Maintenance Phase - The Food Babe

00:00:00.000 hey michael wait are you ready to tag us in oh i thought we were doing the uh if folks could kill

00:00:17.160 i think you're about to ask me what do i know about the food babe very little oh do you want

00:00:23.100 me to i'll be peter today uh michael aubry what do you know about the food babe well i already

00:00:29.700 said very little welcome to maintenance phase the podcast where we know very little about what we're

00:00:33.320 talking about boom it doesn't cut in in the same way welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that

00:00:42.940 is made from the same material as yoga mats this was like all i know of this person so i'm gonna

00:00:49.160 be just killing time till we get to that controversy it was also almost all i knew of

00:00:54.340 this person as well because you mentioned her real name the other day and i was like what

00:00:57.500 Yes. Her name is Vani Hari. She has been running campaigns, usually petition drives that are

00:01:04.880 focused on food corporations for more than a decade. Interesting. That approach has garnered

00:01:10.780 her quite a following. She has currently 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 2.3 million

00:01:17.840 followers on Instagram. She has targeted Anheuser-Busch, Kraft, General Mills, Kellogg's,

00:01:24.920 chipotle chick-fil-a subway starbucks in and out just it's a really long list 0.98

00:01:31.280 that all sounds bitching to me except for the goals that she sets and how she achieves

00:01:37.420 except for what she's doing and who she is as a person so today michael uh i'm michael humps

00:01:43.380 oh my god she got too far into it it's not like we even say like what our like little

00:01:50.600 qualifications are just like here's my name as a person we don't even have really a schedule

00:01:54.540 yeah we don't it's not a real show it started with the fake tagline and then it just gotten

00:02:01.160 less real from there if you would like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com

00:02:05.320 slash maintenance phase you can also subscribe through apple podcast premium subscription it's

00:02:10.260 the same audio content stuff michael aubry today today i'm taking you into the world of the food 0.91

00:02:18.480 babe you're taking me back to the blogosphere and i think that uh oh my god shit is leaving 0.97

00:02:25.500 my brain again michael this sucks cognitive decline the podcast we are in our 40s a bunch 0.98

00:02:33.420 of the sort of rhetorical devices that she uses are used by lots of folks in this space so it 0.82

00:02:38.500 seemed useful to sort of break down and think about like what are the components of what she's

00:02:43.040 doing here and what are the red flags that folks might be able to apply to other health and

00:02:47.680 wellness media and go, Oh, wait a minute. Yeah. So Michael Aubrey Vani Hari was born in 1979 in

00:02:54.760 Charlotte, North Carolina. Her parents immigrated to the U S from India. Her dad was an engineering

00:03:02.060 professor at UNC Charlotte and her mom was a high school math teacher. Vani herself goes on to

00:03:09.460 graduate from UNC Charlotte with a degree in computer science. And when I read that, I was

00:03:15.340 like, I don't know why, but this makes intuitive sense. There's something going on with computer

00:03:20.180 science majors. I know. Having like a bizarre sense of certainty that they excel at lots of

00:03:26.340 fields. We need to get kids like reading like liberal arts shit again. We need more wokeness 0.99

00:03:30.780 in the schools. After college, she goes on to work as a consultant, a management consultant 0.99

00:03:35.160 at Accenture. That's also foreshadowing. No offense to the management consultants out there,

00:03:43.100 but it's like, if you look at the trajectory, it's real bad. Her origin story as the quote

00:03:51.120 unquote food babe is similar to many, many, many we have heard before. She talks about getting sick, 0.69

00:03:57.520 she talks about changing what she ate, and she talks about feeling better. And then she says,

00:04:02.040 I started looking into nutrition. So here is a synopsis of that origin story from a New York

00:04:08.940 Times piece. It says she had eczema, asthma, stomach problems, and severe food allergies,

00:04:14.960 the last of which critics, and at least one person who said she knew her growing up,

00:04:18.960 dispute because Ms. Hari has advocated lying to servers about allergies to butter, dairy,

00:04:24.060 corn, and soy to avoid possible sources of genetically modified food. At age 23,

00:04:28.740 she had appendicitis, something she said was caused by her lifestyle of poor nutrition,

00:04:33.280 though most experts say it is a random occurrence. She read books like Spiritual

00:04:37.220 nutrition and conscious eating and applied the skills she learned as an award-winning

00:04:41.380 debater in high school to food.

00:04:43.440 She read labels, cleaned up her diet, and saw results.

00:04:46.320 Her eczema, asthma, and allergies went away, and she said she was off all prescription

00:04:50.560 drugs, up to eight or nine, depending on the season, within three to four years.

00:04:54.760 Yeah, this is like all of the greatest hits of maintenance phase.

00:04:57.740 It's like a Voltron. 0.98

00:04:59.180 Yeah, she's got a condition without sort of clear causes or clear treatments, which 0.84

00:05:05.160 often sends people googling and then google gets you into the like swim with dolphins to cure

00:05:10.180 everything rabbit hole and then she gets into this like my diet will save me kind of thing my

00:05:15.700 lifestyle was killing me stuff and then into like spiritual world and then these weird claims of

00:05:21.560 like i was on prescription drugs right but then i stopped eating seed oils and now i'm not on any

00:05:25.480 what she does with that experience is go ah this made me feel better we need to change the law yeah

00:05:31.500 I feel better because I stopped eating this thing.

00:05:34.060 So we should change how they make this thing that I don't eat anymore. 0.87

00:05:36.860 What was the actual diet that she switched to? 0.74

00:05:38.480 Was it anything specific or just certain food? 0.59

00:05:40.060 She's a little bit Dave Asprey style in that it's like a real sampler platter.

00:05:45.180 Oh, yeah.

00:05:45.440 It's GMOs.

00:05:46.640 It's food colorings.

00:05:48.560 It's additives.

00:05:49.760 Okay.

00:05:50.080 I always feel like there's this moment in an episode where I go like,

00:05:53.440 do we just tip our hand and go, this person isn't good.

00:05:56.920 And I think this is the moment where I go.

00:05:58.900 You're not, you're not pretending to be like, this is a sympathetic protagonist.

00:06:03.280 This person isn't good.

00:06:04.740 She's not.

00:06:05.240 I mean, we're already getting like some of the woo woo stuff and some of the exaggeration.

00:06:09.440 So like, I knew this was coming.

00:06:11.040 What I will say, what we'll see in her pattern is that she reaches for like the biggest,

00:06:15.180 scariest and least understood concepts amongst her audience.

00:06:18.940 Okay.

00:06:19.380 She's written two books and I read both of her books, Michael.

00:06:23.380 Did you really?

00:06:24.340 Yeah.

