Food Babe Vani Hari explains her support for RFK Jr. during his Senate confirmation hearings and how her personal story led her to fight to remove harmful chemicals from children’s food. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
Make America Healthy Again champion RFK Jr. was grilled on Capitol Hill this week as part of his confirmation process to become Health and Human Services Secretary. Despite fierce opposition from some senators, parents and health advocates on both sides of the aisle have lined up to support him.
In this episode, we speak with Vani Hari, longtime food activist and New York Times bestselling author, who was in the room supporting Kennedy during his Senate hearings. She'll explain why she believes parents are finally winning the battle to get chemicals out of kids' food. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley.
It's Sunday, February 2nd, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the war over chemical-laced packaged food is Vani Hari, best-selling author, activist, and creator of the Food Babe blog. Vani, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. So first off, tell me a little bit about your path to food activism.
How did you become interested in nutrition to begin with?
Yeah, my parents came here as immigrants in the 1960s. And when they came to the United States, they were big on adopting the American culture. And so when my dad went back to have an arranged marriage to my mother in India, and they ended up coming here to live the rest of their life, the first thing he introduced her to was a McDonald's hamburger.
And that's how I was raised on an American standard diet. We were one of the only Indian families in Charlotte at that point, Charlotte, North Carolina, where I grew up and where I live now. So everything was kind of handed to us in terms of what we should be eating. And my parents were very trusting of the American food system. And As a result, I was really sick as a child. I had eczema.
I had asthma. I was in and out of doctor's offices for most of my life. I was on so many prescription drugs. When my parents would take me to the doctors, they never asked them, what is she eating? What are you feeding her? They never asked about my diet. They just put me on the next medication. And that is how I grew up.
In my early 20s, I hit rock bottom when I ended up in the hospital having to get my appendix taken out, one of my organs. At the time, they said, your appendix is something that you don't even need. It's an organ that just can come out. They made such a light situation out of it, but I started to question what the doctors were telling me, which is, why do we evolve and
having an appendix first of all, but I wanted to find answers of like what happened to my appendix of why it was about to burst. And so when I started to research really what was happening in my body, I found out that I had extreme inflammation and that was coming from my diet.
And when I started to make changes shortly after that scare and that situation, I remember getting this one big book and in it, there was a concept in it that hit me like a ton of bricks. And it was that the majority of foods on the grocery store shelf are dead. They're not alive.
And I was like, that's how I've felt for most of my life, like a zombie, not wanting to get up in the morning and go to school, not wanting to participate in activities and physical sport activities because I didn't have the energy because of my asthma.
And so when I started to take the concepts in that book and apply them to my life, and I started to eat as much real living food as possible, things like fruits and vegetables and things that I would find at the farmer's market, My whole life changes. I mean, it was dramatic to the point where I lost all of the weight that I had put on as a result of this lifestyle.
But I also started to realize a level of health that I never thought was possible. I got off nine prescription drugs. And the people around me that grew up with me, my relatives, my friends, they were like, whoa. You have made a dramatic transformation in your appearance. What are you doing? We want a piece of what you're doing.
And they begged me actually to start a blog to share this information, to share my recipes and what I was doing and why suddenly I refused to eat candy because it had artificial food dyes. And they wanted to know the green drink that I was drinking and what was in it and how they could make it at home. And this is before, you know, we even had a Whole Foods in Charlotte.
Back then, it was the little mom and pop natural food stores or the farmer's market. And so I had to really teach people people in my community and people around me on these new methodologies of how to take care of your health and actually look at the root cause of what's happening in your body.
And I started to realize that there were so many people out there beyond my friends and my family that didn't know the truth about what was happening in our food supply. And I wanted to investigate it for them. And I wanted to investigate it for my own personal reasons in that there are so many products that I thought were healthy but weren't actually healthy.
Things that I thought were good for me because of the fact that they only had 400 calories or this many fat grams or whatnot, or they had the marketing of, quote unquote, eat fresh at their fast food chain that I was eating fresh, but I found out I wasn't. And so I started to investigate these major fast food chains, major food companies, and the company started reaching out to me.
I think the first one that reached out was a yogurt chain who I was very upset with because they were really promoting the fact that they were using organic milk for their yogurt. And I was like, this is amazing. This is so awesome. I could go to the mall and I could have this treat and it's good for me.
But when you looked at the ingredients, they were coloring their products with artificial food dye. They were putting in preservatives and trans fats. Yes, they were starting with organic milk, but they were adding, you know, 30 more chemicals to the concoction that they put in the machines. And so I wrote about that and how duped I felt.
