The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
519. If Another Country Did This to Our Citizens, It Would Be War | Vani Hari
Thu, 30 Jan 2025
Jordan Peterson sits down with author and co-founder of Truvani, Vani Hari. They discuss Hari’s personal struggles with food which led her to start the Food Babe blog, the disgraceful business practices of major food companies, how the Tobacco industry took over big food, the unimaginable progress made just recently via the MAHA movement, and where this new surge of hope leads us - should we choose to follow. Vani Hari is a food activist, a NY Times best-selling author of 4 books, co-founder of the organic food brand Truvani, and was named one of the “Most Influential People on the Internet” by Time magazine. Hari started FoodBabe.com 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 influenced how major food giants like Kraft, Subway, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, and Starbucks create their products, steering them towards more healthful policies. This episode was filmed on December 30th, 2024 | Links | For Vani Hari: On X https://x.com/thefoodbabe?lang=enOn Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thefoodbabe/?hl=en Website https://foodbabe.com/ Read Vani Hari’s most recent book - “Food Babe Family: More Than 100 Recipes and Foolproof Strategies to Help Your Kids Fall in Love with Real Food” https://a.co/d/1jw9Aq6
People are fat and diabetic at rates that are criminal.
38%.
38%. I don't think I ever recovered from reading about the fact that marketing people built the food pyramid, right? Not scientists. How the hell did we get there?
There's this revolving door of people who are working for chemical and food corporations and then going to serve in government to kind of uphold their interests.
Tell me what you know about the tobacco company's purchase of the food industry. So I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the issue of nutrition, I would say. And some of that's for personal reasons, and some of it is for intellectual reasons, let's say.
I had reason in my own family to look at nutrition very carefully, because it turned out that my daughter, who had a very serious illness, Michaela, was reactive to a very large range of foods. And that was rather a shock to discover, you might say. And I've been experimenting with diet for quite a long time in a radical way, far more radically than I like. That's the first thing.
And then I would have ever expected to do. And that's had some pretty positive consequences. And I've heard from many thousands of people positive tales about the consequence of their shift in diet. And I've interviewed people like Chris Palmer who's a psychiatrist at Harvard who's been using dietary manipulations to treat intractable psychological disorders.
And I know that people are fat and diabetic at rates that are criminal. And so even though This isn't something I ever hoped I would be interested in, even that's become necessary. Now, I went to Washington a while back at the invitation of Ron Johnson to partake in a hearing there. And I met Vani Hari at that. roundtable at that discussion. And I had a chance to talk to her today.
She's the food babe. And she has a large following and is very interested in the pathologization of the American food system. And for personal reasons, as well as professional reasons, let's say, some of which are akin to the issues that my daughter faced. And so she came in today. And we had a chance to talk about, well, the hearing that we participated in jointly.
And then we talked about her career, how she moved from consultant to food activist and rekindled that more recently at this hearing. And we walked through a discussion of the major problems that beset the American family, let's say, especially children. Children and mothers, I would say, probably are most effective, although men are not far behind for obvious reasons.
We had a chance to walk through all that and to start to puzzle out, well, the nature of the problem. tremendous rise in obesity, tremendous rise in diabetes, catastrophic consequences of the transformation of our food supply. And we talked about that and we talked about what might be done about it.
And especially given the radical transformations that are upcoming in the new Trump administration and its surprising synergy with this Make America Healthy Again movement. So if you don't want to be fat and stupid and diabetic, This is not a bad podcast to listen to. So, Vanny, we met in D.C.
That's right.
Yeah, so why don't you talk about that event a bit and how you got invited and what you thought of it and why you were there. Just tell the story.
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I've been a food activist for many years, for over 10 years. And I... have been wanting to hold American food companies accountable for using ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries for a long time. I think it's disgraceful. I think it's unethical. I think it is hypocritical.
I think it's immoral that an American food company can serve a better, safer version of their product for another country and not their own citizens and how when they find out they can make a product that's safe, they don't do it for all of their customers.
And so I've been working on this issue for a long time through petitions, through campaigns to get food companies to change because government regulators have been asleep at the wheel. They haven't held these food companies accountable. The conflicts of interest are riddled in the government that prevent them from enacting anything that would be helpful to safeguard ourselves from these chemicals.
And so when I was invited to be part of the Senate roundtable with Senator Ron Johnson, at first I said no, actually, because for many years I've been off the scene. I haven't been holding the food companies accountable in that big, bold way because I became a mom. I started a food company to change the food industry from within. I took kind of a backseat to this activist role because
You could say my nurturing phase of my life became more important to safeguard my kids. And when I was an activist and I hit the national level and the national stage, I was attacked. I was attacked by the media. I was attacked by paid for scientists. I was attacked by quote unquote independent experts who were actually getting paid by the food industry.
And to the point where I had to have security when I went to go speak at universities. I had people drive by my house. I had, you know, death threats, rape threats online. So that work going up against a trillion dollar industry kind of took a backseat when I became a mom and then- When did you become a mom? Almost eight years ago now.
How many kids do you have? Two. Two, okay.
Yeah. And so earlier this year, I was called upon to be part of this new kind of campaign to hold big food accountable. And my friend, Jason Karp, who was also at the Senate hearing yesterday, called me and says, Bonnie, this is something I really want to do. Let's get together and figure this out. And then we got together with Callie Means as well. And we started working together again.
And it was like my passion was reignited. And I realized that we really have an opportunity at this point in time that I never thought was possible in my entire career with the emergence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking these issues at the national level.
Yeah, what a strange thing to have happen, eh? It wasn't anything that you'd predict in relationship to Trump.
Nothing, nothing like it.
Came out of the blue. It's very weird.
It really did. And, you know, for so much of my life, I was jaded about politics. I, you know, I was a... a Democrat delegate for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, I put him up on a pedestal. I thought he was gonna be the savior of our world. And when he got into office, I quickly realized that special interests, lobbyists, corporations,
were controlling him and controlling the message and controlling what he could get done. And then the two-party system itself allowed him not to get much done.
