies. And, you know, as Americans, we have to rise up. We have our moment right now. We have top-down leadership happening for the first time in history. We actually have a moment right now to educate the public in such a way that these issues can finally get the truth out, right? And we have the opportunity to reach every single person and tell them the truth about what's happened to the food supply and tell them the things that my parents didn't know when they came here to America from India, and they were so trusting of the American food system, and they thought it was so amazing being able to go to McDonald's and find a cheap meal for their family, right?

We need to tell Americans the truth of what's been done, and then we got to force the food companies to undo it. And that's what I've been doing with the Food Babe Army and so many different advocates. And I can't tell you how excited I am for the Make America Healthy movement and for President Trump himself to be sharing information that I've been sharing for over 10 years. I couldn't believe my eyes. My jaw was like wide open. I was like, wow, this is getting out there now in a way that I never thought was possible. So just out of curiosity, what was your reaction to that kind of famous photo where President

Trump and Bobby Kennedy and a few others, I think Speaker Johnson, they're sitting there having McDonald's and I think one of the comments on it was, Maha starts tomorrow. Yeah, that was Dodd Jr. making a joke. Yeah. You know, it's funny that the immediate thing that came to my mind reminded me when I was in corporate America and my bosses would go out to eat. And I would kind of be like not making a big deal out of it. And I would just kind of join in because, you know, I wanted to fit in. And I was like, well, is RFK Jr. doing that? I'm not sure, you know. And so that was the first thought that came to my mind.

But I think what's more important is that we're not trying to stop fast food or get rid of fast food. We want to make it the same as they do in Europe. McDonald's French fries, 11 ingredients here in the United States, including dimethylpolysiloxane, an ingredient you would find in silly putty. According to the FDA, it can be preserved with formaldehyde, a neurotoxin. They use that here in the United States, but in the UK, there's three ingredients and the fourth ingredient is optional. It's just salt. I want to talk a little bit about this addiction piece because someone must have figured

out at some point, hey, let's make food addictive. I mean, it sounds like a terrible thing to say, right? Well, what happened is R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris bought up the food companies long ago, and they saw there was this opportunity to diversify their portfolio because they saw consumption of tobacco go down, and they said, we can use the same science for food to make it addictive, and we can make cheap food-like substances and put chemicals in it and people will eat it and we will make a lot of money. And they started to use the same science that they used in tobacco to addict people to cigarettes in food. And now there's a major lawsuit just filed in Pennsylvania from a teenager who has type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease that is suing 11 of the top food companies for his ailments because he did not know that his

food was being engineered to be addictive. The lawsuit is like reading a horror movie about the American food supply. This is my question. There's actual evidence that shows there was deliberate attempts to make this processed food addictive. Yes, absolutely. And when these lawyers go through discovery, it is going to be a field day. It's going to be like a birthday gift to me. I won't stop reading it. It's fascinating to me. I mean, it kind of makes sense that if you're in the business of making money off of addiction, that you might continue that same business model. But at Epoch Times, we cover a lot of things that are, let's say, hard to believe and turn out to be true. This is one of those. This is why I'm asking you. You're doing really fearless journalism and I really appreciate it. Yeah.

Can you tell me a little bit about, just a little bit about that evidence that exists already that you know that this was deliberately done? Because it just might sound very fantastical to people. Well, let's just look at, yeah, let's just look at the ingredient natural flavors, right? Natural flavors you see on a label at the grocery store. However, it could mean thousands of different chemicals that they've synthesized to create the one millionth best part of a taste, literally taking over your entire old factory system of your nose. A lot of people don't realize that flavors also bring smells to products so that when you open up an ice cream sandwich packet, the smell of it immediately hits your nose because

when something's frozen, it mutes the senses, right? So there's all of these tricks being played as well as the texture of processed foods. They actually make the texture easier for you to digest. So you eat more of that product before your brain can recognize that you're full. I mean, look at processed bread, how soft and easy it is to digest. And compare that to a homemade loaf of sourdough bread, how it's chewy and crusty, and it takes you a long time to bite through it and chew it up. In the same time, you can eat five, six, seven, eight slices of processed bread

in the same time it would take you to eat a piece of bread made at home. So every single thing, down from the actual additives to the texture to the type of chemicals like MSG that we've already talked about, they're using those in combination with our basic human biology of loving sugar, salt, and fat combined together. And they're using that against us. And this is why me personally, I've decided not to be part of that experiment anymore. I've decided these processed foods are not good enough for my body,

and I went to a real food diet, and I went off nine prescription drugs when I changed my diet. And this is what I hope for every American out there, to not walk around like a zombie like I used to as a child and be in and out of doctors' offices all the time and getting organs taken out of your body, which has happened to me. And this is an option now to recognize that you have the power.

You can decide how to eat. You can take back control of your health. You can fight these giants and tell them, you know what, I'm done with you. Bonnie, you are so incredibly passionate on this issue. You have to tell me a little bit about where this passion came from. And you just, you talked about something, you know, frankly, quite scary if you've had organs removed and so forth. So just tell me a little bit about your backstory here. When I hit rock bottom in my early 20s and they told me my appendix was about to burst and I had to get my appendix taken out, I almost died. You know, I didn't know what was wrong. I almost didn't go see the doctor.