And it went so viral that the CEO of the company reached out to me, pulled the marketing off their stores and apologized. Wow. And that was my first taste of activism and my first taste of, oh my gosh, my voice can make a difference. And it was probably when Chick-fil-A invited me to their headquarters after I wrote an article called Chemical Filet or Chick-fil-A.
I showed the hundred ingredients that they have in their Chick-fil-A sandwich and how I thought they were healthier than going to McDonald's. But when I compared them to the McDonald's ingredients, they were virtually the same. And this really shocked people.
I mean, it went so viral that the executives at Chick-fil-A invited me to their headquarters to consult on their menu items on how to make their ingredients better. And when I was taking off work to go there to consult with them instead of consulting with banking institutions, I was like, okay, something got to give here. Like this is obviously way more impactful than what I'm doing at the banks.
And so I ended up deciding to quit my job. And when I quit my job, I was not making a dime doing Food Babe. It was literally there as a passion project. So it was something that I had to really figure out. The beautiful thing that happened after I quit my job was I was able to spend 100% of my time researching the food industry. And the first thing that I did was I was an avid traveler.
I love to travel. It's been a passion of mine since I was a little girl. And whenever I would go to Europe or another country, I'd always feel better. I felt I felt better. I liked the food better. It tasted better. And I was like, what's going on here? Like, why is it so different?
And so I started to compare products that we have here in the United States to products that they sell in other countries. But the exact same products. So like a Doritos package here in the United States versus a Doritos package in Europe. And I would compare the ingredients. And I did this large experiment. and I think the title is something like how US companies are exploiting Americans.
And I showed this stark differences between the same product that's being sold here and in other countries and how in other countries they're using better and safer ingredients. And while here they're using man-made chemical additives. And that side-by-side comparison went so viral that it was an opportunity to finally say, you know what, we need to hold the food companies accountable for this.
You know, one of the examples in that investigation was Quaker Oats. Here in the United States, Quaker Oats was a strawberry Quaker oak pack had dyed apple pieces to make it strawberry, dyed with a red 40, an artificial food dye linked to hyperactivity in children and can be contaminated with carcinogens. But in Europe, they're using real strawberries.
Wow.
And, you know, that product, Quaker quickly got onto that and that product doesn't exist anymore, thankfully. But it was... Something that I just couldn't believe the stark differences. And so I decided to take on one of the largest food companies in the world, which was Kraft at the time. And they were serving little children mac and cheese with artificial food dyes, yellow five and yellow six.
While in Europe, they're using paprika and beta carotene. Wow. And, you know, it was a viral petition. It was so exciting. For the first time, we were on national TV. It gained a lot of steam, like 270,000 signatures very quickly. And on April 1st, it wasn't Happy Fool's Day for Kraft that day because I took the petition to their headquarters and I demanded a meeting. And they sat down with me.
They really did. And I sat down and I looked them in the eye and I just said, why? aren't you doing this for American children? You already have the formulation in other countries. Why are we getting the man-made additives that are linked to all of these health issues that we're experiencing? We have crazy chronic rates of disease for our kids, close to half of children on some kind of medication.
What is going on here? And they looked at me and they said, we have to agree to disagree. And they dismissed me. And I said, you know what? I'm not gonna let up. I'm gonna keep leading the charge. I'm gonna keep educating the public. I'm gonna tell people the truth about these chemicals.
And within six or seven months, they had to change because what happened was we were able to change the marketplace. People went from Kraft macaroni and cheese to their competitor, Annie's, who didn't use artificial food dyes. And then General Mills saw an opportunity. We're gonna buy Annie's for $800 million. And so at that point, Kraft's like, shoot, we're going to lose all our market share.
We need to change right now. And they did, which was great. And the funniest part of it all, which just makes me laugh to this day, is whenever they told the press that they were making the change, they're like, it had nothing to do with the petition, right? It had nothing to do with the worldwide press on this issue. So I took that momentum and And I continued it and took on more giants.
So that brings me to my next question. On your website, you currently have a petition going about Kellogg's. What are you pursuing there?
Well, shortly after taking on Subway, I ended up taking on the beer industry. I took on Starbucks. Starbucks removed caramel coloring level four from their drinks and posted their ingredients for the first time in history. They were actually hiding their drink ingredients for many, many years from the public. But
After I took all of those giants on, you know, I sort of receive a lot of attacks and they try to take my character down and they try to do whatever they can to get me to stop. And it was very intense. And at the time I could say I was super kind of naive about what I was doing because I was like,
wait a minute, if I just tell the truth and they do the right thing and these companies change, this is great for everybody, right? But I didn't realize that there's some factory that makes azodicarbonamide and now they got to be shut down and people are losing their jobs and there's money lost by these companies that have to change their formulations and all of that.