And so- Yeah, well, it's not obvious how much power the president actually has, right? Right. Because the system is very complex and there's weird things wrong with it that are that aren't obvious at all until you understand them. You know, like congressmen, this is something that just stunned me when I found it out. Congressmen spend about 28 hours a week fundraising.
They can't do that in their own offices. So they have these ratty offices in the outskirts of DC. They basically act like telemarketers. That's a dismal way of spending your time. So they're spending, and if they don't do that, they're not funded by their parties. And then they spend a bunch of time campaigning because they have to be elected every two years. And then they travel.
It's like they don't have any time to do their job. And it isn't a job I would take, you know. So that's a big problem. And it's only one of a multitude of problems. And, of course, the president's term is limited. sometimes to four years. And four years, you know, it takes two years just to figure out how to do a complicated job. Two to three years.
So there's a lot of things that have gone sideways. Okay, so let's go into this. Your past as a food activist. Okay, so why did you do that? Like, how did that happen?
You could say it happened by accident because I was so... wounded by the truth about the food industry when I was finding it out. As a child, I grew up with two immigrant Indian parents who came to the United States and they were so trusting of the American food supply and the American way of life that my dad introduced my mom to a McDonald's hamburger.
It was the first thing he introduced her to when they had an arranged marriage and came back to the United States and said, if we're gonna live in America, we're gonna eat like Americans. And they lived in a very poverty-struck environment in India where it was hard to get food and hard for people to eat.
And so it suddenly became so easy and it was cheap and it was readily available to the point where, you know, my parents thought it was great that you could go and get fast food very quick. Hey. And they would give a free meal to you if you colored a drawing on Mother's Day and Father's Day. I mean, I was there at McDonald's doing that every holiday so I could get the free meal.
And as a result, I had such terrible health issues, me and my brother. I mean, in and out of doctor's offices on – Prescription drugs nonstop throughout my childhood. Can I ask you what those were? Sure, yeah. Everything from three different medications to control my asthma, Singulair, Advair, Aburol.
So asthma was one of them?
Asthma was one of them. Then to just control the situation when it would flare up, I'd be on prednisone. I'd be on antibiotics three or four times a year. Then there was the eczema medications, the costochorderoid, the cream, then there was shots in my ass. I mean, all of the things that they had to deploy to just make me feel normal, right? And I look back at my childhood,
And I was walking around like a zombie. I mean, I didn't feel motivated to go to school. I didn't feel motivated to read, even though I had these two immigrant Indian parents that took, put a lot of emphasis on my academics because of where they were. You know, my dad's a PhD, my mom's a master. So it was, they put a lot of emphasis on that. So I think that's where I ended up going, where I went.
But I know I could have done so much better in my early career, in my early life as a student, as a young person, if I had not been subjected to that food.
What made you determine or discover that your health problems as a child were food related?
In my early 20s, I hit rock bottom. I was working for a big six consulting firm called Accenture. They put me on the road on an expense account. I was in this situation again where I'm outsourcing my food to the corporation this time instead of to America, right? And it's nonstop. wine and dine dinners, five-course meals. I've never done anything like that before. It was so exciting.
They would bring in droves of food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so that you would bill more hours to the client at these big banks I was working. And I hit rock bottom. I became depressed. I became overweight. And I had appendicitis. And when I went to the doctor the first time, the doctor said, oh, there's nothing wrong with you. You can go back and take some Advil.
And thankfully, my parents said, you know, something doesn't seem right. You need to probably go see your regular doctor in the morning. And when I did, he was like, you have appendicitis. You need to have an emergency appendectomy right now. It's going to burst. And at that point, I went to see the surgeon, had my organ taken out of my body.
And this whole time, the doctors are saying to me, nobody needs their appendix. Don't worry. This is something routine. You'll be fine. You're going to survive. They're trying to ease my parents' worries. And something doesn't seem right, that God would give you an organ that you don't need, first of all. Second of all, I started to question,
first of all, why a young 22-year-old is in the hospital with this type of surgery.
How much weight had you gained?
Probably 30 or 40 pounds.
Okay, so yeah, right, right.
And it was that moment that I decided to take my health Seriously, and the first thing I did was research why you get appendicitis. And I found out the reason you get appendicitis is because your body's inflamed and your digestive system has become inflamed. And actually your appendix is there for a reason. It actually populates your gut with good bacteria.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, it's a reservoir, right? Yeah, and so I started to discover all these things about my body and about the human body that I couldn't stop learning about. And I started to channel this.
What was your educational background?
So I was a—I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
Oh.
But in high school, I was a top-tier debater. I got recruited to college to be in debate. I was number one in state three years in a row.
And— Is that why you got hired as a consultant? Did you do well in university as well? I did. Because it's hard to get hired as a consultant.
It is. It is very hard. But I think my debate skills are probably what allowed me to do that because I interview well. Yeah, yeah. But back then we didn't have Google. We had to go to the library and we had to look at the microfiche and carry these big tubs of evidence around and photocopy evidence to take. And you'd have to learn both sides of the argument, affirmative and negative.
So you learned to see the world in a whole view through these topics and debate. And so one year's topic happened to be healthcare when I was in high school. I never applied anything I learned to it to my own body, but then it suddenly came rushing back. And so I started to check out these big books on nutrition. And one of these early books that I read was called Conscious Eating.
And in there, he talked about how the majority of foods in the grocery store shelves are dead. And I was like, that's how I felt most of my life is dead.
You mean like the whole center of the grocery store?
Yeah, the whole center of the grocery store.
I don't think I ever recovered from reading about the food pyramid.
Yeah.
Really? It was like, really? No way. Not possible that it was... A marketing lie from beginning to end. When you first started talking, I thought, you know, I have qualms about activism as an entity. And there's a lot of, like, nutrition is such a complicated topic. It's like, there's so many ways this can go wrong. Why are we concerned about it? And then I think, people are so overweight.
