Vani Hari is an author, activist, and founder of Food Babe. Something is profoundly wrong with America’s food industry. From the scientists shaping America's understanding to the regulatory bodies meant to protect us, there are deep-seated problems in the system. The fight to restore America’s health has begun, but corruption and troubling ingredients in our food supply are just the tip of the iceberg. Expect to learn why Vani Hari took her fight straight to the front steps of Kellogg's headquarters, why so many ingredients are approved in the U.S. but banned in Europe, which companies are the biggest culprits in adding unnecessary junk to food, why seed oils are at the centre of the debate over healthy products, the major conflicts of interest among food scientists and studies and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to 80% off everything sitewide at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What happened at Kellogg's headquarters?
Kellogg's. So two weeks ago on October 15th, I went to Kellogg's headquarters with 400,000 signatures, took them to Kellogg's front door. to ask them to remove artificial food dyes and BHT from their cereals that they produce here in the United States. But don't do this for countries like Canada, all of the countries in Europe, Australia, India.
So basically using one set of ingredients here in the United States that are more toxic and harmful towards little children because artificial food dyes are linked to hyperactivity. They require a warning label, a cigarette type warning label in Europe when a product has artificial food dyes that says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children.
Chapter 2: Why are artificial food dyes harmful?
They've seen that when they study these different artificial food dyes, they contain carcinogens, so they're linked to cancer. They cause autoimmune disorders, eczema, asthma, and also the chemical BHT, which is an endocrine-disrupting chemical that you find in the lining of cereal bags as a preservative. They use that here in the United States, but they don't use that in other countries.
So I have been demanding that Kellogg's sell us the same safer versions of their cereals that they serve in other countries. And I've been doing this for a really long time. I've been doing it for over a decade. In 2015, Kellogg's said that they were going to make these changes. They got worldwide press about making these changes.
They got a lot of praise publicly and through the media when they made this announcement, but then they never did it. They said they would do it by 2018, and instead they created new cereals to hook modern children of today, like Baby Shark and Peeps and Little Mermaid and Elf on the Shelf and all of these different trick-or-treat type cereals to get people to buy their cereals.
And it's really sad because not only did they lie to us, they continue to sell American children an inferior, less safe version of their cereals.
Is it true that they make those cereals in the same factories as the cereals that don't have those same dyes in? Is there any truth to that?
At one point, I believe that Canadian cereal was being produced here in the United States and they were shipping it over the border. I think now they have a Canadian manufacturer now, a factory.
But yeah, that was... They had the capacity to do it. So we're going to talk a lot today about some of the more nefarious activities maybe of people's favorite high street food brands and stuff like that. Why? Why do brands do this? Is it cheaper? Is it laziness? Is it something new world order trying to sterilize the population? What's your reasoning behind this?
What's your justification that you think they're doing it for?
There's a few different reasons. The first reason is that a petroleum coal tar-based dye is cheaper to put into a product than carrot juice, watermelon juice, blueberry juice that they're using in other countries to color these cereals, okay, and other products for that matter. It's cheaper. The second thing is it doesn't break down as fast, right? Petroleum lasts forever.
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Chapter 3: What are the conflicts of interest in the food industry?
And sure, maybe they get them to eat more and that's capitalism or whatever. So is it your stance that there is a step change in how they've been able to hack our physiology, our olfactory system, our texture detection, orification, as it's known. They've been able to get in and play now sort of outside the bounds of what is reasonable for food companies to do.
Because assuming, I'm going to guess that you're not going to say all foods need to taste like gravel and it should make the experience as unenjoyable as possible for everybody involved.
Listen, real food does not taste like gravel, right? I mean, I eat a real food diet. I love everything that I have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I think it tastes amazing. But I stay the same way. My health is awesome because I'm eating real food with real nutrition. And my body isn't being subjected to these food industry tricks anymore.
that have happened at a level that I can't even comprehend. I mean, our entire food system has been weaponized against the human body to the point now our rates of chronic disease are astronomical. I mean, like literally we were gonna have a situation where we are going to break down as a human society unless we take a look at this and see what's been done and people know the truth.
How much do you lay at the feet of ultra-processed, calorie-dense, hyper-palatable foods that are easy for people to find, consume, and eat too much of? And how much do you lay at the feet of the specific ingredients and endocrine-disrupting effects and so on and so forth? It seems to me...
Most of the arguments come from either a overconsumption side leading to higher BMIs downstream from that, lots of health problems, but then there's this sort of other area which is maybe to do with what's the constituent parts of these foods and so on and so forth. How do you come to think about these two areas?
I mean, both of them are synergistic. Both of them are problematic. And you've got, on one hand, the overconsumption of food that is not nutritious. It's actually not doing anything for your mitochondria in your body. It's leading to metabolic syndrome. And that leads to so many different chronic diseases. What's metabolic syndrome?