And I'm affecting a trillion dollar industry, really, you know? And so... I was like, oh boy, I'm going up against the giants. Like this is really intense. And it was the moment that I started the Kellogg's petition, which is when my daughter saw Baby Shark cereal at the grocery store. She was two at the time.
And I had remembered that Kellogg's said that they were gonna remove artificial food dyes. So I was like, oh my gosh, let me check the ingredients. It's 2019 now. They said they would do it by 2018. It's gotta be done by now. And this is a new product. So of course they've done it, right? They didn't.
They started creating new products and targeting the littlest modern children of today by using the most popular toddler song, Baby Shark. And now my daughter is interested in this product that they still are poisoning us with ingredients they don't use in other countries. In Europe, in Canada, in Australia, in India, Kellogg's doesn't use artificial food dyes. Here in the United States, they do.
And they said they would remove them. So I was like, why isn't anybody in Washington or the press or anybody holding them accountable for this commitment they made? They made Worldwide Press when they made the commitment and got the praise from it, but no one's holding these companies accountable for their actions. Their shareholders aren't doing it. Like, what is happening here?
And so I was like, you know what? I'm starting a petition. And so I was so glad and happy that two of my friends food fighters in this space I got connected with earlier this year, Callie Means and Jason Karp. We started working together again on how to take on big food. And it was, let's finish the job with Kellogg's. So Jason got into the fight.
He wrote a shareholder letter, sent it to Kellogg's and saying, you know, this is unacceptable. You must remove artificial food dyes. And they were gonna have a meeting with us. but they actually reneged on the meeting because we wanted to bring some doctors to the table because they wanted to bring the Consumer Brands Association with them.
Now, the Consumer Brands Association is the biggest big food lobby group in Washington. They're going to do whatever they can to belittle you or to make you look like your pseudoscientist or your fear mongerer. And they will use whatever they can to kind of spin the situation against you.
And so we're like, okay, if you're going to bring the Consumer Brands Association, a huge lobbying group with you, we'll bring our scientists with us that show that these artificial food dyes are causing harm to children. They didn't like that. And so they shut down the meeting. Once they did that, they left us no decision at that point.
And it was like, how can we bring the most attention to this as possible? And when I was invited to be part of the Senate Roundtable with Senator Ron Johnson, I was able to finally discuss how American companies are using better, safer ingredients for other countries and not us.
And I was able to show the examples, not with just Kellogg's, but so many other brands on how we are systematically being poisoned here in the United States because our FDA allows it to happen. They literally just said two weeks ago, that they will not criticize the food industry. If they will not criticize the food industry, how can they hold them accountable?
And in the room was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also giving testimony, and he heard my testimony, and I could tell it really resonated with him. This has been something that's been important to him, and he gets these issues. And it was such a beautiful moment because when he was giving his closing remarks, he said something so profound. He said,
another country was doing this to us, it would be considered an act of war. But these are our own American companies, and it's un-American.
So what is their motivation to continue with this? Is it that they make it hyperpalatable because they think they would just lose a lot of market share if they made the foods less exciting to taste or look at?
I think it's a couple things. So first, I think they're going to eventually change. I know they are. There's no way they're going to be able to be a viable company in the next 100 years with artificial food dyes. There's too much awareness happening. We have leadership at the highest levels bringing this awareness down. Every single mainstream news station is talking about these issues.
It's absolutely incredible, the movement that has been created and the grassroots movement. We literally have unstoppable momentum. And so I know they're going to change. But the two reasons why they wouldn't change, well, that they are maybe putting their heads in the sand is that number one, artificial food dyes are cheaper for them to buy because it's a petroleum-based product.
It doesn't go bad on the shelf. Whereas what they're using in Canada, carrot juice, blueberry juice, watermelon juice, it has a shelf life, right? It can break down faster. It's a real food product. So it's different, right? That's number one.
Number two, they like the advantage of using artificial food dyes because in focus groups, they've found that kids will eat more of their product when it's brighter. So they make more money. And that's the part that's sinister to me in the fact that we have the rising rates of childhood obesity and disease. We have 38% of preteens ages of 12 to 18 having prediabetes.
It used to be zero and now it's 38%. That is unacceptable to me.
Now, you mentioned that there's some groundswell in the media to put these companies on the hot seat. Something interesting, I'm sure you've already observed this, that I've seen just in the past, say, month or two, I keep seeing articles from legacy media that seem to defend processed foods. So just a couple examples.
The Times recently ran a headline, Why Ultra-Processed Foods Aren't Always Bad, about a month before they ran a title. Are seed oils actually bad for you? The subhead there was RFK Jr. and others claim they're harming our health, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Time magazine ran a piece titled, What if ultra-processed foods aren't as bad as you think?
So just to the casual observer, it kind of seems just as this issue has grown recently that some of these big media entities are actively taking the side of big food. So what's going on there? Are they just being contrary to anything they perceive to be a Trump-aligned cause, or do they have a financial stake in the food industry?
They 100% have a financial stake in the food industry. I mean, I'm just thinking about the recent New York Times piece that said that, you know, what if ultra-processed foods aren't that bad? That one specifically was written by someone who works for like, you know, has consulted with Beyond meat, one of the most processed man-made plant-based meats that I think is complete processed garbage.
That isn't something that we should be eating. We should be looking at how do we deploy technology so that we can do more regenerative farming and so that we can get people to eat more real food and animals, not like man-made chemicals in a laboratory to have like fake blood in it.
So when I look at these pieces that are being placed in the media, number one, a lot of times they're being placed by people who are apologists for the food industry, or they're planted by front groups. These front groups are something that I write about in my book, Feeding You Lies, where I talk about the food industry's playbook and how to unravel it.
In there, they use these front groups that are very innocuous and they think, you see their name and you're like, wow, they sound so reputable. Like the American Council for Science and Health or the Genetic Literacy Project.
You see these different names and you're like, oh, they just sound so scientific and they're full of experts and they're gonna tell me the truth about what's really happening and let me feel better about my processed food habit. Well, that's their purpose, is they're basically trying to be apologists for the big food and big chemical industries. And they place this with these news outlets.
And on top of it, from the political standpoint, and this is where I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone, where I'm waiting with bated breath at this very moment of the first Democrat that's going to say, yes, I will confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Secretary of Health and Human Services I'm waiting on bated breath for that. And everyone is staying on party lines.
The same thing happened in media, where nobody would have me on, like CNN, NBC, none of them would have me on their network during the election. But as soon as the election was over, they're calling me. I'm like, this is where we're at, where we're just going to let our American kids suffer. That is something that every American should rise up against and say, enough is enough.
Like, when are we going to say, you know what? We're not going to buy your products anymore, Kellogg's. This is not something we're going to do. And also... We say to the media, this isn't fair to our children. You need to give us real reporting.
And this is why we have to decouple some of the big food advertising towards little children from media so that the Today Show will actually cover this and it's not just Fox and Friends.
So what are some very low-hanging fruit items that are actionable in terms of regulations that could be easily rolled out that would have a high impact? Like what would you say are your top five things that you'd like to see happen?
Well, yeah. I mean, I just said one. First of all, get the marketing towards little children, junk food marketing from little children out of the media. There's over 10,000 food additives approved for use in the United States. Europe only allows four. Simple. Go down to that number. That would make a fundamental impact on the quality of our food.
I say instead of subsidies to big ag for GMOs and factory farms, we should subsidize regenerative farming, which will dramatically reduce the amount of pesticides being used on our food. This will help our farmers grow a much more wide variety of crops, moving away from ultra-processed foods that are made with corn and soybeans and sugar or sugar beets.
we gotta root out the corruption from our health agencies. We've gotta stop the conflicts of interest with big food and pharma and chemical corporations. We have close to 50% of the funding of the FDA coming from industry, and they say they're not gonna criticize the food industry.
So it's like, even if you just required the warning labels that they require in Europe on artificial food dyes, so American parents could know the harms of choosing that product and eating that ingredient,
that will force the food companies to remove artificial food dyes. Right. So do you believe RFK is the guy who can make this happen? Obviously, that's just one of these health departments. We also have Marty McCary coming in with the FDA. Do you think this is the team that can get it done?
They understand this. They can get it done. Just looking at RFK Jr. 's track record, how he won a historic $2.2 billion case against Monsanto and Roundup Wheat Killer, and it showed that it's strongly linked to cancer. I think seeing his determination, he's so incredibly passionate about this subject. And then when it comes to Dr. McCary, he's absolutely incredible. I mean, I've read his books.
He understands how corrupt medicine these institutions have been. And he also understands like looking at root cause analysis from a functional medicine perspective. And so I would much rather have someone in that position that gets these issues fundamentally. And by the way, publicly supported the fact that he's not buying Kellogg's because of this situation as well. I mean, I was floored.
I was like, yes, thank you, doctor. And it's incredible. So he gets it. He understands this.
These are simple changes we could make today that if our governments, leaders, and agencies put the hatred for each other away and just think about American children and think about how many people are on Adderall to help these issues, how fundamentally they can change American children and help improve their lives and their teachers' lives and their parents' lives.
And that's what we really need to be focused on.
All right, well, Vani, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. That was Vani Hari, bestselling author, activist, and the creator of the Food Babe blog. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.