00:06:24.860 Aubrey.

00:06:25.380 I know.

00:06:25.900 Are you okay?

00:06:26.660 I'm fine.

00:06:27.380 they didn't end up being super relevant to the actual episode you wasted your time i read these

00:06:33.180 were nothing you stopped eating seed oils months ago and you're like why what was it all for i've 0.99

00:06:38.940 cut out all the gmos what am i supposed to do now but you feel amazing your energy is off the charts 0.99

00:06:44.580 she doesn't say this but reading her work i was left with the distinct impression that her what 1.00

00:06:51.600 she calls here sort of like looking into health and nutrition stuff in that phase of her origin

00:06:56.960 story was much more her googling from a place of like i feel better why did this thing make me feel

00:07:03.980 better yeah yeah than a i want to understand the full landscape of this issue and understand the

00:07:10.520 nuances in the body of research right right you're gathering ammunition for something you already

00:07:14.460 believe rather than doing like an open-ended like oh what does the science say about this yeah it's

00:07:19.160 the kind of googling that most of us do most of the time right it's just to be totally honest right

00:07:26.200 you're like you're googling like e-bike benefits rather than like okay what are the pros and cons

00:07:33.380 she's not googling like eczema yeah what are the treatments that are available what's the body of

00:07:38.880 research she's googling quit gmo's treatment for eczema or like improved eczema you're right like

00:07:46.880 yeah that's my i don't know that i don't have her search terms in front of me of course i don't

00:07:51.760 but like that's the impression that i got from reading her work was being like i feel better

00:07:55.920 why do i feel better yeah i i feel like anytime somebody says like i do my own research like 90

00:08:01.860 of the time that's what i assume they're doing 100 from there she starts blogging under the name

00:08:07.880 the food babe in 2011 is she like 25 at this point she's born in 79 so what are we talking

00:08:14.620 yeah 32 so she has like a whole life as like a management consultant before she starts this like

00:08:19.060 influencing stuff she's been a management consultant for like the better part of a

00:08:22.400 decade at this point she's doing well enough with the blog within one year that she is able to leave

00:08:30.560 her full-time corporate consulting job dude adsense getting that adsense dollars truly so

00:08:37.300 she's getting money from uh adsense she's getting money from affiliate marketing of products that 0.82

00:08:44.680 she says are safe and above board. And, uh-oh, Michael, she also now sells her own line of

00:08:51.920 protein powder called Truvani, which you can get at Target and Whole Foods. Truvani? That's almost

00:08:57.520 Truvada. No, it's the word true and then her first name. Oh, so mine would be True Michael.

00:09:02.900 True Michael Trabri.

00:09:04.980 so the early days on the food babe blog are frankly wild as fuck there was one post i only

00:09:16.500 found synopses of this one it didn't get archived on the wayback machine so i couldn't find the

00:09:21.180 original post but there was one post that has been much discussed and much reported on

00:09:26.480 called food babe travel essentials no reason to panic on the plane okay we were just talking

00:09:33.440 about this i'm an anxious flyer in a way that i didn't used to be so maybe i can benefit from

00:09:37.460 these tips okay michael did you know according to vani harry that the air on a plane quote isn't

00:09:44.100 pure oxygen either it's mixed with nitrogen oh what this is very alarming it is alarming because

00:09:50.520 air itself is about 78 percent nitrogen and she just like didn't know this is a wild thing to

00:09:58.180 published without like a very cursory google just a google yeah so people started to critique it

00:10:04.740 both in the comments and also like on reddit it sort of made its way okay far and wide to be like

00:10:09.900 what is going on with this lady the new york times interviewed her about this post uh this was in 0.87

00:10:19.220 2015 so several years later and here is what happened she says all you seed oil guzzlers

00:10:28.000 in my mentions right now stay metabolically impaired and torpid that's interesting you're

00:10:33.180 afraid of sunflowers i'm that's never not going to be funny to me it says in an interview miss

00:10:41.200 harry said she didn't remember the post okay which mr cook brought up by name she then said

00:10:47.940 it would have disappeared from the blog because it was old weeks later in an email she admitted

00:10:52.800 that it had been removed because of mistakes and said that she planned to start noting when she

00:10:56.840 clarified or corrected posts. Ms. Hari said that these particular posts, which she wouldn't

00:11:01.540 acknowledge as having been discredited, were a feeble exercise in nitpicking that detracted from

00:11:07.560 her mission. If you're going to pick apart every little sentence I've written, she said, her voice

00:11:11.400 trailing off, she added of her critics, they have to dig so far and deep to find something that will

00:11:16.460 make me look crazy because what I'm saying now is so sane and so real. That's good. I'm too real.

00:11:22.920 and my haters are going back to my posts she is doing seed guzzlers in my mentions 0.80

00:11:28.400 this is what these people always do she's doing all my haters become my waiters at the table of

00:11:35.140 success another good quote from a terrible person that's all this show is now oh my god i don't know

00:11:43.180 why that one gets me so hard every time you could have just said that and saved us both some time 0.91

00:11:49.580 And I wouldn't have had to read this fucking alarmingly weird quote.

00:11:52.640 That's a really, really strange response to just like a factual error. 0.96

00:11:57.040 Also, like factual errors get through. 0.80

00:11:59.260 Like people, we have said dumb things on the show too.

00:12:02.120 Like factual errors happen.

00:12:03.700 I feel like the bigger thing with like if you're following an influencer or something, 0.97

00:12:06.720 if they can't just admit to a mistake, I'd be like, yeah, that was really dumb. 0.79

00:12:09.520 I don't know why I said that.

00:12:10.380 Thank you to everybody who pointed it out.

00:12:12.140 Like the fact that she can't even admit like, oh, they're nitpicking and finding all this 0.97

00:12:15.040 garbage.

00:12:15.320 But also it wasn't even, it wasn't wrong. 0.87

00:12:17.440 And also I deleted it without saying anything.