They're so diabetic. Like, it's really bad. You know, you see on, if you go on X now, you see these videos of people on the beach in the 1960s and the 19, now people smoke too, but regardless of that, like when I was a kid, there was like one kid who was plump in our class and we thought he was fat and like he would be well within the normal range now.
And so something, yeah, I went home to my hometown Fairview last Christmas, and I went to see a hockey game, 17-year-old hockey players, you know. Hockey players are in pretty good shape. Hockey's a hard game. It's very aerobically demanding. And after the game, the guys invited me into the dressing room to talk because they knew me and knew who I was.
And so I went in and I saw three or four of them without shirts on. And I thought, Jesus Christ, you guys, you look like 45-year-old men, you know, like breasts. Guts, it's like no one that I knew looked like that when I was 17, certainly not the bloody hockey players. And I thought, man, if the hockey players look like that, what are the rest of the kids look like?
So something's gone seriously sideways. Okay, so you suffered from all sorts of health complications when you were a kid and then a young adult. So that's very reminiscent of my daughter, by the way, as you know. And you started perusing the scientific literature. You had a little bit of background in that because of your preparation as a debater.
And so you had to teach yourself at least to some degree to think like a scientist, which is to contrast the evidence, to learn to read the journals as well, which is not a simple matter. Most scientists can't read the journals. So yeah, okay, okay. And so, and then you had this bout with appendicitis. And so, okay, let's continue on from there.
So, you know, I continued working on in the corporate world. And I remember having this really terrible boss. And he was so bad that I started not being able to sleep at night. I started to get very fearful of, you know, just going to work. And it was becoming an issue. He was very aggressive. And in the way he acted, in the way he not only managed his employees, but treated me in general.
It was very misogynistic, if you will. And so I started to feel like kind of this this situation where I suddenly just stopped sleeping. So I went to the doctor and I just remember this moment because I sat in her, you know, she was my internist and I sat on the table and I told her, I was like, you know, I just can't sleep. I have a lot of stress at work.
And she just asked me like kind of what's happening. And she goes, oh, okay, this is what you need. You need Ambien, you need Xanax, and you need, starts with a C, it's an antidepressant. It starts with a C, I can't remember the name of it. And I said, wait a minute, like really? Like these, you want me to take these three drugs? And I was so trusting.
of my doctor and so trusting of the medical system that I took those drugs to get through that time period when she should have just been saying, hey, Vonnie, why don't you quit your job? You're 25 years old. Like, why don't you quit your job, right? Why don't you go look for another job? You don't need to take this mistreatment from this dude because you're making a big paycheck.
Like, go find another job, right? But this is kind of where I think the rubber meets the road for me when I was going through that period, because that's really where my... Symbalta? Symbalta. That's it. Thank you. I was like, it starts with a C. Symbalta, yeah. And... It was around that time where I said, I don't need to be on these drugs.
They were, first of all, making me completely numb and crazy, right? I suddenly was laying on the couch all day not doing anything, right? And it was that moment that I just said, you know, these drugs aren't for me. I need to get off these drugs, but I don't know how to do it. I found a integrative psychiatrist that also practices acupuncture, and she helped me get off of it.
And I started learning about natural foods, and I started learning about real food. And I started learning about food in a way that I had never known before in terms of
I started looking at ingredient labels of things that I had been eating most of my life, and I became horrified because I realized that they were man-made chemicals invented for one sole purpose, which was to improve the bottom line of the food industry, not improve my health. And so I was eating this like science experiment. No wonder I didn't feel good, right?
And I'd gained the weight and ended up in the hospital with appendicitis, but also didn't even have any other mechanism to get through a stressful time. The only option I was given from my doctor was here you go is, you know, all of these different, you know, brain altering medications.
And it wasn't until I made the connection that you can actually get through stressful times through meditation, through sleeping well, through, you know, eating well, from getting off of processed foods that actually make it very hard to think clearly.
And as soon as I changed my diet from a processed food diet to a real food diet, things from earth, basic meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, when I did that, everything changed. I lost all the weight. I went off nine prescription drugs.
I started to look completely different to the point where my friends and my family around me couldn't believe the remarkable transformation to the point where one of my aunts joked with one of my cousins, did she have some work done? How long did that take? It took a period of two to three years. Yeah, two to three years. And a lot of trial and error, too.
Yeah.
Of, oh, I thought this was healthy and this isn't. And there were so many time periods where I wouldn't eat a McDonald's hamburger anymore, but I'd go to Subway because it was, quote unquote, eat fresh, right? And then I found out Subway's bread had close to 50 ingredients, an ingredient in there called azodicarbonamide that you find in yoga mats and shoe rubber.
And they don't use it in single- They can be good if you prepare them properly. You know, they don't use it in Singapore and Europe and Australia and everywhere else, but they use it here in the United States. Like, what is this chemical doing in our bread?
Why do they do that? I mean, look, Europe is very overregulated, right? In many, many ways. And America is less so, and it's much more competitive. Right. And so excess regulation can really be a problem. And now I know that has to be differentiated, and I'm not taking issue with the case that you're making.
But I'm also curious, it's like, if they're selling these products in Europe and in Canada, and they're free of, what would you say, chemicals that people have, whose utility people have questioned elsewhere, why do they continue to do it in the US? Like, what difference does it make fundamentally?
Fundamentally for the food companies, it makes them more money because it's cheaper to use a chemical additive made from petroleum or coal tar or some other substance than to eat real food. And the reason why it's cheaper for them to do that is because it doesn't break down over time.
So you think it's just a matter of... It's just a matter of economics.
Yeah. I mean, it's economics because it allows them to keep that bread there longer at every subway around the block, right? It allows them to have that uniformity of that product as well, which is what fast food tends to do, which is you want that same product every single time and you want it to taste the same every single time, no matter who's making it.
Yes, well, there's also utility in producing food that doesn't spoil as long as you don't poison it because spoiled food is also poisonous. So it's not like this is simple. Like I've had a lot of mixed feelings about all of this because as you pointed out too, when your parents immigrated to the US, there was the immense advantage of free and abundant, or cheap and abundant calories.
