Let's Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari - How to Find Toxic Ingredients In Our Food with Vani Hari

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

I sit down with activist and author Vani Hari who has single-handedly changed the food industry. How she got huge companies like Chick-fil-A and Kraft to remove toxic ingredients, taking on the beer industry, getting death threats, the difference between the US food industry and other countries, what her food philosophy is, and why she doesn't believe in moderation. Plus, how she recommends starting on this health journey.A word from our sponsors:Ritual - Support a balanced gut microbiome with Ritual's Synbiotic+. Get 25% off your first month at Ritual.com/BEHONEST. Happy Squatting.Smartwater - Life's full of choices. Smartwater is a simple one. Visit drinksmartwater.com to learn more. LMNT - Get a free Sample Pack with any drink mix at DrinkLMNT.com/HONEST. And if you're an LMNT INSIDER, you have first access to LMNT Sparkling - a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. Cotton - Discover the Fabric of Now at TheFabricOfOurLives.comEharmony - Get who gets you, on eharmony. Sign up today.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This is Let's Be Honest with Kristen Cavallari, a podcast all about getting real and open on everything from sex, relationships, reality TV, wellness, family, and so much more. And just a fair warning, there will probably be some oversharing. Welcome in to Let's Be Honest. I'm your host, Kristen Cavallari. And today I have activist and author Vani Hari with me, who I am so excited about. She has single-handedly changed dozens of multi-billion dollar food corporations. She criticizes and goes after the corrupt food industry as a champion for health, which I absolutely love. She started a blog in 2011 and had over 54 million views in 2014.

I've also personally been such a fan for so many years. So Fani, welcome to Let's Be Honest. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you so much, Kristen. I've been wanting to sit down with you to talk about food for as long as I can remember. like when I first realized you were like really into good real food and I was like, Oh, she gets it. This is amazing. And so I'm just so excited about this. I know we've been trying to make this happen for so many years. I mean, we've emailed back and forth. We've tried to meet up before, but I think, you know, between both of our schedules, it's been hard, but yeah, I am so excited to finally sit down and make this happen. So I'm, I want to start with your journey and how you started to figure out how the food industry was so corrupt and what made you want to do this because this is such a challenging uphill battle.

So, I mean, we all bow down to you, but it is not easy. Yeah. You know, it, it really stems from how I used to feel as a child. You know, I grew up with two immigrant Indian parents who, when they came to America, they wanted to adopt the American lifestyle. And so they're like, you know, we're going to eat like Americans. And so me and my brother were allowed to eat whatever fast food we wanted several times a week. And I mean, I had all my birthdays, like Burger King and Wendy's and Pizza Hut. And my mom, who was Indian, didn't really know how to cook American food. So she relied heavily on the processed foods that you would find at the grocery store. So our Thanksgiving

meal was stovetop stuffing and the Pepperidge Farm stuffing that you would buy in the big plastic bags and the cranberry sauce out of a can and anything that she could use to kind of help her put together the American meal, she did with the help of the processed food industry. And as a result, I had every health problem imaginable as a child. I mean, eczema, asthma, allergies was on so many different prescription drugs. By my early 20s, I was on nine prescription drugs. And it was that point where I kind of hit rock bottom. And I'd gotten a job working for a big consulting firm. And they put us on this fancy expense account. And they were flying us all over the United States working for these C-level executives at these big banks. And it was very, you know, very fun and exciting and challenging. And so they expected you to eat through breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And again, I found myself eating a lot of processed foods because they were just bringing in whatever the restaurants were making, you know, for breakfast, it was big blueberry muffins and bagels. And then for lunch, it was, you know, these big spreads of barbecue. And then at dinner, it would be like Italian with like tiramisu and all the, you know, chicken Parmesan and all the pasta. And it was insane. And I remember just gaining a lot of weight, feeling really awful about myself, got really super depressed. And then one night after eating a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, I'm not saying it was because of this, but after eating a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, I'm not saying it was because of this, but after eating a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich, which used to be my favorite thing

in the world and my favorite fast food, because I thought it was the healthy fast food. I know it. Yep. And it actually, you know, at the time had close to a hundred ingredients in it. One of the first ingredients was MSG, which of course is the reason why I was so addicted to them. But I landed in the hospital with appendicitis and it was that moment that I changed my life forever. I just decided to take health as my priority because I was, again, in my early twenties,

all my friends, it was, it was Christmas season. All my friends were out having fun, going to these really fun parties, meeting guys, doing all this stuff. And I was in a hospital room recovering from appendicitis and I missed everything that season. And I just was like, felt so terrible about myself. I'm like, where, what am I doing with my life? Right. And so I just started to use this energy that I learned in high school, where I was a number one debater in the state for three years in a row and recruited to college to be in debate. And back then we didn't have Google.