00:12:19.080 all of this stuff is just like weird just say that you made a mistake and move on it's not that big

00:12:22.620 of a deal to me these are the the reactions and the comments of someone who is seeing this as

00:12:27.160 like an attack on their character and not as like this is a thing that happens yeah every reporter

00:12:33.120 under the sun has published something that was like incorrect in retrospect or you didn't catch

00:12:39.600 it at the time or whatever podcaster recently who called colostrum wound juice i heard about that

00:12:44.420 one too unclear who the next post we're going to talk about is from uh july 2012 it focused on

00:12:52.540 microwaves the previous one was not archived on the way back machine this one is archived 0.90

00:12:59.440 in the way back machine and have i got a fucking screenshot for you oh it's got an arrow okay it's 0.91

00:13:08.460 got images so i would like for you to describe okay okay the images oh my god what yeah i didn't 0.94

00:13:18.360 know she was like this off the rails this early we're doing it there's a before and after image

00:13:25.060 and the before looks like some sort of like snowflake type of thing and then there's an

00:13:29.260 after there's a giant red arrow pointing at the after i don't know why and then alongside the

00:13:35.260 arrow. It says harmful effects of electromagnetic waves as illustrated by Dr. Mazzaru Emoto in book

00:13:41.680 The Hidden Messages in Water. And then under the after image, which also has a microwave oven. So

00:13:48.400 this is like a snowflake being microwaved, I guess. It just looks like a water droplet. It says

00:13:53.100 the distilled water heated in the microwave resulted in a crystal similar to that created

00:13:58.740 by the word satan yeah i'm not seeing satan in this image though do we have to look upside down

00:14:05.460 like no read the paragraph okay and then we get this big brick of text the paragraph that we're

00:14:10.080 about to read is from vani harry's post she says last by not least okay dr mizaru emoto who's famous

00:14:20.040 for taking photos of various types of waters and the crystals that they formed in the book called

00:14:25.280 Hidden Messages in Water, found water that was microwaved did not form beautiful crystals,

00:14:30.500 but instead formed crystals similar to those formed when exposed to negative thoughts or

00:14:36.180 beliefs.

00:14:37.340 Yep.

00:14:38.040 If this is happening to just water, and then an em dash, which doesn't make sense,

00:14:42.060 I can only imagine what a microwave is doing to the nutrients, energy of our food, and

00:14:46.640 to our bodies when we consume microwaved food. 1.00

00:14:49.360 I didn't know what a bad writer she is.

00:14:51.180 It's not great.

00:14:51.840 For the experiment pictured above, microwaved water produced a similar physical structure

00:14:56.760 to when the words Satan and Hitler were repeatedly exposed to the water.

00:15:02.700 This fact is probably too hokey for most people.

00:15:06.540 Again, a weird em dash, but I wanted to include it because sometimes the things we can't see

00:15:11.380 with the naked eye, or even fully comprehend, could be the most powerful way to unlock spontaneous

00:15:17.740 healing.

00:15:18.420 what does it mean the words hitler and satan were exposed to the water like the water was nearby

00:15:25.180 he just said hitler satan satan hitler is that real he just chants it at the water and then he

00:15:32.940 looks at it under a microscope this is the first thing we talked about on the show aubrey where i'm

00:15:36.880 like don't bother like debunking this just like so off the rails and it's like this isn't even

00:15:43.940 like a real like what possibly could he be fucking talking about so the author of this book is masaru 0.64

00:15:49.340 emoto he is a pseudoscience entrepreneur i you're kidding pseudoscience one of his inventions is 0.95

00:15:56.940 called the vibration-o-meter got his degree in alternative medicine from a disgraced and 0.97

00:16:05.720 discredited institution that no longer exists hell yeah his fucking wikipedia page is listed 0.96

00:16:11.780 under pseudoscience and i gotta say if wikipedia as a whole is like this is garbage yeah yeah yeah 0.97

00:16:20.180 yeah then like that is the fucking drag i love the ones that are like early life and it's like 0.80

00:16:25.060 a paragraph and it's like controversies like six pages so his belief was that uh water's structure 0.83

00:16:33.940 responded to human consciousness and that its structure changed when exposed to curse words

00:16:42.980 and words like satan and hitler is it only like curse words in english or is the is the water

00:16:49.140 multilingual mike i'm gonna blow your mind i didn't read this book she's slipping when asked

00:16:56.240 about these she said quote these were before i decided to make this my career it's like saying

00:17:01.820 that the New York Times or whoever aren't allowed to make mistakes. Back then I was blogging as a

00:17:06.600 hobby. It's so funny to be like, how was I to know that the guy who exposed water to Satan and found

00:17:13.240 crystals in it was lying? This was only a part time thing. It's my hobby. Of course, I'm allowed

00:17:18.020 to lie. Right. There's a part of me that read that it's like, you don't get mad at the New York

00:17:23.800 Times for having its little hobby wordle. Yeah. Her profile continues to grow. In 2015, she was

00:17:31.560 named one of the 30 most influential people on the internet by time magazine michael do you want

00:17:38.080 to know who else is on the 30 i was just gonna ask you this i'd be like give me the list are

00:17:44.060 they all like discredited like crypto weirdos now i'm gonna go rapid fire pewdiepie ta-nehisi

00:17:51.420 coats matt drudge anita sarkeesian shakira oh jk rowling narendra modi oh yeah taylor swift

00:18:00.620 and caitlin mcneil the woman who took the picture of the blue and black slash golden yellow golden

00:18:07.140 white dress let's uh let's do it again but do mary boff kill for each one of them it's very

00:18:12.640 important to me we have to rank these people oh it's gonna be so many kills what i know it's mostly

00:18:18.080 kills on that so all the while while her profile is rising there is more and more and more overt

00:18:25.660 criticism from scientists. A Yale neurologist named Stephen Novella has called her the

00:18:32.060 Jenny McCarthy of food. That's a good dig. Kevin Fulta, who leads horticultural sciences

00:18:40.160 at the University of Florida, said, quote, she found that a popular social media site was more

00:18:45.900 powerful than science itself, more powerful than reason, more powerful than actually knowing what

00:18:51.720 you're talking about. That is accurate and very sad. Marion Nestle told one reporter, quote,

00:18:57.420 I think she means well, but I wish she would pick more important issues and pay closer attention to

00:19:01.940 the science. Classic Marion Nestle. She's saying the same thing, but like way nicer. Yeah. Trying 1.00

00:19:06.660 to put it in a nice way. It is like pick better goals and also look at science. I love your energy,

00:19:12.340 but if you were a different person, it would be better. When asked to respond to her critics,

00:19:19.700 she generally responds in one of a few different ways. Her most common one is by asserting that

00:19:28.180 the scientist in question is a paid industry shill. Classic, classic. Another one comes from

00:19:33.820 a quote that she provided to the New York Times. She said, quote, this whole idea that I'm not

00:19:37.760 scientifically accurate. OK, fine, if you want to say that. But I'm translating stuff so that

00:19:42.980 the layman can understand it. And that's why I'm so effective. Yeah. Well, how else would we know

00:19:47.960 that the water exposed to Satan and Hitler 0.92

00:19:49.900 is poisoning us. She's like, I'm trying 0.94

00:19:52.020 to make this available to the people 1.00

00:19:54.160 as a retort to

00:19:56.080 your information for the people

00:19:58.180 is incorrect. And also, we

00:20:00.080 are the scientists that you are allegedly

00:20:01.800 interpreting, and we are saying that this is wrong.