And that's not nothing. Like not starving is a very good thing. Now, not starving and becoming obese and diabetic Well, that's not an optimal solution, and that's definitely happened too. I mean, I was shocked 25 years ago when I drove across the U.S., especially in the northern states, in the more rural areas. God, you know, we'd go into towns where...
and into little shops when we were driving across where Tammy would be the smallest person by a lot, including the nine-year-olds. You know, it was just unbelievable. And so I could tell at that point that something was off and it's got much worse since then.
But these problems are so complicated because it is necessary for the fast food companies to produce something approximating a uniform product and to work against spoilage. And there is the complex problem of over-regulation that plagues the Europeans, that's for sure. But when I look at it, I try to look at the most important data first.
So when I look at the climate change problem, for example, I think the planet is 20% greener than it was 20 years ago. That's this data point. All the other data points are this big. You just ignore them. It's like, no... semi-arid areas have got much greener. That's the end of the argument, as far as I'm concerned. And then with the health thing, it's like, well, everybody's fat and diabetic.
Everybody, virtually. You know, for example, this is a terrible thing. So, you know, when they measure your blood sugar, they adjust the blood sugar norms by age. Well, this is a terrible thing because it means that when you're 40 and you get your blood sugar tested, you're normal. But if you were 20, you'd be diabetic. So what does that mean? It means you're diabetic, right?
Because you shouldn't age norm that particular measurement. And so that's terrible. And you undoubtedly do know. Insulin resistance is a disaster and too much sugar is really hard on people. That's why diabetics lose their limbs. It's really bad. It's really hard on your brain. And so this is definitely bad.
And then, you know, I came to all of this kicking and screaming to some degree because I always thought that people who were concerned about food, over-concerned about it, were neurotic and really needed to find something better to do.
when I saw the rising rates of diabetes and obesity, and then also learned about the food pyramid, it's like, oh, I see, this is a complete bloody catastrophe and a real, like a rat's nest and a Pandora's box. And well, you found that out when you were in your 20s. All right, so what did you conclude? Like what did you just, you changed your diet and then that's a personal thing.
Yeah, yeah. And so then I couldn't shut up about everything that I was learning.
Right. Well, you're a debater and extroverted, so that's not surprising.
So I started a blog and I wanted to call it eathealthyliveforever.com. And my husband, who's the tech geek in the family, thought that was a terrible name. And so he said, he found on auction a few minutes later, Food Babe for $10. And at first I didn't want to call it Food Babe because it felt kind of foreign. I didn't feel like a food babe for most of my life.
But I said, why don't we teach people to become a food babe? Like how to be a food babe.
It's got a catchiness. It's funny with marketing. It's a tricky thing, right? Because Food Babe has the, it's a, what would you say? It isn't a serious name.
But it makes people uncomfortable in some settings, which I find so interesting. And maybe you can comment on that because it's really interesting that it makes people uncomfortable. Yeah.
Okay.
Like Senator Ron Johnson, for example, like when he announced, you know, that I was about to give my testimony.
Yeah.
He's like, I didn't come up with the name food, babe. Right. He just didn't want to take responsibility for it.
Yeah. Well, I think. It has the advantage of popular appeal and the disadvantage that it isn't a serious name. And so those are competing advantages and disadvantages. And obviously it worked. And there's no sense talking unless people are listening. And of course, that's always the marketing conundrum. So, you know, I don't have anything more to say about it than that.
So, okay, so that's what you started. And you started blogging.
That's right. And so... Where?
On what platform?
WordPress.
Oh, yeah. And so when was that?
In 2011.
Okay, so you're an early blogger. That's right.
And I gave up television to find time to blog outside of work.
You gave up watching television?
Yeah, I gave up watching television.
That's an interesting comment for everybody watching and listening. If you're looking for time to do something that you want to do, you can always give up something that's not particularly useful that you are doing regularly. And that giving up TV, that was probably good for you too.
Oh, it was great. It was the best thing I ever did. So I found time to research and write and I started to just have this insatiable curiosity about all the things that I was eating and then looking at the ingredients and posting the ingredients for people to see what they were eating. And my friends and my family, like my mom and my few friends that wanted to read my blog at the time,
But it started to reach a wider community. And I realized there's other people out there looking for this information on what they were eating. And there was a food movement starting. And it was probably when I wrote the article, Chemical Filet or Chick-fil-A, that went viral.
And Chick-fil-A invited me to their headquarters to consult on their menu changes and ingredient changes that I finally made the decision. Why did they do that? Um... They were smart. They were smart. They rolled out the red carpet. They picked me up in a cow-wrapped car. They were really smart to try to make friends with me. More food industry executives should hear that message because...
the reason why Kellogg's is suffering so bad right now is because they wouldn't let us in, right? We just recently went to their headquarters with over 400,000 signatures to get artificial food dyes and a preservative called BHT that's linked to cancer out of their cereals. And they wouldn't let us in. They wouldn't even sit down with us to take the petitions in person.
So what is that going to do to activists? It's going to rile us up. It's going to make us mad. It's going to make us go harder. And we started a national boycott. Now Fruit Loops is down 54% in the last 12 weeks on grocery store shelves. And their stock price is down.
I've got to say, Fruit Loops should be down. No, seriously. Well, of course, right? I knew that was not a good food when I was like four.
Right.
I'd like, so Froot Loops were fine, but really?
The reason Froot Loops is such a good example, they already make... other cereals without these additives for virtually everywhere else. Canada, Australia, Europe, India, you know, everywhere almost. And this has got to stop across the board. And so Kellogg's is one example of a larger problem.
With Froot Loops, for example, like, are you concerned about the fact that it's basically sugar?
I mean, it's not, I'm concerned, number one, I think the main concern I have with Froot Loops is I don't want anyone to ever eat it again, right?
Okay, well, that's the major concern. Right, but- What is it about Froot Loops particularly that if you have to focus on what you think isn't acceptable, what aspect of it is? You talked about the chemicals, but it's also a highly processed carbohydrate. That's right. It's radically sugar-
And targeted towards little children. And the biggest profit generator for Froot Loops is actually in U.S. schools. In schools.