So I had to actually go to the library, check out big law journals and other big books and photocopy them to carry evidence to debate tournaments. And so I learned how to research and I applied those skills to my health. And so I started to check out these giant books on nutrition. And one of the first books I read had this concept in it that the majority of foods in the grocery store shelf were dead. And I go, well, that's how I felt most of my life was dead. And I was like, I want to feel alive. And so I started moving towards, you know, a 50% raw diet, like where I'm eating as many unadulterated fruits and vegetables that

have not been packaged processed in any way that's straight from the earth. Right. And then, and then I started to slowly remove some of the very controversial things from my diet, like candy. I was a candy addict. I mean, I would eat a whole box of runts and dob stoppers and all that stuff. And it was just disgusting. And, but it was really inflammatory too. I mean, you can see when you look at old pictures of myself, I mean, you can see it all over my face. I'm just like so inflamed.

And as soon as I eliminated these chemicals from my diet and started to eat real food, my whole body changed. And everybody around me was like, you know, Hey, what are you doing? You look totally different. We want a little piece of what you're doing. And that's when food bait was started. And again, I was still working in the corporate world, working for this really demanding job, traveling all over the country. Now bringing my own food with me when I travel and figuring out how to order at restaurants and ask them certain questions about what's in a certain food and how they're preparing it and

what cooking oils they're using and all of that. And, and so then I started to share that information on food, babe. And, you know, my mom and my couple of friends and a couple of people at work were reading it. And then eventually I started to share ways that I felt I had been duped by the food industry. And one of those first articles was actually on Chick-fil-A and it went so viral that it was about the hundred ingredients in a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. It went so viral that Chick-fil-A contacted me and invited me to their headquarters to consult on changes. Oh, wow. Yes. And shortly, you know, I found myself at work, like all of a sudden, very excited about changing the food industry and helping

these corporations who are responding to my writings to help them be better. And, you know, several different companies around that time are reaching out like Chipotle, you know, I called out Chipotle before they were non GMO and really kind of a cleaner, fast food. They were using GMO ingredients, they were using a lot of food additives, and they were hiding this under the label as food with integrity. And they wouldn't even tell you what was in their food when you called like you, you would email call, you'd ask for the ingredients, they wouldn't tell you eventually, I got a manager at one of the local Chipotle's in my town to show me the back of the packages and take pictures of them. And that was the way we got the information out to the point where someone started a petition

on my behalf and then Chipotle had to do something about it. Wow, that's incredible. I know it was such a surreal time because it was at the, kind of the start of the power of social media and making your voice word and using it for good. And I had never been on social media before that. So I'd never used it for like a personal reason. I was always using it to like spread ideas. And so it was like this beautiful community started to be formed who I call the food babe army, because they were not only, they not only care about what they eat like us, right. But they were willing to like call companies, sign petitions, hold these companies accountable. And it was just this beautiful thing. And that's one of the

reasons why Chick-fil-A invited me to their headquarters. They saw the powerful army behind the food babe name and everything that I built. And so when I went to that meeting, I took off work to go to that meeting. They actually picked me up in a car wrapped with cow print. It was insane. Pulling out all the stops for you. They really were. And like you go into their office and it's like a museum and they have like the Batmobile there. Like apparently the founder was really into like Batman and just strange things happening in that place. But they were the nicest people, I'll have to tell you. And it was the smartest thing that they did

because I realized the people behind these companies, there are a lot of really nice people. But they're unfortunately driven by profit. Right. And it's so sad because it's one of the reasons why I started Truvani, my brand that I sell protein powder and bars and other things, which I just want to thank you, Kristen, because you were one of our first customers. I remember the product.

I don't know if you found it on your own or if I sent it to you first, but you were like OG user of Truvani. And now we're the number one plant-based protein powder. Oh my God. It's really good too. And I think because your name is so trusted, you know, people obviously love it because they can count on you for a really good, clean product. So, I mean, between those two things, I'm not surprised it's doing so well. I think that's incredible. Thank you. I mean, it's just a huge, like, I just, I can't even believe like we're number one, like that's just so beyond my whole comprehension, but you were there at the start. So I just want to thank you

for that. Cause that's sweet. I just remember this article, I think it was like in glamour or Vogue or something. And they're like, Kristen Cavallari's favorite marine collagen. And I was like, it is. It's so good. Yeah. I love that. Oh, well, that's very cool. Thank you. But anyway, so, so yeah, they're driven by profit and because kind of the, you know, that day at Chick-fil-A was a very meaningful day because they made some meaningful changes after that meeting, even though lately they've gone back on some of those promises, which is really sad. They went antibiotic-free, and now they're going back to antibiotics, and it's really

unfortunate. And I literally have like 10 podcasts just about that topic alone. Yeah. But shortly after that meeting, I ended up quitting my job because I realized that I could make a better impact in changing the food industry. And I was making no money doing food, babe. So when I quit my job, it was cold turkey. I was scared to death. I did not tell my parents for several months because I was worried that they were going to be like, you don't have health insurance. Where's your 401k? Like what's going on, right? What is this education we paid for? Exactly. Yeah. And so I was really nervous about it, but I think when eventually it came clear

that I was no longer working at the bank was when I was flown to like be on Dr. Oz to take on craft and craft was actually serving Americans one version of mac and cheese that had artificial food dyes here in the United States, but took out those artificial food dyes for citizens overseas because Europe requires a warning label that says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children. And they didn't want the warning label on their product. So they figured out how to reformulate their product without the controversial dyes that affect children's brains and their bodies. And so I felt like that unethical hypocrisy had to change.