00:20:04.140 In addition to those sort of more public

00:20:05.940 responses to criticism,

00:20:07.840 a lot of the media around

00:20:10.280 Vani Hari includes 0.62

00:20:12.100 references to her penchant for blocking

00:20:14.180 people who expressed discomfort

00:20:15.860 with her marketing, or

00:20:17.780 who are like hey wait what are your credentials for talking about this although as someone who

00:20:22.480 blocks extremely liberally i'm inclined to like slightly defend her on this do you have a facebook

00:20:29.960 group called banned by food babe with over 10 000 members oh my god is that true yeah no way

00:20:36.680 i definitely think there's like a point at which it just became like a little hater factory and

00:20:41.400 all the people who disliked her joined in but like it seems like initially it really was like

00:20:47.300 a shit ton of people who had been blocked by her yeah this was also summarized in one of the times

00:20:52.840 profiles quote ms harry said that people are only blocked for obscenities but dr schwartz who is 0.64

00:21:00.000 among the band though not a facebook group member said he merely questioned her credentials i block

00:21:05.980 people for being annoying mostly 10 years ago i was like a zero block purist like no blocks not

00:21:12.400 doing it you can't do that you can't do that on the internet today no i'm not a responsive blocker

00:21:18.700 i'm like a preemptive blocker you're like this is only to get more annoying 100 like if i see 0.89

00:21:24.580 someone doing some real fucking bad behavior in someone else's comment section oh yeah cool block 0.92

00:21:30.940 so we stan a queen a blocking queen a blocking queen join that facebook group everybody the 0.96

00:21:37.520 thing is there is a block by michael hobbs facebook group but it's just mumsnet where

00:21:41.500 she really starts getting traction is by running a series of campaigns focused on food corporations

00:21:47.900 okay so in 2013 michael vani hari set her sights on craft foods crown jewel it's boxed mac and

00:21:59.300 cheese which to be honest is like the most ultra processed food imaginable when you think about it

00:22:04.360 yeah all of these are and i think this is one of the things that like absolutely blew my mind

00:22:08.920 about her work is that she's targeting things like chick-fil-a sandwiches craft mac and cheese

00:22:15.220 she had a whole fruit loops campaign okay all of them are like can you believe they're putting

00:22:20.940 this in there right we deserve healthy safe food and i'm like why are you campaigning around

00:22:26.780 boxed mac and cheese yeah yeah yeah like do you not want to advocate for higher levels of uh money

00:22:33.440 in food stamps programs right there's like a bunch of stuff that you can do that isn't focused on

00:22:39.820 like crap mac and cheese is poisoning you or what like it's an odd path to take although to be fair

00:22:45.280 it is powdered cheese dude i'm on record cheese dust is delicious how dare it is delicious but 0.98

00:22:52.560 it's like there are there are some like mega ultra processed foods that i'm like yeah this

00:22:57.600 stuff is killing us sure that if there was real evidence for it i would buy in wholeheartedly

00:23:02.060 again i think this is sort of her model right just pick things where you're like that sounds

00:23:06.220 about right yeah and then say the scariest version of the thing about that and get a bunch

00:23:12.520 of people on board right with uh that and then on her list and then buying into her framework and 1.00

00:23:17.940 so yeah yeah so her complaint with craft mac and cheese was uh the use of artificial food dyes

00:23:25.440 okay she wanted them to remove artificial dyes from craft mac and cheese particularly yellow 0.76

00:23:30.660 five and yellow six because they shrink your balls oh good that was what i learned in middle 0.91

00:23:35.140 school yellow five which was in mountain dew shrinks your balls and also the last sip of 0.92

00:23:39.420 mountain dew is 80 backwash richard gear gerbils yeah these are true facts just community knowledge 0.99

00:23:47.080 my sincere goal in high school was to start a nationwide rumor you fucking gremlin of course 0.98

00:23:53.280 you started a fucking podcast i know this is what i'm putting misinformation this is all i want so 1.00

00:23:59.720 in this craft mac and cheese campaign she did what would become a real sort of classic tactic 0.99

00:24:05.300 of hers which is she launched a petition on her website and according to her she got 350 000

00:24:13.020 signatures oh wow she's a huge audience and each one of these campaigns grows her audience

00:24:18.060 considerably right she gathered all of these signatures she did a big theatrical petition

00:24:25.200 delivery like physical petition delivery at craft hq and had a meeting with executives there

00:24:32.580 craft initially said that they weren't going to change the recipe but two years later they

00:24:38.380 announced that they would remove artificial

00:24:40.380 coloring from all of its

00:24:42.420 mac and cheese products. Okay.

00:24:44.420 But they said the change had been in the works

00:24:46.280 since 2012. Okay. It's not because of this lady.

00:24:48.800 Although that could also be PR 0.88

00:24:49.920 stuff on their part. Yes, absolutely.

00:24:52.260 Both of these actors involved have an incentive to lie.

00:24:54.280 Yeah. Also, this is a common response

00:24:56.580 from businesses. Yeah, yeah. They're just like,

00:24:58.320 we're doing the thing, I don't want to talk about it.

00:25:00.720 We didn't really get into the subseed oils, but like

00:25:02.480 fundamentally, like, I don't care.

00:25:04.140 If they remove food dyes, it's not like I'm like

00:25:05.860 married to food dyes. It's like,

00:25:08.000 i think evidence should guide these discussions but ultimately like if craft removed yellow five

00:25:13.340 like okay fine do you know what the concern is with food dyes when people are like get artificial

00:25:19.760 food coloring out of our food shrinking your balls no that's all i've ever heard about i've

00:25:24.420 never heard anything specific this one dates back to the 1970s with something called the fine gold 0.86

00:25:29.340 diet okay the core idea behind the fine gold diet it was the like strip all of the additives out of

00:25:36.460 your kid's diet. Okay. The assertion behind this and the Feingold diet was that additives and food

00:25:43.440 dyes caused ADHD. Was it like a line go up thing that like rates of ADHD have increased at the

00:25:50.100 same time as yellow five consumption has increased kind of thing? No, the Feingold diet came out in

00:25:54.740 the seventies. So even our language around ADHD was very different than what it was. Yeah. There

00:26:00.060 is some evidence today that in kids who already have ADHD, some of those kids, when consuming

00:26:07.940 foods that have food coloring in them, will sometimes experience a temporary increase in

00:26:15.020 their hyperactivity symptoms. Really? Yes. It's very strange. So as a result, some countries

00:26:21.340 require a warning label on foods with food coloring. Wow. Okay. The US does not require

00:26:27.180 that warning label but that body of research did not exist when the feingold diet came out this 0.70

00:26:33.160 was somebody who was just like on fucking vibes here's what i think yeah right and again this is 0.52

00:26:38.540 like 70s natural food freak out sort of suspicion about newer foods kind of stuff so this fit right 0.96

00:26:46.720 into a worldview and a discomfort with sort of like the modern world as a whole yeah and also

00:26:52.080 a fundamental discomfort with neurodivergence. Also like yellow five and red 40 and these things

00:26:58.080 do sound kind of like sci-fi dystopian. Yes. Yes. Because what happened to the first 39 reds?