Oh, yes.
I see. So it's being sold to schools and served for breakfast to our little children. And then it has chemicals in it that affect their brains. It causes hyperactivity. In Europe— you have a cigarette type warning label on any product that has artificial food dyes that warns parents that says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children.
In Europe, parents get to know, have full informed consent on a product. Here in the United States, we don't have that, right? We allow our companies to just put these poisons in our food when they've already reformulated them better for other countries. And then on top of it, these carcinogens are made from petroleum and- And these are the coloring? These are the colorings, yeah.
And just the way that they are produced create all kinds of carcinogens and other problems, immune response, allergies, other things in the human body, eczema. So one of the things that I first did when I went through my transformation is I suddenly gave up artificial food dyes. I just said, no artificial food dyes. And just that alone
helped me transition to a better, cleaner, healthier life because the products that didn't contain artificial food dyes were few and none, right, at the time. Now there's a whole another industry being created without a lot of these chemicals, which is great. One being my company, Truvani, where we're creating products that are processed, like our bar is processed
but it's made with ingredients you would find in your own kitchen. Dates, maple syrup, nuts, right? And that's the kind of food we should be consuming and have available to the public to eat, not food that is made with poisonous carcinogens that make, for example, let's take yellow number six that's in Cheetos. Yellow number six, there's a new study that just came out.
Cheetos are very Froot Loops-like food. It's like they stain your fingers.
They're terrible, but I grew up on them, and so many children eat them, and they're served in schools too.
Oh, yes.
Yes, and Doritos.
Oh, yeah. They're a pretty sketchy item as well, all things considered.
But this is what we're eating. This is what kids are getting after their soccer match. This is what is happening out there that's available whenever you go to a show or anywhere else. This is what people, I mean, you go through the airport, that's what's available.
If these are riddled with these carcinogens like yellow six, for example, that they just showed that turn the skin of mice transparent. Like, I can't make this up. Like, this is horrifying what it's doing to animals in animal studies, but we allow ourselves to continue to eat it.
How do you... Diving into the scientific literature in relationship to nutrition is... It's just a rat's nest. I mean, any clinical studies are... Clinical studies are impossible, right? I'm amazed that anyone ever does a clinical study on anything because it's so hard.
It is.
And then on the nutrition side, you have the problem of an immense number of variables, right? So most of the studies that you read that the press publicizes pick one...
variable among a thousand and would make the claim based on a correlation that you know x causes y and the probability of that is zero most of the time as far as i'm concerned which is why there's been so much rubbish published about nutrition How do you know that you have any ability even to parse the literature? I mean, I understand your claim.
Your claim is that, at least in part, that European countries, Canada even, have taken a different approach to the regulation of extraneous chemicals, colorings, for example, in food, and the U.S. is lagging behind that. That's an interpretation. But that's predicated on the idea that the Europeans know more about what they're doing than Americans do.
Now, their obesity rates are quite markedly lower in Europe, which is very interesting, right? I mean, it's not obvious why either, because that's even true in places like Italy, where the diet's pretty carbohydrate-loaded. And so it's not easy to figure out exactly what's going on. And so it's possible that the differences in food constituents are contributing to that.
How the hell you'd ever parse that out is beyond me. But you seem relatively confident in your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. And I'm kind of wondering why, because it's really hard.
It is really hard, but I don't think nutrition has to be rocket science either. I think the only people that have made it difficult to understand or calculate in a way has been the food scientists themselves that have created these chemicals using the same technology as tobacco companies. R.J., R. Reynolds, and Philip Morris bought up all the food companies in the early
Yes, that's another thing. See, I don't know much about that, so we should go into that a little bit too, because that's a fact that I've only stumbled on, I don't know, maybe it was only since that Senate hearing, you know? Yeah. Because that came to light there, and I thought, oh no, that can't be true. We have the food pyramid catastrophe, and...
So the food pyramid catastrophe is the fact that marketing people built the food pyramid, right? Not scientists. And they justified it scientifically. And their own scientists warned them, their own consultants, that they would produce an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. And they ignored that. And that was the Department of Agriculture.
Yeah.
And I guess it was out of that, I hope I have this right, that subsidies that made corn syrup dirt cheap came about. And I suppose that had the advantage of cheap calories, but like everything and its dog has corn syrup in it, and that seems to be a relatively bad idea.
I mean, it's a basic question to ask, why does the Coca-Cola served here have high fructose corn syrup made from genetically engineered corn here in the United States, but in other countries, they're using real sugar, right? Like we have a seriously different set of ingredients and chemicals that we are being exposed to than other countries.
So why do you trust the Europeans more than the Americans on that front?
Because they're using more natural ingredients, things that came from the earth. And I'm using my own, again, going back to this idea that it doesn't need to be rocket scientists. The food scientists have made our life complicated because all you have to do is go back to real food.
Intuitive eating and going back to what you would find in a farmer's market is literally the first step to unleashing your grips on this industry that has harmed our health, right?
Well, so- One of the things that I've thought through with regards to this carnivore diet that my daughter and my wife have been instrumental in pursuing is that it radically simplifies the playing field, right?
I mean, and I'm trying to think just strictly as a scientist in that regard, if you have a chronic illness or a set of chronic illnesses and the etiology is unspecified, which is generally the case for chronic illnesses, the first thing you might want to do is simplify the landscape, right? Now, you can't simplify it more than with a meat-only diet or a beef-only diet even.
That's the simplest you can possibly make it because you can live on beef almost indefinitely.
Forever. I think about the Maasai, right?
Yeah, right. Or the Inuit, for that matter, although they don't eat beef, but they eat meat. meat and fat fundamentally and they live on it indefinitely and you can do that and so that way you eliminate well a plethora of potential food
related symptoms and then all the interactions between those foods and if it works well then you can experiment slowly to see if there are particular things that you're sensitive to you know or that because what we've seen with the carnivore diet you know they say the plural of anecdote isn't data which is a cliche I really hate because the plural of anecdote is hypothesis actually if you know a thousand people tell you something it's like maybe
Maybe we can test it and see like something might be there. It's not proof, definitely. Proof is hard to come by, but it's the beginnings of the process of investigation. Well, it's clear to me that the carnivore diet radically reduces obesity. I mean, I had a friend who recently started it. Again, this is an anecdote, but I've seen this with many, many people. He lost 30 pounds in one month.