Thankfully, my parents made me go see him and he's like, you have to have emergency surgery. The first doctor I saw actually told me nothing was wrong. So in that hospital room recovering, I made a commitment to myself that I would research my health and figure out what was actually happening because something didn't make sense. It did not add up to me that my appendix is just a useless organ and I didn't need it. I found out things that were the truth, which is the appendix is actually there to populate your gut with good bacteria. And the reason it becomes inflamed is because of an inflammatory diet that I was on, right?

That I was eating Chick-fil-A, you know, after work, after my workout, because it was 400 calories. I didn't know that it had 100 different chemicals in it. And so our bodies are not meant to handle these man-made chemicals that have been invented in the last 50 years. These chemicals are invented for one sole purpose, and that's to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve our health. It's to make them more money. So when I see an ingredient on a food label that isn't real food that has come from the

earth, I put it back away. When I see monodiglycerides or natural flavors or high fructose corn syrup or, you know, any of these chemicals that we've talked about here today, the artificial dyes and the artificial flavors and the partially hydrogenated soy and corn and canola oils, because those are things that we didn't evolve to consume. And I really think that it's simple and when you start to eat real food, meats, cheeses, nuts, seeds, beans, fruits and vegetables, your body starts working in a way that really makes you closer to finding your purpose in life. I really do believe that because I don't think you can find your purpose in life until your brain's functioning correctly.

And when you're hopped up on all these chemicals that we are in America, I think this is one of the reasons why we suffer so much. That's a fascinating view, actually. Was there a particular moment where you got that clarity as you were going, you started researching, I guess you changed your diet substantively, but there's this moment where suddenly, hey, my brain is working so clearly and I get it. Yeah, I mean, I really think it was the moment that I started to change the food industry. I don't think I would have been an activist or been able to change the food industry had

I not had my brain working correctly because I was able to actually research and read and be an activist and rally the troops in a way that I didn't have the energy to do that kind of work before, right? I wanted to sit on the couch after work and veg out on TV. I didn't want to research what had happened in the food industry and investigate these different fast food chains and other big food companies, right? I didn't have the energy to do that. I was like in this zombie-like mode. Tell me about your blog, because I think your blog has actually been remarkably influential. Thank you. It's, you know, it's called foodbabe.com. My husband, when I first started it, I wanted to call it eathealthyandliveforever.com,

right? And he thought that was a terrible name. And so he found Food Babe, $10 on auction, and yelled out from the other room. We were living in a two-bedroom apartment at the time. And he yelled out, and he says, how about Food Babe? And I said, that's great. That's kind of catchy. It's short. You know, people remember it. But it made me feel a little bit nervous because I was like, I didn't feel like a food babe for most of my life.

Well, why don't I teach other people to become a food babe? So for the first year and a half of my blog, I never even had my photo on there. I kind of hid behind this name, Food Babe. I had these cartoon characters up there. And I was still working in the corporate world, working for big financial institutions, consulting for C-level executives. So I kind of wanted to hide this passion that I had, but it was hard to hide it, right? You can kind of see how passionate I am about this topic. And so at work, I was known as the health freak, right?

And eventually, I found myself taking off work to go write, to go investigate, and then eventually getting invited by these fast food giants to consult and get some of these chemicals out of their food. And when that started to happen, I made a commitment. I said, you know what, I think this is way more impactful than what I'm doing at the banks. This can change millions of lives. And I quit my job cold turkey. I remember I wasn't making a dime doing Food Babe. And I quit my job cold turkey. And it was that moment that really started this fight and this research about how American

food companies are poisoning us with ingredients they don't use in other countries. Because the first investigation I worked on when I didn't have a job was comparing product labels from Europe to the United States, the exact same product label. And one of the first products I found, which I just couldn't even believe it, was strawberry Quaker oats. Here in the United States, they were using apple bits dyed with red 40 to make strawberry oats. But in the UK, they were using real strawberries. They don't make that product anymore, thankfully, because of that investigation. But this was one of the things that I discovered, as well as Kraft macaroni and cheese doing this

as well, using yellow 5 and yellow 6 here in the United States, whereas in other countries they were using paprika and beta carotene. So I decided to take on Kraft and start a petition. I was very inspired by Bettina Siegel who took on PIC slime at the USDA level and inspired by Sarah Kavanaugh who took on brominated vegetable oil and Gatorade. And I said if they can do it I can do it too. And so I started a petition against Kraft to remove artificial food dyes. I took those petitions to their headquarters. They basically told me to get lost. They sat down with me and told me we have to agree to disagree. And I didn't stop there. I decided to keep going and educating

the public about artificial food dyes. And eventually, all the people who were buying Krafts started moving towards Annie's, their competitor, who didn't use artificial food dyes. And you know who else looked at Annie's was General Mills. They ended up buying Annie's for $800 million just a few months later, and then Kraft had to change. And it was the best moment when they went to the press and they're like, you know, we're changing this. We're listening to consumers. And when they asked, was this in response to Bhanihari's petition? And they said no.