00:27:03.340 Oh no. We've had to iterate on this. We're finally at the decent one after 39 tries.

00:27:09.660 The idea that food dyes cause ADHD has long, long, long since been discredited. The other

00:27:15.200 concern with food dyes that pops up is about cancer in rats okay that is a result of a dye

00:27:22.320 called red 3 the fda has banned red 3 you can't use red 3 in the u.s okay however the amount of

00:27:31.420 dye that exists in food for people is way lower than the dose given to rats in studies right this

00:27:41.520 is the diet coke aspartame conundrum where it's like yeah yeah you're drinking aspartame you're

00:27:47.280 worried about like brain cancer from rats are you having aspartame directly injected into your brain

00:27:53.020 yeah yeah yeah at like double your body weight no okay cool it's always like an indicative mechanism

00:27:58.260 not necessarily like a direct danger on the other hand like fine we don't have the cancer causing

00:28:03.160 dye in our food anymore it seems fine to me um i think the other thing to know about food dye

00:28:06.700 regulation in the U.S. is that the FDA, quote, requires evidence that a color additive is safe

00:28:12.600 at its intended level of use before it may be added to foods. And it adds a maximum allowable

00:28:18.000 amount. So it's not just you can use unlimited red 40, right? It is you can use up to X amount

00:28:24.300 of red 40. According to one scientist interviewed by New York Magazine, a 60 pound child would have

00:28:33.360 to eat eight bags of Skittles a day to get to harmful levels of red 40. Okay. Yeah. It really

00:28:39.720 is being regulated, right? Like there is a regulatory mechanism there. Make Skittles beef

00:28:44.100 tallow again. So a big part of Vani Hari's pitch around Kraft is the idea that these food colorings

00:28:51.120 are banned in the EU. So why are they allowed in the US? This comes up all the time in these

00:28:57.200 conversations. Yeah. That came up with the seed oils thing too. It sort of sounds right that the

00:29:02.220 eu would have a stronger regulatory food system than the u.s but that is not the case oh interesting

00:29:09.700 okay every food coloring that is allowed in the u.s is used in the eu okay yellow five used in the

00:29:17.260 eu red 40 used in the eu blue two used in the eu they are just named differently oh is it like red

00:29:26.960 41 red 40 is called allura red okay and when it shows up in ingredient lists it is listed under

00:29:35.360 its e code name so all of these have like an e dash yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so people are

00:29:41.120 looking for red 40 on a label of food from like the uk and they're like where is it and it's e

00:29:48.400 e129 that's red 40 right yellow five is e102 blue two is e132 these are labeling differences between

00:29:59.020 the u.s and the eu the eu is more likely to use technical names or these sort of coded names for

00:30:05.080 ingredients and labeling but regulation in the u.s prioritizes consumers ability to understand

00:30:12.540 what's in their food so we're more likely to use and to require language that's more accessible to

00:30:20.740 more people right and more direct like this is a food dye rather than just like a random number

00:30:24.460 i think it's also worth noting that there are like a number of food dyes that are allowed in

00:30:28.660 the eu that are banned by the fda and are not allowed in the u.s ponso 4r is a red food coloring

00:30:36.300 that is allowed in the eu but not approved by the fda that doesn't mean it's necessarily unsafe

00:30:42.220 It just means that these two sort of regulatory systems deal with them differently.

00:30:46.960 I think there's a temptation to go, this food system is doing a better job on every measure

00:30:53.000 and not like, hey, these are different countries with different needs and different priorities

00:30:57.540 about how this stuff ought to get disseminated.

00:30:59.980 Right.

00:31:00.140 Reasonable minds can differ.

00:31:01.380 Different systems can make sense for different places.

00:31:03.460 Right.

00:31:03.720 This is actually one of the most enriching things about living abroad for many years.

00:31:06.780 I feel like when I moved to Denmark, I was like, they're better at everything.

00:31:09.900 Socialism is cool.

00:31:10.880 and then you get there and you're like oh we actually do a couple things better than them

00:31:14.480 and they do some things better than us so michael the craft campaign was in 2013 in 2014

00:31:21.580 she sets her sights on starbucks okay she writes a blog post called you'll never guess what's in a

00:31:30.580 starbucks pumpkin spice latte is it union busting is it union busting no there are two main claims

00:31:36.680 that she makes. One of them we're going to dig in on and one of them we're not. The one we're

00:31:42.180 going to dig in on is that the caramel coloring used in pumpkin spice lattes is quote unquote

00:31:48.800 linked to cancer. The other big bombshell that she drops in this blog post is that pumpkin spice

00:31:54.340 lattes contain no pumpkin. Is she the one that originated this? This has been driving me insane

00:31:59.140 for like a decade. It's nutso. I don't know if she's the one who originated it, but she is

00:32:04.260 definitely a big force in popularizing it i this made me laugh because i just always assumed that

00:32:11.080 a pumpkin spice latte did not contain pumpkin that it was pumpkin spice yeah we're both bakers we

00:32:16.160 both understand that the pumpkin spice is the spice you put on the pumpkin it doesn't contain

00:32:21.180 pumpkin so here's the thing that i find fascinating how worked up i am about this according to

00:32:26.760 vani hari it took starbucks one year to announce that they had removed caramel coloring from their

00:32:33.780 pumpkin spice lattes again each of these campaigns she gets what she wants yeah that's weird but

00:32:38.700 often what she wants is not the full picture or not correct or whatever yeah like physically

00:32:44.480 incorrect like they i remember this they added pumpkin to pumpkin spice they absolutely did so 0.79

00:32:49.920 i looked this up because i was like is there fucking i've never i don't think i've ever had 0.96

00:32:54.200 a pumpkin spice latte they're so good are they really i bet it's delicious of course all of 0.97

00:32:58.540 those starbucks like we just like poured a pound of sugar in here yeah exactly yeah it's basically

00:33:03.140 a pie in liquid form of course it tastes amazing it's a milkshake we made you a milkshake yeah

00:33:08.040 well here's the other thing when you get a can of pumpkin puree that's mostly not pumpkin oh