He's like 35. You know, 30 pounds. How the hell do you do that? That isn't even possible.
Yeah.
You know, because obviously that wasn't all fat. Right. I don't think it's even metabolically possible to do that. Maybe it is. I can't see how. But in any case, so what was that? Reduction in fluid from inflammation, maybe, at least to some degree.
Yeah.
But the typical response that I've been told by people is... People seem to lose about seven pounds a month, which is still, that's a lot, man. Yeah. That's like world shaping. That's 84 pounds in a year. It's a lot.
Yes.
And so, okay. So your take is that you simplify, right? That's right. Trying to go down to more basic foods.
You go back to real food without added chemicals.
Yeah, well, people say you eat around the edges of the supermarket.
That's right. Yeah, or the farmer's market. You go there. And it's really that simple. It really is. It's not complicated. And, you know, I think what has been so disturbing about the American food supply is it's been engineered to get us to eat more than we should.
Well, that's the next thing. Okay, so this is where we're going to talk about the tobacco companies. That's right. Okay, so... Tell me what you know about the tobacco company's purchase of the food industry. And just lay that out, because I don't really understand.
Yeah, absolutely. So RJR Reynolds and Philip Morris bought up General Foods and Kraft back in the day. And what they did was they said,
we have an opportunity now to get into the food business because there was a decrease in the use of tobacco because of the cigarette type warning labels, you know, the warning labels that they enacted and people became clear on you shouldn't really smoke tobacco, it causes cancer. And so they were looking for another opportunity to diversify their portfolio
And so they said, well, we have all of this amazing research that we've used to hook people to tobacco. We can use the same research and the same scientists to do the same thing to food. And we're going to buy the flavoring companies too, right?
So that's a very serious allegation.
Yeah, which is 100% true. Which parts of it?
Let's take it apart. Yeah, yeah. So it's easy to verify whether or not the tobacco companies bought the food companies, right? That's a matter of public record. But the next parts of it, like, why do you think that's true? Like, I understand that they bought the food companies. And the fact that they were tobacco companies and they bought the food companies is suspicious, right?
But then to say after that, that they consciously planned to use their scientists to addict people to drugs fast food, let's say, or processed food. That's a different thing. So let me push back on that a little bit.
Well, because... Well, I mean, PepsiCo has a robot that... has mimicked real human taste buds that they use for testing, okay? And this kind of information is getting out now because we have a teenager in Pennsylvania that just filed a lawsuit.
He's 16 years old, has non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and diabetes, and he is suing 11 of the top food companies in America for his ailments, saying that the ultra processed food diet that he was on made him that way because it was addictive in nature. And so as part of that lawsuit, they've come out with this evidence, right?
And more is gonna be discovered in Discovery, which I'm so excited about because when I read the lawsuit, it was over, I don't know, 150 pages or something.
And when I read it, it was like a horror movie because it showed, even though it was in the exact pictures of what kind of technology they use to addict our taste buds and our senses to food, they showed the types of technology and the brain nodes that they actually attach to rats and to humans and to... Yeah, well, people understand the dopamine system pretty well now.
Right. So... Okay, but how would you distinguish delicious and easy from addictive, right? Because it's not surprising that food companies would attempt... Of course, they're competing to... Now, that's the thing, is that are they competing to please you or are they competing to addict you? And then the next question is, why are those different? Like, because...
The hallmark of addiction is maximization of short-term pleasure. Now, it becomes pathological when the maximization of short-term pleasure interferes with medium to long-term thriving, right? That's not a good combination.
Yeah.
But it's a fine line. the line between addictive and pleasurable is, that's a thin line. And so if I'm a food company and I wanna make a product that's competitive, I'm gonna try to make it as delicious as possible and as easy. And then,
So that's where the moral dilemma comes in, right?
Yes, yes. Well, and the criminal dilemma for that matter.
38%?
38%. And the age range?
12 to 18 years old.
38, yeah, that's terrible.
It used to be zero, right? We have to look at what's happening in the food supply. We have to hold someone accountable for it or create some type of regulation or change that would prevent this from continuing to go down into the dumps, which is where we're headed because right now we're last when it comes to- Okay, let me ask you another question.
Why not hold mothers responsible? Because one of the things that I think has happened too is that, and I don't know how to make heads or tails out of this, is that obviously what's happened is that food preparation has been taken out of the home and transferred to companies. Now, the advantage of that is that it's, Fast and cheap.
That's right.
Right? And easy. And there are advantages to that. Let's not forget. I mean, when people were preparing, this would be particularly true of your home country. I mean, how many hours a day would women be spending preparing Indian food in the traditional way, like in a village? Like all day. Right, right. All day. Yeah. 100% of the time. Yeah. Now, and they were using...
a variety of different spices and a variety of different fermentation techniques, and they're very complex. Like, I know that one of the reasons that modern bread isn't as edible as traditional bread is because we use fast-rising yeast, which speeds things up, which is a plus, because we like time, but it also...
It's less effective in breaking down the proteins, and so they're harder to digest, etc., etc. I mean, all these traditional ways of making food were time-tested. Fermentation, for example. Now, we've substituted industrial ease for home food preparation. Now, the upside of that is, well, that's four hours a day, five hours a day that are freed up primarily for women.
Yeah.
So then why go after the companies and why not go after the home and say like... Because if you're going to solve it, you need to solve the crux of the problem.
And I mean, you can say that I'm doing both in a way because I'm an activist on one side, but I also am a cookbook writer on the other, right? I've written two cookbooks where I'm teaching people how to make things faster with real food in the house that doesn't take all day, right? Right, right.
And so...