And so I started a petition. It got over 380,000 signatures. I stormed the Kraft headquarters. It was on Dr. Oz at the time. It was really popular in CNN and all the big TV news stations, Good Morning America, etc. And eventually Kraft made the decision to remove the dyes by the end of that year when because of the campaign, we had shipped so much market share to their competitor Annie's who ended up getting bought that fall by, or that summer, I can't remember exactly the right date, but like for like $800 million or something ridiculous by General Mills. So their competitor bought their, you know, their, their mac and cheese. And so they were very

upset and they had to make a change in order to compete. And it was one of their flagship products. So this is something, this disparity between US products and other products that are being sold overseas by the same US companies has been something that's been an ongoing fight with me. I've taken on Subway. I've taken on Starbucks for this. I've also taken on the beer companies too, for not releasing the ingredients in beer. I mean, it was the one thing in my fridge, like my husband at the time loved Newcastle and this is so long ago because now there's so many amazing craft beer, right? But like Newcastle was like the thing, right?

So I'd open my fridge and I was like, okay, I know all the ingredients in my fridge, except this Newcastle. Like, how can we know more about what's in Windex and Coca-Cola than we do beer? Like, this is crazy, right? And so it's like one of the most popular drinks in the world, right? And so that really bothered me that we didn't have any transparency. And then, of course, everything I'd learned about the food industry and how corrupt it had been and how there's over 10,000 chemicals allowed in our food system. Many of those chemicals have not even been reviewed by the FDA themselves, only the companies that have created them. And knowing all that, I knew that

they were doing stuff to beer to make it more addictive, just like they were doing food. And I found out Newcastle is adding caramel color level four, which is considered an ammonia based caramel color that's linked to cancer and animal studies. They were adding natural flavors, other things. So this is something that I wanted to call out. Found out there was corn syrup in beer, right? How did you end up finding all of that out? Well, there was a book written in the 1970s that I happened to find at the library. Again, these like crazy. Thank God. Yeah. I mean, I don't even think it was like on Amazon or anywhere I could buy on the internet. Like I found this crazy book that was written by a nonprofit organization and it

had the ingredients listed in there. And I'm like, I'm sure they haven't changed the formula. They're probably still using corn syrup. Oh yeah. It was like 1979 or something. It was crazy the year I was born. So yeah. And I was able to confirm that they had corn syrup because I would just call and like, you know, try to prod them and get certain lists of ingredients. And I, I spent a lot of time just like demanding that I know the truth about what I'm consuming and was able to release some of the ingredients that you would find in beer to just let people know what you can find and you should know, you should want to know. And within 24 hours of launching that petition, I was scared out of my mind, by the way, taking on the beer industry,

because it's like some mega dollars there, right? Oh yeah. Billions and billions of dollars. And I remember we, to make the backdrop of the video for the petition, we had to pour out. I mean, I'm not even joking. We should have had a party the night before. We poured out 200 cans of beer that day so we could have a backdrop of all beer. Wow. Yes. I don't think I've ever told anyone. It's like, yeah, that was real beer cans that we poured out that day. The whole photo studio smelled like beer. It was crazy. Oh my gosh. I bet it looked very cool though. It looked really cool, but we're like, why didn't we have a rager last night? Yeah, literally throwing it all down the sink. No, because you don't want to drink it when it has all those chemicals in it. Of course not. I wasn't want to drink it when it has all those chemicals in it. No, of course not. I wasn't going to drink it, right? So within 24 hours of launching that

petition, I pit at the time Miller Coors was a separate company, Miller Coors versus Anheuser Busch. And when I pit them against each other, I felt like there's so much competition between those brands that one brand's got to have the pressure to come out first. And so it was like to my advantage, right? I actually did this also with Kellogg's and General Mills at one point too. And that in General Mills ended up on top, but Anheuser-Busch reached out within 24 hours and was like, it was maybe 48 hours. It was something like that. It was actually like 48 hours, I think. And I remember them sending me this long letter and they invited me to their headquarters. And they're like, will you please come to St. Louis?