00:33:13.360 because butternut squash a lot of it it's butternut squash so i'm also like well now who's

00:33:17.360 hiding i know is it real pumpkin i don't know well i would know aubrey because i always bake

00:33:22.820 my own pumpkins when i make pumpkin pie he's farm to table i did live in europe you know what i did

00:33:31.900 live in europe i just like eat like this that's why i'm like so healthy he's got the superiority

00:33:36.940 complex to prove it that's why i'm like so masculine like the internet is saying like he's

00:33:41.020 so masculine and like it's mostly like the vegetables that i eat from europe the way that

00:33:44.160 i make my vegetables she gets hooked on this caramel coloring thing as being like a source

00:33:49.280 of carcinogens in pumpkin spice latte i'm going to send you a quote here that is from an analytical

00:33:57.120 chemist named Yvette Dentremont, who wrote a piece for Gawker called The Food Babe Blogger 1.00

00:34:04.040 is Full of Shit. Nice. Okay. So here is that chemist's breakdown of the PSL of it all. 1.00

00:34:13.700 It says, and what about that carcinogenic caramel color? Well, it turns out that it's not the only

00:34:18.940 thing in your pumpkin spice latte that's in carcinogen class 2B. There's also coffee. Coffee

00:34:24.080 is class 2b because of the acrylamide accumulated during the roasting process. Coffee, before

00:34:29.140 Starbucks turns it into a milkshake, is pretty healthy for you. Class 2b means that all possible

00:34:33.580 carcinogenic effects haven't been ruled out, but that it hasn't been shown to cause a single case

00:34:38.640 of cancer. Okay, so it's like a maybe. We can't say it doesn't cause cancer, but there's no

00:34:43.240 affirmative evidence that it causes cancer. Right. The evidence doesn't allow us to prove

00:34:46.580 a negative, that it absolutely never causes cancer. This is a sort of classic thing where

00:34:52.820 health and wellness influencers will pull from these rankings of carcinogens and will assume

00:34:58.660 that they are ranked by their likelihood to give you cancer. Those rankings are instead rankings

00:35:04.680 of the strength and state of the evidence. Yeah, I know. Science could be way better at

00:35:09.580 communicating this, to be honest. But like, yes, this is so easy to misinterpret. But also,

00:35:14.540 this is like directly the result of people who are untrained sort of googling around,

00:35:19.540 tromping around and not attempting to understand the science on the science's terms because i wish

00:35:24.860 scientists were better at communicating and stuff but also ultimately the responsibility is of the

00:35:29.320 influencers or whoever the pundits who are saying like this causes cancer without like reading the

00:35:34.620 documents in question which are always very clear about like what these terms mean right and

00:35:38.460 meanwhile vani hari is out here in the press repeatedly saying you don't need to be an expert

00:35:43.160 to understand this stuff yeah but you don't understand it really fundamentally misunderstanding

00:35:47.120 like big big big parts and not even caring to like check in with experts be like hey do i have this

00:35:51.820 right yeah this is what like we do with our episodes very frequently it's like we'll send a

00:35:55.100 rough cut to somebody and be like are we saying anything boneheaded here does this sound roughly

00:35:58.420 true and like it's really useful to check in with experts on that stuff and we will absolutely get

00:36:03.480 very useful feedback being like ah this part's not quite it i think the only way you can do this and

00:36:09.180 not bother to reach out to people is if you think scientists are like fundamentally part of the

00:36:13.380 problem. Paid industry shills, right? Michael, are you ready for our next campaign? Yes. This is

00:36:19.780 the way that both you and I first heard about the food, babe. Yoga mat bread. Yoga mats. We're

00:36:25.780 talking 2015. We're talking the campaign against subway bread. I will say every subway in the whole

00:36:33.120 world has the same weird smell when you walk in there, which does have like a sort of formaldehyde

00:36:38.260 kind of quality to it. So I get why this sounded true to people. There's something weird about the

00:36:42.920 way that it smells because it doesn't smell like baking bread even though they are baking bread in

00:36:46.640 there subway is not a top tier fast food place in the you're coming you're going for it you're

00:36:53.140 coming for subway you're like we don't care about what you eat how you live your life however if you 0.64

00:36:57.600 go to subway you're trash i just mean like she's reaching for a restaurant that not very many people 0.70

00:37:06.640 are going to defend right right last week tonight did an excellent piece on their like extremely 0.98

00:37:12.260 predatory business practices which is why we have like three times as many subways in the u.s as

00:37:17.640 any other fast food restaurant oh really yeah absolutely absolutely did he talk about how six

00:37:23.200 inches isn't enough food and 12 inches is too much that's my beef with subway so this was the

00:37:28.140 first campaign of hers that sort of made its way onto my radar the allegation sort of at its core

00:37:35.280 was that subways bread used ingredients that were used to make yoga mats love it a friend of mine

00:37:41.940 told me this at the time and i remember being like that doesn't sound right yeah i remember that too

00:37:48.460 like like it really felt like scientific information that had been delivered by like

00:37:54.120 one of the minions memes on facebook or something where you're just like the the packaging of this

00:37:59.300 alone is suspect right yeah it's a little bit like the american bread is cake thing which is

00:38:04.560 also just about subway bread and about its tax status in ireland or something also just such a

00:38:10.320 like on its face facile comparison you can say like yes i wash all my towels in vinegar and then

00:38:15.760 i made a salad dressing right you use baking soda to clean things but you also use it to put in your

00:38:23.300 like quick breads or whatever or your cookies yeah so vanihari went about looking at subway's

00:38:30.560 ingredient lists and she found one ingredient in particular that troubled her it's called

00:38:36.020 azodicarbonamide. We'll call it ADA. That's what it's shortened to. Sounds bad. Sounds scary.

00:38:43.380 Vani Hari launched a petition in February of 2014 demanding that Subway remove ADA from their bread

00:38:50.060 and she made a video to go along with that petition. And Michael, we are going to watch

00:38:55.140 that video. Okay, we're going to see this woman. Okay, we are going to see this woman.

00:38:58.440 oh hi there i'm the food babe i love yoga it is so amazing for your body and stress and well-being

00:39:10.280 but it really does make me really hungry oh my god she's taking a bite out of the yoga mat

00:39:16.280 wake up people take a look at the ingredients in subways nine grain bread wake up people that

00:39:22.060 one of them is the same ingredients found in yoga mat this stuff called azocarbon

00:39:27.260 And, you know, it's this stuff here.

00:39:29.880 The name's on the screen.

00:39:31.220 It's banned across the globe.

00:39:32.860 If you get caught using it in Singapore, you get fined and put in jail.

00:39:36.260 Yeah.

