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4.22.19

Vani Hari food babe portrait

Food advocate Vani Hari has made a mission out of pushing for greater transparency and responsibility in the American food industry. Vani started blogging as the Food Babe in 2011 and has since used her platform and passion as a vehicle for some impressive changes in food.

The activist and New York Times bestselling author — whose new book Feeding You Lies dropped earlier this year — has helped transform the practices (and recipes) of massive corporations like Kraft, Subway and Chick-fil-A. According to Vani, she’s also become the target of industry giants who want to quiet her voice.

Vani’s goal is to hold companies accountable for some of the controversial chemicals found in many commercial food items and to educate the public at large about how to sort through information overwhelm and make smart decisions for long-term health. She recently appeared on an episode of Dr. Mark Hyman’s Broken Brain Podcast and dropped an eye-opening load of truth that everyone should hear…

The Pod: Broken Brain Podcast #42: Uncovering The Food Industry’s Lies and Reclaiming Your Health with Vani Hari

The Message: In this episode, Vani digs deep into the dark practices of certain food brands and just how far they’ll go to silence activists like herself. The truth about food industry ingredients and practices are sometimes hard to come by and that lack of transparency often benefits brands more than consumers.

Vani reveals the personal health journey that stoked her passion for food advocacy, walks us through her personal experience as the target of food brands possibly threatened by her work, and how she continues to advocate for consumers when it comes to food safety and transparency.

Why We Loved It: Vani makes compelling arguments for what’s wrong with our modern food industry. She also offers actionable ways to shop smarter. What we love about her message is that it’s not all doom and gloom — her advice for how to stay positive, and how to make healthy choices in the face of info overwhelm is inspiring.

Vani encourages listeners to look beyond the headlines, find trustworthy information resources (she loves NRDC, EWG, and The Center for Science and Public Interest) and to make sure we know who is delivering the information we’re being fed (and who is funding the messages).

She also offers three simple questions we can ask ourselves before every meal to transform our health:

What are the ingredients?
Are the ingredients nutritious?
Where do the ingredients come from?

Sound simple? We challenge you to answer those three questions about your dinner tonight!

Love this podcast recommendation? Discover more of our favorite pods here.

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Comments


  1. I generally love The Chalkboard, but Vani Hari, really? This woman is a PR machine who peddles total misinformation with no understanding or respect for basic science. I know you try to present a variety of articles and it must be tough to keep coming up with new and interesting posts, but this woman is a menace and my respect for this website has just dropped exponentially.

    MarciaMarciaMarcia | 04.22.2019 | Reply
  2. I’m not sure Marcia (above) has been riding the GMO/Monsanto train, or has ever read Vani’s website, blogs, or books, but Vani Hari has a lot of important and factual things to share. Her books accurately list out her sources which are all very reliable, she’s not making this all up. She has called out many writers, researchers, and organizations that support Big Food by tracing the money back and seeing who funded the studies in the first place. A lot of things can be traced back to Monsanto, Coca-Cola, and more. I respect Vani calling out the misleading information on food labels and trying to get major corporations to be more transparent with their ingredients, and to take unnecessary (and potentially harmful) things out – like Starbucks with the caramel colorings in the PSL. Huge corporations take advantage of Americans by adding cost-saving preservatives and chemicals, many of which are BANNED around the world! Big Food has been pulling the wool over our eyes for decades now, and it’s got to stop. Open your eyes and pay attention! Keep up the amazing work, Food Babe!

  3. I feel exactly the opposite as the person with the very negative last comment. I have much more respect and was very happy to see her name in my e-mail and in this post. We need more advocates for our food supply that we are being poisoned by with these big companies and fast food restaurants.

  4. Vani Hari is a truth teller and a lot of people and corporations don’t like their secrets being exposed. She is telling us what we need to understand to protect our health and our families. We are becoming a very unhealthy population. We can sit back with our head in the sand or we can listen and learn and fight if we need to. We need more people who aren’t afraid to pull back the curtain, like Vani. Thank you for including her in your recommendations in spite of the comments you may get from industry trolls.

    Carolyn | 04.23.2019 | Reply
  5. She has opened the eyes of so many consumers and changed lives for the better. I do not want chemicals and additives in my food and she has helped us learn and figure this mess out. Kudos to Vani and her team for helping us break through and see the hidden dangers in the food industry.

  6. Vani has helped me to be more diligent about reading the ingredients in the food that I buy. Before I signed up to her updates I was clueless about some of the tactics used by food companies and how we’ve been duped by them for many years. Her struggle against big food is admirable in light of all the negative trolling on her sites. I give he a lot of credit for helping to be the voice in the crowd that at least makes one think before buying the crap being marketed to us as “healthy” Go Vani!

    Steve Mohary | 04.23.2019 | Reply
  7. Anyone claiming this woman is a “PR machine” has clearly done no research whatsoever on this matter, or if they did they developed their opinion based on propaganda paid for by Big Food and Big Ag. Vani Hari backs all of her claims up with thorough research that the average consumer isn’t going to go through, so for that I thank her for her dedication and sticking to her guns despite the naysayers.

    Faith | 04.23.2019 | Reply

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