Sorry.
Metabolic syndrome is a condition that happens in your body basically turns on factors for diabetes and cancer and heart disease. It basically is when the organs in your body stop functioning, your liver, your pancreas, other parts of your digestive system actually stop functioning so that you become more insulin sensitive. You become more prone to cancer.
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Chapter 4: How do processed foods affect our health?
is something that is actually produced from the textile industry. This is not even regulated like a food. It's a textile. So it has way worse pesticides and chemicals allowed for use on cotton. But they found out that they can use this byproduct in our food system. And it's actually one of the what was the main ingredient in Crisco and in trans fats for so long until now.
I think a lot of manufacturers have started to remove cottonseed, although you see it all the time. It's everywhere. And... This is something that is pervasive in our food supply. And so when I'm looking for a product to buy on the shelf, I look for things made with olive oil. I look for things made with coconut oil. I look for things made with avocado oil. And that's about it.
And I use grass-fed butter and ghee at home to cook with. And I eliminate all seed oils. So that's like the first thing that you'd want to do. The second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. Not only is that also made from genetically engineered corn, and have all those chemicals associated with the crops. But the way it's produced also disrupts your, it primes you for metabolic syndrome.
It primes your body for insulin resistance. And so this is something you want to take out of your diet. And this is, you'll find everywhere. It's in Coca-Cola. It's in soda. It's in the majority of things that you find on grocery store shelves, unfortunately. Then you want to look at, sorry, go ahead.
No, no, no, no. I'm enthralled. Keep going.
And then you want to look at all of the different artificial ingredients that are allowed in food. I'll give you a great example. Red number three was banned in cosmetics because it caused cancer.
But when they were ready to ban it in food, the alcohol industry lobbied the FDA and said, no, you need to allow it still in food because it makes our maraschino cherries that we have in all of our popular alcoholic drinks red. And so we need to keep those maraschino cherries with that red number three dye. So you need to still allow it in food. So you can't use it in lipstick.
But it's still allowed in food. And that shows you what a wild, wild west kind of situation we have with our government agencies and how they're completely co-opted by industry. And one of the things that I think needs to happen immediately at the FDA is remove all industry funding from the FDA. And it should be a government funded organization.
It should not have any type of industry funding coming into it.
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Chapter 5: What are the main harmful ingredients to avoid?
Chapter 6: How can consumers make better food choices?
Oh, it's fantastic. Are you kidding me? And they've engineered it that way. The second ingredient in a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich is monosodium glutamate. Monosodium glutamate, MSG, is added to Chick-fil-A so that you remember the flavor, your mouth starts watering, you want to have that sandwich, you love it, right?
And MSG is one of those additives that when they're studying obesity-related diseases, they give to rats to make them fat. So that they eat more than they should and they crave the flavor and they keep eating and eating and eating. And so for me, when I found out that was the second ingredient at Chick-fil-A, I lost my, you know, I was mad. I was really mad.
And I was so mad that I wrote an article called Chemical Filet or Chick-fil-A because it had close to 100 ingredients. I mean, that's just one of the problematic ingredients in Chick-fil-A, but several others. And it went so viral that the company reached out to me and invited me to their headquarters. And when they invited me to their headquarters, I had to take off from my regular day job.
When I initially was starting my blog, Food Babe, I was doing it just for my own passion. So it wasn't to make money or do anything like that. I was a banker. I was a consultant. That was my day job. And this is what I was passionate about and what I would write about in the evening and on the weekends.
And so when my article went viral and they invited me to headquarters to consult and I had to take off work, it was that moment that I was like, wait a minute, I'm consulting all these big financial institutions. This doesn't really mean much to me. But consulting with Chick-fil-A and changing their ingredients, that's real change. And like, wow, I could really change the food industry.
And that's when after that meeting and the subsequent changes that Chick-fil-A made as a result of that meeting convinced me that I should quit my job to do this full time.
Okay, so who else is on the hit list? I've seen floating around a McDonald's comparison between fries in like the uk and europe and in america uh you've already mentioned subway who else is on the the hit list and what are you worried about that they've got in their foods
So yeah, let's just talk about McDonald's. You've got McDonald's in the UK, three ingredients, and then salt is optional. Very simple. Here in the United States, it's over 14. And you've got the chemical called dimethylpolysiloxane. It's an ingredient that can be preserved with formaldehyde, according to the FDA, although there's no safety data on this chemical.
It's the main ingredient in Silly Putty. And when... When it's combined with TBHQ, which is another crazy chemical that's a preservative that you'll find in Reese's peanut butter cups here in the United States, but not in Japan. This TBHQ ingredient turns on your immune response. So you become more allergenic to your surroundings and in your environment.
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