We would love to talk to you more. We're going to release the ingredients and all of our beers. We're very excited about this and blah, blah, blah. I was like, this is amazing. This is so cool. And, you know, of course I leaked that letter to the press and they write out all about this. And it was just such a fun time because it was like, wow, we're getting information about what we're actually consuming. This is great. And when I went to St. Louis, I had to go there

for a wedding anyways. So my entire, my whole, like my husband and all of his family were there and they're huge beer drinkers. I'm not a beer drinker, but they are huge beer drinkers. So they all came with me, like six people, you know, like a whole entourage of people going into Anheuser-Busch. And I remember sitting down with them at this boardroom and we're doing these beer tastings. And I'm just like, Oh, you know, like, this is so gross. And I'm sitting there doing these beer tastings. I look at them and they're like, so what do you think, you know, bloody last words kind of thing. And I'm like, listen, we need an organic beer. Okay. And they're like, we've tried this. And they showed me the wall of all the beers they've created in the last

50 years. You know, they have like this, you know, it's almost like a museum of all these pictures and advertisements of all the different things. And they had created one, like maybe like six or seven years ago prior to that. Oh, wow. And I was like, well, that wasn't the right time. Now's the right time. And it was this amazing moment because just from like so many people across the United States, like, yeah, I was just like, yeah, well, I don't think I did that, but like, it was cool to be there to inspire that, you know? Yeah. But I mean, that's the thing, these stories that you have, you are, you are the reason that so many of these things have changed. And I really just think it's so inspiring. It's so incredible because you really did start this movement and it's just, it's incredible what you've done.

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I would be scared going up against any of these big corporations because they all have a lot of money. And I can't imagine that you didn't have moments where you were really scared. Didn't you get death threats at one point? Like, weren't there some dark stuff that actually happened as well? Yes, it was actually the most trying time of my life. I would say beyond like the sicknesses that I had as a child and then, you know, ending up in hospital with surgery a few times. Like other than those times, like I would say this period was the most insane because here's what was happening. Kind of laying down like the environment that was going down. My first book was coming out and it hit the New York Times bestseller list.

Time Magazine named me one of the most influential people on the Internet. Next to like Kim Kardashian and Barack Obama and Jimmy Fallon. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, what? Like this is insane, right? You should have been number one. Oh, well, thank you. But all of these accolades were happening one after the other. And the food industry was like going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Like they were just so mad about this. They were doing whatever they could to throw as much mud my way as possible. And so anytime a reporter would write a positive article for me, that media outlet would immediately get attacked by like online trolls that were actually controlled, I found out by Monsanto's program, which they had a program

that was, and for people listening, if you don't know what Monsanto is now they're bare, but they were the people responsible for creating genetically engineered organisms and the chemical called Roundup that has glyphosate in it. And it's now been implicated into causing cancer in, you know, hundreds of court cases across the United States right now. And this is a very toxic chemical being sprayed on our food. It was one of the things that I was actively campaigning against. And it was one of the things that I took my delegation status for the National Democratic Convention in protest in front of the Secretary of with like labeled GMO signs. And I,

I used my status to like go for this issue and they did not like that, right. How I was able to get all of this press and media attention for these issues and talk about the, the detrimental effects of their chemicals that they were spraying on our food. And at the time there was also this huge proposition 37 that was in California where we were campaigning to get California to label genetically engineered organisms anytime you would buy processed food. And they defeated that actually with the help of big food companies paying for and using a lot of illegal things that happened because definitely, I think it would have passed had they not used kind of the force of Big Food to stop the legislation. But they were very mad at what I was doing. Because, again, had this big army of people educating people. And they did not like that. And so they had this program called Leave No Comment Left Behind.

And so anytime somebody would say something about me on the internet, like anything positive, sharing anything, they would immediately go find it. And then there would be like a hundred comments. She's pseudoscientific. She's a, she's crazy. You know, she doesn't know what she's talking about. And they try to do that in the media too. I mean, I remember there was this article that came out just around that time as well. It was in the New York Times and it was a whole profile piece on me. And, you know, they sent a photographer down, took a picture of me. And it was like this great moment of just attention on me all of a sudden, which I loved being in the media when it came to talking about the food industry.

But I didn't like the sudden attention on me and who I am. Right. Because it was just like, wait a minute. This conversation is not about me and who I am. This conversation is about the food industry that's poisoning us right now, right? And they know it and they're doing it for profit and this has got to stop. And so they wanted to change the conversation. And so they paid quote unquote, independent experts to come against me and, and they make it look like make it look like I'm nobody with no credentials versus all of these scientists and doctors. And so in this article in the New York Times,