But the problem is the way our nutritional science gets divvied to the public and decimated to the public, it's riddled with conflicts of interest. It creates a situation where, for example, you have these studies that come out and they say candy actually makes kid athletes better at their sports. you know, this was a headline that went out, right?
And it was a study funded by Mars and, you know, the company who makes M&Ms and the other American candy companies. Well, these studies come out not because they, like, we're going to believe them and we're going to call out the bullshit for them, but it makes it so that when a mother is in the line at a grocery store,
and their child is tugging at their skirt, grabbing those M&Ms and wanting to put them in the cart, they say, oh, it's really not that bad, right? It makes that situation so that they feel okay doing it. And that's...
how probably 90% of the information that gets sent out to the American public through media, through marketing, through magazines, through wherever we're listening, TV is happening when it comes to food. The real information about how our food is full of chemicals and has been designed to make us overeat is not getting out.
And so when you make such an interesting argument, and I love that you've delved deep into the psychology behind this, because it is true that the food companies want to make their food delicious.
Yeah, well, and I would say they've succeeded as well.
They are delicious. I mean, of course, because, but is it an unfair advantage to an American, to a human being, that a company can have that kind of technology, a robot that has taste buds.
Yeah.
Right?
Well, you can say the same thing about social media. Oh, totally. I know, I know. You have industry-sized enterprises focusing on maximizing short-term pleasure for commercial gain. That's right. Well, that's rough. And that is, it is like... It is a hard thing for the average family to compete with.
We can't compete with that.
It's hard.
Mothers can't compete with that. We don't even stand a chance up against that science because they're creating the one millionth best part of a taste. You know, the reason why nature is so... important for a child to eat at a very young age and allows them to become a less picky child is because, take a blueberry. Sometimes they're mealy. Sometimes they're hard. Sometimes they're juicy.
Sometimes they're plump. Sometimes they're small. Sometimes they're big. It's different every time you have a blueberry. Whereas if you go and get a blueberry Nutri-Grain bar or some other cereal, it's the exact same time every single time. And then
They're using the one millionth best part of a taste in a flavor component that they call natural flavor on the label, which could mean a thousand different chemicals. And if your kid grows up on that, they're going to be picky and hate real food, and they're going to end up in that 38% pre-diabetes situation that we have right now with preteens.
Whereas if you start your child on blueberries, real blueberries... they're going to have a chance, right? And so we have to hit it from both sides. We have to hold the food companies accountable.
We also have to educate the public the truth about the food industry, the truth about nutrition, the truth about real food, what's been done to our food in the last 50 years, how to undo that in your own home, and how to get the products out there, and how to pick the right products that are using less chemicals and additives so that you don't expose your family to this.
And we're just at this critical phase right now where we have an opportunity like we've never had before because of the national conversation. And I have more hope now that we can actually change the trajectory of where we're headed
than I've ever had in my entire career, and it's allowed me now to get back in the game, whereas before, again, I was worried about getting back in the game, because I have children now, right? And it was the reason why I wanted to say no to doing the Senate testimony, but I'm so glad I did, because now we have created, it's beautiful, because we've created this
community of people, this movement of people that not only care about their own health, but they want to hold these companies accountable. They want to spread this message far and fast and wide. And it's taking over social media to the point where it's getting to people that I never thought would ever listen or understand.
And that's the piece that I think is so important about the work that I do is I want people to wake up And so when I pick a certain company and I target some individual company for a chemical, it's not necessarily about that chemical or that company. It's about waking people up because of the injustice of what's happened to our food system.
All right. What were the consequences for you of the Senate hearing?
Well— First of all, after the Senate hearing, I couldn't believe the media, for example. We had the left-leaning mainstream media either ignore us or call us names. They called us the woo-woo caucus.
Yeah, well, you know there's nothing more corporate-friendly than the left-wing media.
Yeah.
Like, how the hell did that happen? You know, it's so weird. I don't understand the current political situation at all because 20 years ago, if you stood up against the giant corporations, the left was all over you, regardless of who you were. The mere fact that you were standing up against the giant corporations was sufficient to validate you.
And now, I can't really think of anything that should appeal more to people who are on the left than individuals standing up against gigantic corporations run by like cigarette companies. Yeah. Right. But no, that's not. Now, obviously, that has to have something to do with advertising.
100 percent. 100 percent. Because they didn't even bother to ask for comment or, you know, interview us or anything like that. They just wrote the article. And it's in The Atlantic. You know, this is.
The Atlantic is done.
Yeah, they're done.
The Atlantic disappeared five years ago. You know, I used to read it all the time. It was a great magazine. And then something, I think it changed ownership. It did change ownership. And I think that's what did it in. It became a propaganda magazine.
Yeah, it makes me mad because it was one of the Christmas gifts that my father-in-law would send to us. And I'm like, great, I can read this. This is fantastic. You know, I would quote it all the time. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, that was really disappointing.
And it was... Were you surprised that it was Ron Johnson who did this? I mean, this is the other thing that's so weird. It's like, okay, so it's the Republicans and more the traditional Republicans, not even the Trump types. The traditional Republicans are calling on food activists to go after the large food companies run by the cigarette companies. It's like, how the hell did we get there?
And let me just tell you, the four hours we were there, there was not one political partisan party talking point talked about. It was four hours on how to save humanity. And Nobody wanted to cover it. It was insane. I just couldn't believe it that, like, the mainstream media just completely, you know, ignored us in a way.
Well, luckily, it's just part of their demise.
I mean, and I just—it was like the Twilight Zone. I really couldn't believe it. And I also want to say thank you to Senator Ron Johnson for allowing me— How did he get involved? Like, why did he do this? You know? I mean, I think he cares deeply about what's happened to our health in this country. And he wanted truth tellers to be there at the table telling the truth.
And he allowed me to talk about the food companies in an uncensored way that has never been before Congress in that way ever to the point where— It was a very weird day. Yeah, I mean, and I honestly am so thankful for that because my testimony went so far and so wide. I mean, hundreds of millions of views across so many different platforms.