It just made me laugh so hard because it was clearly a response to the new awakening about these chemicals and how they were poisoning us with ingredients they don't use in other countries. You know, something just piqued my interest. You mentioned that on the one side, of course, you're shaming the industries for not just using these other ingredient lists, right, that have a lot less problematic ingredients. You also said you were consulting those. So people are actually inviting you to actually say, hey, this is how you could do it well. Tell me a little bit about that part of your efforts. Yeah, absolutely.

So Chick-fil-A was one of those companies that I think handled this correctly. You know, I think Kellogg's has handled it miserably. It will actually be the biggest mistake in the food industry when it's said and done. They should have invited us into their headquarters that day when we took the petitions to their Battle Creek office. Chick-fil-A did it proactively. They said, you know what? Your blog post went viral. We hear you. We want you to come to our headquarters. We want you to meet with our executives. We want to listen to your concerns. They sat me down. And well, first of all, they picked me up in a cow covered car and you walk into their headquarters and there's a huge

Batmobile there. You're just like, what? So I guess that's what they do with all their money. They buy the Batmobile. Then I sat down with all the executives, the guy who is the head supplier for the chicken, the head of marketing, the head of operations, all surrounding me. And they let me bring a camera that day even to document this. It was absolutely astounding. And they listened to me. They actually implemented a lot of changes. I whiteboarded out for them that day using my consulting skills. And they were like, you know, out of all your complaints about our food, can you help us prioritize them? And the first priority I asked for was them to remove antibiotics from their chicken feed. And they told me it wasn't possible that day.

And I told them you can do it because Chipotle is doing it. And what they're doing is they're converting their current chicken feed over. And you can do that with your suppliers because you buy enough chicken to have that influence, right? And they eventually made that change. And then they took out artificial food dyes from their ice cream product that they offered kids as part of their kids' meal. They introduced a kale salad. I mean, so many different things that they've made progress on. There's one that, of course, that I give them a very hard time about still, and they know it. And they said they've tried.

They can't make their chicken taste that good without MSG. Natural flavors and MSG, those type of additives are the reason why you know the difference between a Wendy's hamburger, a McDonald's hamburger, and a Burger King hamburger. The reason why you know the different flavor profiles is because of these additives. But when you make a burger at home, do you remember it every single time? No, not really, because every single time it tastes different. Interesting. What does your research tell you about GMO foods? The reason I'm asking this is there's kind of two ways to do GMO, right? One is artificial selection, how it worked. You just increase the frequency of a particular

gene that was already in there, right? For example, to make a different looking cabbage, which is broccoli or something like that, right? On the other hand, there's also this kind of transgenic situation where you're introducing things which would never, ever end up in an organism. And I don't know, do you distinguish between these two kinds of GMO? Is just GMO completely off limits for you? And if that's the case, why? So my biggest problem with genetically engineered food is the way that they are designed to withstand heavy doses of Roundup and glyphosate. And seeing the $2.2 billion verdict that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s law firm brought to their plaintiffs, showing that there is a link between Roundup and glyphosate and cancer, that's very alarming to me.

And so for me, that's why I avoid GMO foods. Okay, interesting. It's like a very specific type of GMO that you're talking about. Yeah, I mean it's the one that's in 85% of foods at the grocery store shelves that are processed. It's the corn, it's the soy, it's the canola, it's the sugar beets. And cottonseed too. Let's talk about cottonseed oil because cottonseed oil is a byproduct from a textile industry. So it's not even regulated like food. They can use much worse pesticides on a textile than they do food. And then the byproduct

of that ends up in our food. And then the way they deodorize it and bleach it and extract it with hexane, it's absolute poison for your cells. So if I believe that the way that industry answers this question, it's like, yes, there may be a cost, but it allows us to feed so many more people by using these chemicals. That's just not true. That's been disproven. Yeah, regenerative agriculture and regenerative farming is actually going to be the method that saves the most people. If we can actually change the way we subsidize our farmers to promote biodiversity of crops,

that is what is going to solve the issue. Okay, fascinating. Well, Vani, this has been a wonderful conversation. Any final thoughts as we finish? Final thoughts are food industry, we're coming for you. The entire Make America Healthy movement is very exciting to be part of. I was actually a delegate for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Right. actually a delegate for Obama in 2008 and 2012. And I'll have to tell you, this is the time where I have the most hope that our government leaders may be able to get something done. I just can't wait to see what happens.

But I'm here to continue to spread the truth about the food industry and tell people what's really happening behind the scenes. And so in that vein, any plans to be involved in what the U.S. government is going to be doing, assuming Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Marty McCurry and a suite of others get confirmed? My biggest impact I can make as a food activist is from the outside. Well, Bonnie, Harry, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thanks. The FDA, Kellogg's, R.J. Reynolds, and Philip Morris International did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Thank you all for joining Bonnie Hari and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellogg.