The Dr. Hyman Show
America’s Food Supply Is Rigged—Here’s How to Opt Out | Vani Hari & Dr. Shebani Sethi
Mon, 10 Feb 2025
Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are identified as the leading cause of preventable death globally. These foods are chemically altered, stripped of their natural structures, and filled with additives, sugars, unhealthy fats, and preservatives, resulting in products that offer little to no nutritional benefit while contributing significantly to chronic disease. In this episode, I talk with Vani Hari and Dr. Shebani Sethi about why ultra-processed foods are not just a health risk—they are a public health crisis. Vani Hari is the food activist behind FoodBabe.com, a NY Times best-selling author of 4 books, founder of the organic products brand Truvani, and was named one of the “Most Influential People on the Internet” by Time magazine. Hari’s viral testimony before the US Senate sparked a massive movement to stop American food companies from poisoning their own citizens with ingredients they don’t use in other countries. Hari founded Food Babe to spread information about what is really in the American food supply. She teaches people how to make the right purchasing decisions at the grocery store, how to live an organic lifestyle, and how to travel healthfully around the world. Vani has gathered hundreds of thousands of petitions to change the food system and influenced how major food giants like Kraft, Subway, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, and Starbucks create their products, steering them towards more healthful policies. Dr. Shebani Sethi is a double board-certified physician in Obesity Medicine and Psychiatry. She is the Founding Director of Stanford University’s Metabolic Psychiatry program and Silicon Valley Metabolic Psychiatry, a new center in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on optimizing brain health by integrating low carb nutrition, comprehensive psychiatric care, and treatment of obesity with associated metabolic disease. Full length episodes can be found here: Why the Last Thing that Should Ever Eat is Ultra Processed Foods How To Be A Food Activist In Your Own Kitchen How Does Ultra-Processed Food Affect Our Mental Health? This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%.
Chapter 1: What is the number one cause of death today?
Coming up on this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show. I'm just going to say it really clearly, unambiguously. Altered processed food is the number one cause of death in the world today, period. This is not my opinion. This is from the Global Burden of Disease Study of 195 countries. The data is very clear. Too much of that crap and not enough real food.
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Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights.
And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well, check out my membership community, Dr. Hyman Plus. And if you're looking for curated, trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, drhyman.com, for my website store and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. What's ultra processed food? What's not?
So let's talk about what exactly are ultra processed foods? What are the characteristics? How do we define them? Well, there's something called Nova classification. I'll get into a minute, but essentially it's deconstructed food. Basically take raw materials from things like corn, wheat, and soy. You deconstruct them chemically in a lab. all structurally alter them.
So they're not actually the same chemical structure. And our body, remember, gets messages from the outside environment and regulates this biology through chemical signals that depend on the structure and shape of the molecule to create a signal in the body that does good or bad, right? This is really important. So these are funky, weird, Franken molecules.
And then they're turned into food-like substances that come in every color, size, and shape of chemically-distributed yuck, okay? Now, they're super energy dense usually. They're high in calories. They have pretty much no nutritional value usually. They're high in sugar. I mean, they may have added vitamins. You get your cereal or Froot Loops with added vitamins.
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Chapter 2: How do ultra-processed foods affect our health?
And Dr. Ioannidis, who's a professor at Stanford, has written about these a lot and has talked about all these professional societies, whether it's the Academy of Nutrition Dietetics, American Diabetic Association, American Heart Association, said they should not be making recommendations about what to eat.
For example, the American Heart Association says tricks are for kids and Lucky Charms are heart-healthy foods. Why? Because they're low in fat, despite that they're full of additives, chemicals, and tons of sugar.
Oh, you hit on a sore subject for me, cereal.
Well, I'm a cereal killer. I hope you know that. I like with a C-E-A-R, you know.
Yeah, definitely. One of the most unethical companies out there right now is Kellogg's. It's a company that back in 2015, they said that they would remove artificial food dyes for children in all their cereals. And they said they'd do it by 2018. And I wondered at the time why it was going to take them three years to do it because they were already selling
Fruit Loops and Apple Jacks and all of their famous cereals overseas without artificial food dyes. And it wasn't like they had to reinvent the formula or come up with a new recipe or anything like that or invent a new way to make something blue or red. they're already doing this to avoid a warning label that Europe requires.
It says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children when a product has an artificial food dye. So they're avoiding that warning label. So they know this affects children's health. So, completely unethical. They already know how to make the products better and safer, and they're not doing it for their own citizens.
So, not only did they not do it by 2018, it's now 2020, and they've invented four new cereals with artificial food dyes, a whole line of waffles with artificial food dyes, directly targeting children, directly targeting toddlers. You know, I have a toddler at home. You know, I have a three-year-old, and she loves that song, Baby Shark.
And, of course, they come out with a Baby Shark cereal full of artificial food dyes. I actually started a petition. If anyone's watching this, you can go sign it. It's foodbabe.com slash baby shark to finally get Kellogg's to sign. to uphold their commitment to remove artificial food dyes and to stop making these new products that are harming our children.
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Chapter 3: What are the characteristics of ultra-processed foods?
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And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. And this podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.
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