I remember sitting down with the reporter and she was saying, what do you think about all these scientists that are against you? I go, they're being paid by the food industry. Look into it. And she didn't look into it. She didn't report on it. And the people she quoted in this article, I couldn't even believe the corruption involved. One of the guy's names was Fergus Fidesdale. Guess who he was? He was on the board of Sensient Technologies, the company that makes caramel color level four. Okay. That's how it always is. I know. I had just taken on Starbucks and the fact that they were using this artificial coloring in their pumpkin spice lattes and they were actually forced to remove it and release their ingredients for the first time in history. For the longest time, you didn't know what you were

drinking when you were drinking a pumpkin spice latte. So at the time I was actually campaigning against Starbucks to remove caramel color level four from their pumpkin spice lattes. And Starbucks was also a company that wouldn't tell you what was in their drinks, which was insane because their competitors like Dunkin' Donuts and others would post their ingredients online. But when you went to this fancy, higher end coffee chain, Starbucks, you didn't know what you were drinking. And I really wanted to showcase the fact that the lack of transparency was a problem and the fact that they were using this caramel color level four. So of course, this guy's going to be against me

because he's getting paid $150,000 to be on the board of this company, right? And so it would have been nice for the New York Times reporter to tell the public, hey, these people that are against Bonnie and the information that she's sharing, they're shills. But of course, they're not going to do that. And thankfully, the science as well as people's intuition about the food companies have gotten more in line with the truth. And now I'm not under that kind of pressure anymore. But at the time, it was so intense that I actually thought about quitting altogether. I'm sure. I don't know how you would.

How did you keep going? I mean, what did you say to yourself? Because I think most people would have given up. Yeah, it was. I remember it was a really dark time. You think it would have been such an exciting time with all the accolades and the attention and the views and all of that stuff. But from just a standpoint of understanding how you can deal with so much criticism, and you've dealt with this too,

Kristen, just being in the public eye, how intense it can be. And I wasn't a celebrity. I wasn't doing this so that I could become famous. I was doing this to change the food industry. And as a result, I, I kind of became that way and I wasn't ready for that. And I remember trying to look up books on Amazon. After you become famous, how do you handle all the attention? What do you do? Like literally fame for dummies. I mean, I'm serious. I was like that. That's That's kind of like my go-to, like when I don't know something, I just go research, right? Like what do you do in this circumstance? Right. And so I started to reach out to people that could help me. And one of the first people that I reached out to was Gabrielle Bernstein. And she really just, I remember she did like a prayer with me, like on

the phone that day. And she just like sat down with me and she reminded me, and this was so powerful that this work was bigger than me, that like this had nothing to do with me and it had everything to do with so many other people. And if I remembered that key point that I could, I could handle the brunt of what was coming at me. Yeah. Wow. And, and at that moment, you know, along with a lot of other things like turning off Google alerts, you know, like I turned it off that day and it's been over 10 years now. I have no idea what people are saying about me anymore. Isn't that the best? I don't read my comments and it is the most freeing thing you can do.

It doesn't matter what people are saying. It doesn't matter. No, like I didn't want the praise to affect my work, but I also didn't want the criticism to affect my work. And I wanted to keep following my heart and my intuition and doing what was right. And so I turned off Google alerts, remembered why I was doing this. And then I started to develop, I mean, it took years, but I started to develop this thick skin that is needed in this world to handle this kind of, to be in this kind of

position. Oh, yeah. And now, you know, after having two children, you know, that definitely did soften me as an activist. I would if you will, because, again, I was having death threats and people coming by my house and people going to my talks and heckling me and trying to, you know, shut them down and having, you know, a situation where I've had to have security with me and things like that, which has been insane. And because of COVID and because of having children, I just kind of got out of the public realm in a way and became more in my shell in terms of starting Truvani, for example, trying to change the food industry from within, because I realized that all of the protein powders out there had so many additives in them, things like gums and emulsifiers that now you look at the studies that are just coming out on, on those and how they are linked to cancer and diabetes and obesity. And it's like, what is going on?

Like these gums, yeah, they made me feel bloated, but I had no idea that there were these major health implications as a result of these unnecessary additives. And then, you know, getting into doing that really allowed me to take kind of a backseat to my activism in a way. But then as soon as my son started to get a little bit older and he's three now, I just, I'm finding the fight back in me. It's just, I'm ready to go. And it is for them, right? It's for them. And one of the biggest campaigns we have going on right now, and I have this amazing coalition that has been created, is Kellogg's. Kellogg's is also serving US citizens one set of ingredients here in the United States and taking out those chemicals

for citizens overseas, like Froot Loops here in the United States has artificial food dyes, but right across the border in Canada, they take them out and they basically taste the same. And so it's so crazy that they won't remove these dyes. And the worst part about this situation is that they're a bunch of liars. In 2015, they vowed to remove the dyes because there was so much activity around companies doing this and they felt like they needed to do this to compete. And then they said they would do it by 2018. And instead, they actually started to create new cereals with artificial food dyes that were geared towards infants and toddlers like Baby Sharp and Peeps to like celebrate Easter. And, you know, in Minecraft and like all of these things to get like the kids of today hooked to it.