00:39:37.000 This is a very hazardous substance that is linked to lung issues and workers who are exposed to it.

00:39:41.900 If it isn't even safe to be around and breathe in, how could it be deemed safe to eat?

00:39:46.680 Well, the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world that still allows this ingredient to be used here in the United States.

00:39:52.820 In the U.S., big food companies use this as a flour bleaching agent.

00:39:57.260 In other countries, they wait a week to turn their flour white.

00:40:00.940 Not only is Azek's, it's on the screen, and Subway's nine-grain bread,

00:40:06.340 but you'll find it in the food at McDonald's, Wendy's, and even Starbucks croissants.

00:40:11.000 Keep the yoga mat out of your mouth and on the floor.

00:40:14.380 Do you know friends and family that eat yoga mat?

00:40:17.000 Then share this video with them and go to foodbabe.com for updates.

00:40:21.700 Until then, I'm the Food Babe.

00:40:27.260 you have no real enemies. You're afraid of yoga mats. I shouldn't be, but I'm so annoyed at how

00:40:33.380 she's pretending not to know how to pronounce it. Totally. You've written numerous posts. It's like

00:40:38.840 a whole campaign and you're like, oh, whatever. You can see it on the screen. Like, come on.

00:40:42.880 One of her sort of core rules about food is if a third grader can't pronounce it,

00:40:48.780 you shouldn't eat it. Third graders can't pronounce very much. I couldn't say refrigerator 0.76

00:40:51.920 when I was in third grade she realized really heavily on this sort of proposed binary of like

00:40:58.000 chemical versus natural right which is like that doesn't exist yeah almost everything in the

00:41:05.060 natural world is also chemical has a chemical name this is once again I would say neophobia

00:41:11.140 in sheep's clothing right the assumption is that new techniques and new ingredients and new foods

00:41:18.480 are inherently sinister. I thought that this quote from a professor of food science at UMass

00:41:26.680 was a really good sort of encapsulation of what she's doing here. This is from a New York Times

00:41:32.240 piece. It says, science splutter with frustration that to Ms. Hari, the word chemical is always a

00:41:38.360 pejorative and that she yells fire about toxins, but ignores that fruits and vegetables are full 0.93

00:41:43.120 of naturally occurring toxins. Beach pits, for example, are very natural, but they contain

00:41:47.440 cyanide, said Fergus M. Clydesdale, a professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts.

00:41:51.880 Oranges have methanol, which is very toxic, and we've been eating those for thousands of years.

00:41:56.420 Professor Clydesdale also pointed out that the body is made of chemicals and that we eat partly

00:42:01.040 to replenish those chemicals with chemicals from food. Hey! Everything is chemicals! Yeah,

00:42:08.740 I'm against chemicals and I'm for natural foods. Like, neither one of those things mean anything.

00:42:12.600 so ada what it does is that it's essentially like a foaming agent it helps foams retain their 0.75

00:42:19.900 structure and bread is a fucking foam okay so this is an additive that helps you sort of maintain 0.87

00:42:27.420 that like bread foamy kind of structure okay she does point this out in her video that like 0.97

00:42:34.240 the core reason that this is banned in other places is because of worker safety right it

00:42:40.980 doesn't have anything to do with consumer consumption right it's just like completely

00:42:45.960 apples to oranges and again she's reaching for sort of the scariest thing it's also wild to look

00:42:52.520 at that and not to frame this as hey the people who make your food deserve safe working conditions

00:42:59.780 i want food that's made by people who are able to be safe at work right you could run this whole

00:43:05.380 campaign as is but swap out sort of like aren't you afraid of what's in your food what's lurking 0.99

00:43:12.340 in your food right for hey workers are under protected in this country right that's fucking

00:43:18.020 true hey like food processing is like a notoriously exploitative sector the leap from if it's not safe 0.77

00:43:24.420 to inhale why would it be safe to ingest without looking into what we know right about whether or

00:43:31.480 it's safe to ingest, right? Like that's sort of an unhinged thing. Again, like part of the way

00:43:37.060 that she talks about this stuff is completely devoid of context. She doesn't talk about like,

00:43:41.640 why is this used? Right, right. Here is a little right up from Forbes.

00:43:47.740 So how dangerous is this latest red flag food additive? Honestly, not so bad, at least when

00:43:53.140 compared to some of the other chemicals like BPA that have raised a hue and cry in the past few

00:43:57.800 years. Interestingly, ADA was actually brought in as a substitute for a much worse chemical,

00:44:03.020 potassium bromate, which was phased out after California's Proposition 65 called it into

00:44:07.820 question as possibly dangerous to human health. Right. So this was an attempt to actually improve

00:44:12.120 the safety of the food system. Yes. And there's no real acknowledgement of that. There's just the

00:44:16.620 like, look how sinister this shit is. Right. She genuinely just makes it seem like they are 1.00

00:44:21.380 straight up out to get you and not like they're solving a problem in an inelegant way or they

00:44:27.460 could solve that problem in a better way right according to her website the petition garnered

00:44:32.760 more than 50 000 signatures just in the first 24 hours wow which is also how long it took subway to

00:44:39.000 respond and agree to remove ada from its bread within the next two months that's actually

00:44:44.840 fascinating they came so quickly they said that the removal was already underway which tracks to

00:44:50.580 me right if it's coming out in the next two months right i don't know enough about industrial like

00:44:56.360 food creation food manufacturing um so i couldn't say for sure but i'm like two months is a really

00:45:03.960 quick turnaround for something that is part of the structural integrity of the bread that you

00:45:09.080 serve in every dish at your place because you'd have to like reformulate and then like do a bunch

00:45:13.620 of testing to make sure that the product is not going to be meaningfully different which like

00:45:16.820 there may be different equipment that's required there may be different staff training right it

00:45:21.920 just seems like a big undertaking to me to get done in like 60 days or less just because there

00:45:28.700 was a petition but i'm sure she declared victory anyway absolutely for all of these she claims

00:45:33.840 credit pretty unilaterally yeah but again it's sort of goop style where like right as as go to

00:45:39.760 the paltrow said like each of those little cultural firestorms yeah just bring more people 1.00

00:45:43.760 traffic increased her business all of that kind of stuff and that is also whether or not that's

00:45:48.300 her intention that is also an effect that appears to be happening here right well the thing is i

00:45:52.300 mean it's also the thing that she didn't mention the actual danger with subway sandwiches that if

00:45:56.200 you arrange them in the shape of the word satan oh it changes their molecular structure they

00:46:01.720 actually get so much worse the sandwiches respond to human consciousness but only in english

00:46:07.500 and i guess the real issue with this isn't necessarily that subway removed this thing 0.98

00:46:12.920 from their bread because honestly who gives a shit it's more like it's the opportunity cost 0.97

00:46:17.220 of, first of all, giving people this bizarre, like, anti-system, anti-government, everything 0.99

00:46:22.340 message, and also, like, the energy of people doing petitions and lobbying the corporation

00:46:28.760 could have been directed at something, like, bad that they're doing, like, the way they

00:46:31.740 treat workers or union busting or something that's, like, actually real.