And people were all of a sudden just waking up going, oh, my gosh, I had no idea these— chemicals are in American food and not other countries, and why are American companies doing this? And the questioning starts to happen in someone's mind, and they start to question what they're eating, and that's where it starts, right? That's where the change happens.
And I do this work because I want people to never get in the position I was in when I was younger. I wanna reach them before they get to that point. I don't know if I'm successful or not.
I feel like I'm successful in that I get the people that are starting on the verge of being sick or they're looking for change, but I'm really hoping I get to the people that haven't had to go through the trouble that I've been through. And that is what ultimately motivates me to keep my message loud and clear because I think where people start to pay attention is sometimes this situation where
it's taken from a different point of view. It's not the, oh, you should eat healthy, you should eat more fruits and vegetables. Oh, you should look at your nutrition, you know, what the traditional route of a nutritionist or a registered dietician would have done, right? But from an activist standpoint, I think it's like, everybody wants to hold someone accountable for this mess.
Somebody wants, there has to be a villain in this, right? And the villain right now is the food industry in a way because Again, they have put profits over people over and over and over again. And now we're in a situation when we look at the chronic disease rates, we are in a dire situation where we all have to work together, corporations and government, to try to solve this.
And that's what I'm so excited about because after that Senate roundtable, it was like an explosion happened with our movement. I don't know if you felt that. I mean, I just felt like it was the turning point in a way. I mean, just having Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
sit down with us and hear each one of our testimonies and him say these words to me, and I'll never forget, he said this, he said, if another foreign nation was doing this to us, it would be considered an act of war.
When it came down to, you know, American companies using ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries, not in their own, you know, not, you know, they use a safer version for other countries and a more toxic version here. That is something that just needs to change and fundamentally stop.
And so- Have there been companies, I mean, you talked about Chick-fil-A and they worked with you. Have there been companies that have reached out to you other than Chick-fil-A? to improve the quality of what they're offering. I mean, I know what's happening with Robbie Starbuck.
Now, it's quite frequently the case that when he reaches out to a company now, particularly, they make changes very quickly and adjust their... I mean, he said, when I interviewed him, he said that a lot of the executives didn't even really know what their DEI people were pushing fundamentally.
Yeah.
Which doesn't surprise me in the least because what people don't know about DEI and its philosophical roots could fill many books. And one of the things about corporations that's a positive, I mean, there's many things about corporations that are positive, but they do tend to be quite responsive to the public. I mean, corporations that aren't responsive to their customers disappear quickly.
And so you'd think there would be a pathway to cooperation on this front. And especially given, it's so weird though, eh? Obviously, the MAGA crowd have decided they're on the Make America Healthy Again side, which is weird, but it happened. And that's half the American population, at least. So you'd think there'd be a massive marketing opportunity there.
I guess part of the problem is that likely the corporations don't know how to market except through the legacy media. And the legacy media leans left in this weird way that's pro-giant corrupt corporation, which is also impossible to understand. So, you know, how much of it is that they just don't know, that they don't know what to do?
Right. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. You know, when we took... the petitions to Kellogg's headquarters. And I used, you know, my Senate testimony to kind of lay the framework of that petition drop because- So this was after this Senate hearing? That's right. And so I said in my Senate testimony, I said I was going there on October 15th and you should come.
You know, I invited everybody in the room and I invited other activists and the public and they came. I mean, we had a thousand people on the ground in Battle Creek, Michigan, very hard place to get to. And we marched to Kellogg's headquarters. It was a pivotal moment in my career to see that many people care about the American food system and changing it.
And they understood that this is a much bigger issue. But when we got to the front door and they didn't let us in, they sent out a security guard. We looked up into the building and in the window, one of the executives was still in the building. They actually told most of their employees to go home that day.
On a whiteboard, that rolling whiteboard, he wrote, get off our lawn and showed it down to all of the women and the children and everybody who was gathering there that day. And it was all captured on film. And this really made a lot of people mad, made me mad. I had to cool off for a second seeing that sign. Like, I can't believe they don't even have the decency to take these petitions in hand.
I mean, when I did this with Kraft, when they were doing this with Kraft macaroni and cheese using one set of ingredients here in the United States and another in other countries, I petitioned them as well, and I delivered those petitions. They invited me in. That's what you do when someone gathers that many signatures and takes them to your headquarters.
You don't deny them entry and treat them like a terrorist, right? But since then, what's been so amazing to watch is I'm sending letters now to other big food corporations. I sent a letter to General Mills. Immediately, they responded. They didn't ignore me. And that's what I expect food corporations to be doing from this point forward because It is the biggest PR mistake ever.
Oh, definitely, especially right now. Yes. Because the tide has obviously turned.
Right, to not listen to us, not sit down and talk to us.
Oh, and also to not market to half the American population, right? That's right. That's a big mistake. Big mistake. So what that also means is that companies that do pivot will have a definite advantage and quite rapidly. So, right.
And General Mills has already created a new cereal without artificial dyes. So I think they're on their path. I think they're going to be probably one of the first to change. But again, cereal is not exactly the healthiest thing we want people to be eating.
But this is about a bigger issue, which is getting the chemicals out of the food, making it more real, having processed foods be available but not full of carcinogens and other toxins that could be affecting your brain, affecting your body, affecting your immunity. and increasing cancer incidences. We have to look at everything, right?
That's a good place to end this section, I would say. So for those of you who are watching and listening, you know we continue our discussion for half an hour on the Daily Wire side. And I think what we'll talk about there is what... what could be done with the new administration and the new health initiatives that are being put in place?
I mean, the Trump administration people are sorting all of this out now, trying to figure out how to rejig the food system, for example, so that it doesn't produce the catastrophic consequences that we can see now. And so I think we'll get Fannie's
opinions about what she hopes the Trump team might do, like where's the biggest bang for the buck, so to speak, in terms of re-evaluating how we prepare food and eat it and what we serve to our children. So that's what we'll do on the Daily Wire side. So you could all join us for an additional half an hour there. Thank you very much for coming in today.
Thank you.