Because we don't, you know, you know, the kids of today don't know Toucan Sam, you know. So they're trying to find other, you know, more relatable cartoons to get them hooked. And they could have created these serials without artificial dyes easily, but instead they decided to use them. And I felt like this hypocrisy, this unethical behavior had to stop. So I started a petition. Now it's over 94,000 signatures. If anyone's listening, please go sign it. I want to get to a hundred thousand. I want to go deliver them to Battle Creek, Michigan, where WK Kellogg's headquarters is. It's the URL is foodbabe.com slash baby shark. Really easy to remember. And hopefully you can put it in your show notes maybe, but it would, it would be so great to get as many signatures on

that as possible to add to that, we've had another layer of pressure being added. We've got one of the most popular lawyers in the country, who's the lawyer for Elon Musk and Alec Baldwin and others, Alec Spiro, heading up a legal demand letter that has been written by Jason Karp, who started Hugh Kitchen and Hugh Chocolate, who I know you know. And he is sending a legal demand letter to them. And he's going to reserve all his rights from a legal perspective. And I hear of other law companies and other people also putting together the case against Kellogg's.

And we've got an army of amazing spokespeople and people who have been in the food industry and the lobbying industry, like Callie Means, who started TrueMed and has come out with a new book called Good Energy, talking about this in the media all the time. And it's like this amazing group of people. And then we've got Jesse Itzler, who I don't know if anyone knows him, but he's an incredible advocate for real food. And he's the husband of Sarah Blakely, who started Spanx. And he also is an entrepreneur and runs all of these amazing competitions and

running events and athletic events. And he demanded like that he speak to the CEO of Kellogg's and he's like challenged them so many times offered to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars to just sit down with them and talk. And, you know, we've got all of these people, you know, from every angle going at catalogs right now. And I feel like we're on the brink this last quarter, they went down 1.9% in revenue. So yes, since, since December. So I know we're hitting the bottom line with this information and people are boycotting them, which is just fabulous. But this is something that is despicable. It needs to end. And this disparity, again, people shouldn't really be eating cereal. Like, let's just be

honest, right? There's so much better food to eat in the morning. But for the people who don't know, the people who don't know this information, the people who are the kids that just won't gravitate towards that food because it's available at schools or at a hotel buffet or, you know, anywhere, it becomes an issue. Exactly. Yeah, no, that infuriates me. Since you hit play on this podcast, thousands of photos have been posted on social media, capturing the moment, but not always living in them. A few hundred more now. Cotton is asking us to help my listeners take a pause, to tell stories instead of just watching them, and to make moments better by wearing a versatile, comfortable, and long-lasting fabric. A fabric you may be wearing or even laying on right now. Cotton is my go-to. There is nothing better than wearing cotton when you're lounging around the house. My favorite is a nice flowy cotton dress in the morning,

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I don't know if you guys have heard this before, but they really say that your gut is your second brain, which makes sense to me because I feel like when you do get your gut in check, everything else just sort of falls into place. I know I have more energy. My mental clarity is really on point. I just feel better. I'm no longer bloated. I've really actually taken the last year or so and gotten my gut in check. And I've noticed a huge different all skin stuffers related to gut. So it is really important that we focus on our gut and take care of it the same way we would any other part of our body. So that's why I absolutely love the Ritual Symbiotic Plus. I really have noticed a difference taking it. I also love that the products contain high quality, clean ingredients and that all of Ritual's products are vegan, GMO free, and they're tested for heavy metals and common

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Oh, that's a good question. I know so many things. How's my brother? Yeah. Well, you know, he's seven years older and he doesn't like listening to his little sister as most older siblings don't. And for the longest time, he just ignored me and made fun of the fact of how I ate and why I ate this way.

And eventually he started to adopt a lot of my principles and started eating a lot, consuming a lot of Truv Bonnie too. And, and he's just turned around his health. He looks so different than he did 10 years ago. And that is just, I would say my biggest accomplishment because I tell you families really hard to change. Like my dad, for example, he is so metabolically sick. He has so many issues. And if he had just listened to me like a little bit, he could have probably reversed a lot of the situations that he's in. And he wouldn't because he's just stubborn like dad, right?

Set in their ways. Very set in his ways. And so just having my brother be able to follow through on some of the things that I talk about and seeing the results is just been, it just is my favorite thing. And he probably looks and feels the best he ever has too. I would imagine. Yeah. I love that. So what is your food philosophy? How do you describe that? So I hate the word moderation. I really do. I hate that word because I don't think there's any reason to like have poison in moderation. Like there's no reason for me to go buy

conventional ultra processed food and have it in my house. Like there's just no reason to eat that. There's plenty of alternatives today that taste really great that you can have instead. And so like those swaps, like if you go to my Instagram page, I'm always sharing swaps because instead of goldfish, now you can have simple meals, pop them or whatever, right? Like you can have a different alternative that has real ingredients in it. Not all the additives that are there to addict you to that food. You can actually stop after one serving, not eat the whole box. And so I really think that in terms of my food philosophy is to eat as real as possible. So as many unprocessed foods as you possibly can fit in your body during the

day. And then if you want a little bit of fun to eat foods that come out of a package, great. Your diet should allow that if you're eating a lot of plants, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, meats, cheeses, and then you can have a little bit of the other stuff. Okay. Yeah. See, that's you and I are so similar. And I just try to choose organic packaged goods. Yep.