00:46:35.180 I think that's the vibe with kind of all of her stuff.

00:46:38.220 Yeah.

00:46:38.400 Most of the things that she lands on, I'm like, I don't care.

00:46:41.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:46:41.820 But I think the issue is that she is doing a bunch of world building that is, like, they're 1.00

00:46:46.140 poisoning you. The food supply is out to get you that she's sort of painting this much broader

00:46:51.520 picture about like most of the sources of your food are inherently suspect and are trying to

00:46:58.400 hurt you. And that leads directly into like pretty profound anti-government sentiment and erosion of

00:47:06.560 trust in entities like the FDA, right? Right. Uh, you know, the FDA has a great deal of sort of

00:47:12.660 power, but in terms of like a social media following, she's definitely winning that war. 0.98

00:47:18.020 Right. And instead of educating her followers on like the actual problems in the food supply, 0.99

00:47:22.560 she's essentially like uneducating them and making them afraid of all these like

00:47:25.780 phantoms rather than like things that we could actually be doing something about. Like things

00:47:29.780 like improving the ability of like the FDA to like inspect workplaces and shit like that.

00:47:34.300 100%! Food safety is like a real issue. Yeah.

00:47:36.360 The little coda to this particular campaign is that this year the FDA has announced that it's

00:47:41.540 going to revisit ada's place on the grass list but isn't that just like rfk jr being like whatever

00:47:46.420 that's what i was gonna say is like whatever the fda does is not a measure at this point of like

00:47:50.960 whether or not it's true or false but also i hate this so much because we're now going into a world 0.99

00:47:55.420 where basically anything the fda does you're like oh fuck it it's rfk jr's weird bullshit right 0.98

00:48:00.500 that's exactly the kind of distrust in institutions that she is fomenting however these institutions 1.00

00:48:05.380 are not trustworthy anymore because they are run by degenerate psychos right it's now true what

00:48:10.220 she's been saying about these government agencies for decades it's true as a direct result of what

00:48:15.100 she has been campaigning for yeah and then we result in this like low trust society they were

00:48:20.900 trustworthy or considerably more trustworthy on a bunch of different things and as a result of her

00:48:27.320 like straightforward misinformation campaigns on a bunch of this stuff that is now eroding

00:48:34.300 public trust at least amongst her audience and sort of adjacent audiences for institutions that

00:48:41.700 were by all accounts not doing a perfect job but on the stuff that she was talking about were

00:48:46.820 taking those decisions pretty carefully right and were like really genuinely weighing consumer

00:48:54.220 safety and that sort of thing right and also then now it puts us in a position where we're like oh

00:48:58.320 those numbers are from the fda you can't trust them which makes us sound like loons but like

00:49:02.600 that might end up being the case it also puts us in the position of being like hey lay off craft

00:49:10.100 what did they ever do to you right like these are all sort of like institutions with very few

00:49:15.400 defenders right this all sort of culminates with her attending the confirmation hearing for rfk

00:49:23.160 junior oh it makes a lot of sense to me her approach is sort of right in the pocket of rfk

00:49:28.720 juniors right so that like their alignment makes a ton of sense to me yeah the thing i wanted to

00:49:34.120 close with is talking a little bit about sort of the rhetorical devices that vanihari uses that i

00:49:42.480 think are pretty common amongst maha influencers and wellness influencers sort of regardless of

00:49:49.860 their political affiliation right okay a few of these sort of rhetorical devices we've talked

00:49:53.760 about before one is anecdotal evidence stories in place of evidence right another which we've

00:49:59.240 talked about a fair amount is designating some foods as real foods and other foods as quote

00:50:04.260 unquote fake foods right yeah there's also another one that we've sort of touched on in the past is

00:50:09.260 this idea of like nutritional nostalgia right that's not an argument that relies on evidence

00:50:13.940 it relies on the sort of feeling that we weren't quote unquote meant to eat something right we're

00:50:19.180 a fallen society. Yeah. There are also a few devices that we haven't talked about quite as

00:50:26.020 much. One is that in her work, Vani Hari does not spend much time explaining why things are the way

00:50:35.080 they are. Okay. Again, there's only this sort of fallen society narrative. The last one that she

00:50:41.460 uses very liberally is this deployment of questions with sort of heavily implied answers.

00:50:48.340 the one that she uses the most is what are they trying to hide oh yeah i love that that's super

00:50:54.380 conspiracy brain because it's like we can't find evidence of this but that's evidence of the

00:50:59.160 conspiracy right this is the thing that will show up sometimes where people will be like i called

00:51:03.860 general mills and asked them who grew the oats that are used in cheerios and they couldn't even

00:51:08.580 tell me yeah that doesn't necessarily mean that someone is concealing sinister information from

00:51:14.820 you right it may just mean hang on i don't have that answer handy it might take me some time to

00:51:20.180 find it or i don't even know how to get that question answered i'm so sorry i can't do it

00:51:24.140 right or maybe it does mean the company's evil but you need actual evidence that the company's

00:51:27.480 evil it's not 100 100 right all of that felt important to sort of lay out because i think

00:51:34.420 all of these are like increasingly commonplace as there's more and more sort of health and

00:51:40.300 wellness quote unquote information being shared on social media with the rise of maha influencers 0.96

00:51:46.340 with like more and more sort of like algorithms tuned toward rage bait and controversial shit 0.70

00:51:53.600 it means we're just going to keep seeing more and more and more of this stuff so it felt like 0.94

00:51:58.320 worth lifting up like here's how this shit shows up and if someone opens with like i didn't see 0.94

00:52:05.560 this information what are they trying to hide it might be worth considering that that is a person 0.98

00:52:10.160 who hasn't done their due diligence

00:52:11.580 or doesn't understand what's in front of them

00:52:13.460 rather than just the person they're pointing the finger at

00:52:17.420 or the company they're pointing the finger at

00:52:18.880 is necessarily doing sinister things, you know?

00:52:21.920 And the only way around this stuff

00:52:23.680 is to arrange your food so that it spells out Gandhi

00:52:25.960 and then it becomes more healthy for you.

00:52:40.160 We'll be right back.

Maintenance Phase - September 25, 2025

The Food Babe

Episode Stats

Transcript