Okay. And then so for someone who is just starting on this journey, it's obviously so overwhelming. I mean, you and I both remember when we first started learning all of this information, it's just, it's a lot. So how would you recommend someone starts on this journey? Is it like, okay, pick three additives and just focus on those until they're second nature to you, like stay away from colors or like, what do you recommend for people? Yeah. So one of the things that I really like people to do is do this thing called the three question detox. And it's, it's the end of my book feeding you lies. And if you really want

your head to be blown open with all of the crazy stuff that's happening behind the scenes in the food industry, that's the book you want to read, Feeding You Lies. But at the end, I share the simple three question detox. And it's number one, you ask yourself every single time you sit down to eat, you ask yourself these three questions. Number one, what are the ingredients? You don't know the ingredients, you can't eat it. Okay. And if you can't find out the ingredients, you shouldn't eat it. And if you do find out the ingredients, you should need it. And if you do find out the ingredients, and you wonder like, what the heck that is, you have to go look it up. So like, if you're going and you're eating a piece of bread, and you find this label in it that says monodiglycerides, and you're like, what the heck is this, you need to go look it up and see what that chemical is. And you'll find out and you can find a lot of these additives actually on foodbabe.com. But

you can look up this additive and find out this is an ingredient that the food industry created after trans fats, basically to continue to, to preserve oils in processed food and to keep it from breaking down on the shelf. And it's, it's a really harmful emulsifier actually. And so this is not something you want to be eating in your bread. When you're eating bread, you want like four or five basic ingredients, right? And so you'll start to recognize that, wait a minute, what are the ingredients that I'm eating really on a daily basis? Is it art? Is it a slew of manmade laboratory chemicals that have been invented in the last 50 years that are there just to improve the bottom line of the food industry and not improve my health? Like, do I want to be part of that crazy experiment that humans are

going through right now? Or do I want to eat real food? And so you start to recognize that when you just ask yourself that one simple question, then the next question is, are these ingredients nutritious? And when you think about monodiglycerides, the example I just gave, of course, those ingredients aren't nutritious, right? But if your bread just was like wheat and salt and yeast, yeah, that's healthy, right? There's some component to that. So you can, you don't have to be a nutritionist to make that judgment, right? You can use your intuition and your best common sense to do that. And the funny thing is, is that the people out there, the scientists and other and the chemists out there that are creating these chemicals, they want you to believe that you

need that science, you need a doctor, you need an expert to tell you how to eat. But actually, you don't, you can use your own common sense. And actually, the only people that have made this confusing are the food scientists themselves. Yeah. And then the third question that you ask yourself is where do these ingredients come from? So in the case of monodiaglycerides, it's coming are the food scientists themselves. Yeah. And then the third question that you ask yourself is where do these ingredients come from? So in the case of monodiaglycerides, it's coming from a chemical factory. Is that something you want to put in your body? You know, and you can ask this question about meat, like, is this coming from a conventional farm where they're crowding their animals, giving them antibiotics and growth hormone and other drugs to keep them confined in

this really disgusting environment? Or are you eating grass fed meat that's, you know, been raised on the on the pasture? So these are the questions you kind of have to ask about your meal every single day. And if you just did that exercise for a week, you would learn so much about what you're bringing into your house, what groceries you're buying, what you're eating to the point where you might just automatically start to make more changes because an ingredient, an apple is an apple, right? And that's way different than something like out of a package that has, you know, 15 other ingredients. Exactly. Okay. That's really great advice. And then also you travel a lot. I travel a lot. What are tips that you can give people for when

they're traveling to stay on track? Okay. So this is like, this is, this is my jam right here because I take my kids everywhere I go. We are traveling at least I'd say three or four months out of the year. We're going somewhere. Right. And over the summer, we, we leave for most of the summer and I always, always bring airport food with me no matter what. And again, if you're living in a certain, you know, microcosm where, you know, you have like real food daily in the LA airport, you get something right. It's, it's different than like, you know, out of the Charlotte airport. I mean, I was in the Miami airport just recently, and I couldn't find one snack, like one organic snack. I'm like, come on, like nothing packaged, like nothing. And I was like, what's going on here? Like where, where is the organic food here?

So airports are just like food deserts to me. And so I always bring my own food for the kids, my own food for me. And what I've been doing is just easy stuff. Costco makes these little individual packets of hummus that are organic. They use some olive oil in them and they might use like, like organic canola oil in there too. I'm not sure, but it's not like completely perfect, but it's really good from just individual packs of organic, right? So those are great to just throw in your bag, put some cut up some raw veggies. That's a lunch, right? That's a that's not even a snack. That's a lunch, right? That little pack of hummus is like 200 calories. So it's good. And then you add some other additional things like nuts and seeds or whatever. And that's like a

really easy thing to bring on an airplane. I love getting sourdough bread. So I order my sourdough bread actually from organic bread of heaven. I don't know this company. Okay. Oh, I'm so excited for this. Okay. So this company and I have no affiliation, although they've tried to like partner with me, but I don't, I just love them. I don't care. I don't need any money from them at all. I think they're amazing. So they have a bakery it's in the Midwest somewhere and they bake everything from organic ingredients, all organic. They make their fresh sourdough and they have sourdough tortillas and they'll come fresh to you and you can freeze everything. So I used to always make my own tortillas,

but now that I have two children and I'm running two businesses, it's crazy. So I order organic bread of heaven and I just have my freezer stocked. And when it's taco night, I pull those out and they're so easy to make. And so I get my bread from them too. And so a lot of times I love just like a really simple almond butter banana sandwich on sourdough. The kids love it. It's easy to travel with. I also love traveling with vegetables like for the kids too. And a lot of times they like to cook vegetables and I'll throw it in a little thermos for them. And they love that. I also have this thing called a warmable. It's, I think it's warmables.com. You can find it. They have it on Amazon too, but it's like these two little packs. They're cherry pits and

you can stick them in them. That's the only thing I use my microwave for, by the way, I thought about taking out my microwave because I never use it, but I have to use it for these little cherry pits. I don't have a microwave in my house. Okay. So I don't know how you'd warm this up. I have to figure that out, but like, I think you can just throw them in the oven actually. But so anyways, so I throw them in there for a minute and, and then I put them in this warmable pack and I can put like slices of like homemade pizza in there. I can put like ideas and all kinds of things for the kids. So that's nice for school lunches too. Yes. So I do that for school lunches and because I make a school lunch all the time, I've gotten really good about packing things for the kids for the airplane and how to make it

compact. And I love this brand called Lunchables. They have all different, is it called lunch? No. No, those are like the crap that I was eating growing up. It's the thing that needs to be. Those are next. Yeah. Those are next. No, no. Lunchbots. Sorry. Lunchbbox. It's a stainless steel container and they have different sizes. I love that. And so I travel with those and they're nice and compact. I love that. And then in terms of travel, some of the snacks that I'm a huge fan of, and these are like non-sweet snacks. Yes, I love the dried fruit and like all of that, but I've found a couple of companies that are amazing with just like organic olive oil and sea salt and olives and their little prepackaged olives.

They're called Gaia and they're delicious. You can get them on Amazon by the box full and they make green and black Kalamata olives. I love Epic for their salmon bites. Have you had those? Yeah, those are really good. And my daughter loves them too. Yeah. So it's wild salmon, a little maple syrup and salt. Like it's a simple ingredient and giving them a little bit of protein. It's not all just, you know, sugary carbs. And my kids love those things on the go. Yeah, those are great. Your bars too. I mean, the Truvani bars. I love throwing bars in my bag. It's just easy. I'm the nut job that always has a salad with me. Every flight that I take,

I make a salad or I'll pick one up from a place, Urban Market actually out by me, which they, I saw all of your stuff there, but I'll pick up a salad from them. And I always have one with me every single time I travel. I have to. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So we have six new flavors coming out very soon of the Truvani bar, which is really exciting. But I also love traveling with our little travel packs of protein too. When you just need like a quick on the go, like maybe you're getting a salad real quick and you're wary about the protein source. Well, you can just have some Truvani protein with that. Just mix it with water and go. Perfect. Yeah. Those are great tips. I think, I think it's just being prepared, you know, just thinking ahead so that you don't find

yourself in a pinch and then you're grabbing, you know, whatever fast food you can find. It literally is just that simple. You just have to prepare in advance. So this I'm going to Charleston in the morning and this is like my, my travel checklist. So I print this out every time it has everybody's stuff. But then down here, I'm like writing what's lunch in the car and what I put in my cooler. And so that way, I don't forget in the morning, it's super simple, it's ready to go. And like, you know, like mom brain, you have to remember a million different things. And if I don't have it written down, it does get forgotten. So it's like, this is how I stay organized. But I also make diet and health a priority. And if I don't have it written down, it does get forgotten. So it's like, this is how I stay organized, but I also make diet and health a priority. And so I make sure that my food is taken care of.

Yep. I'm the same as you. I have to write everything down. It's just like clear space in my mind then for something else to come in. Cause yeah, we're balancing a lot of things. Well, this has been amazing. You are just the best. I really appreciate you being here and then tell everybody again where they can find you. Yeah. You can just come over to food,

babe.com. All the links are there, you know, for social media, come on over and sign the petition slash baby shark. And yeah, everything's there. And you can also go to true Vonnie.com. Now true Vonnie is sold whole foods, sprouts, natural grocers, fresh time. It's at all the, you know, we're launching, um, I'm just going to say it. We're launching Walmart soon. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, it's really exciting. So we're really expanding. We're trying to get it everywhere people are and it's just, it's going to be a wild ride. That is awesome. Congrats. I'm so happy for you. Well, thank you so much. It's so good to see you. Thank you, Kristen. This is awesome.