Exposing The Food Industry’s Dangerous Lies - Vani Hari

what's happening with you and Kelloggs Kelloggs so two weeks ago on October 15 I went to Kellogg's headquarters with 400,000 signatures took them to Kellogg's front door to ask them to remove artificial food dyes and BHT from their cereals that they produce here in the United States but don't do this for countries like Canada all of the countries in Europe Australia India so basically using one set of ingredients here in the United States that are more toxic and harmful towards little children because artificial food dyes are linked to hyperactivity they require a warning label a cigarette type warning label in Europe when a product has artificial food dies that says may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children they've seen that when they study these different artificial food di they contain carcinogens so they're linked to cancer they cause autoimmune disorders eczema asthma and also the chemical BHT which is an endocrine disrupting chemical that you find in the lining of cereal bags as a preservative they use that here in the United States but they don't use that in other countries so I been demand demanding that Kelloggs sell us the same safer versions of their cereals that they serve in other countries and I've been doing this for a really long time uh I've been doing it since for over a decade in 2015 Kellogg said that they were going to make these changes they got worldwide press about making these changes they got a lot of Praise publicly and through the media when they made this announcement but then they never did it they said they would do it by 2018 and instead they created new cereals to hook modern children of today like baby shark and Peeps and Little Mermaid and Elf on the Shelf and in all of these different trick-or treat type uh cereals to to to get people to buy their cereals and it's really sad because not only did they lie to us they continue to sell American children an inferior less safe version of their cereals is it true that they make those cereals in the same factories as the cereals that don't have those same dieses in is there any truth to that at one point I believe the Canadian cereal was being produced here in the United States and they were shipping it over over the Border I think now they they have a Canadian manufacturer now uh a a factory but uh yeah yeah that that was they had the capacity to do it so you know we're going to talk a lot today about uh some of the more nefarious activities maybe of people's favorite High Street food brands and stuff like that why why do brands do this is it cheaper is it laziness is It Something New World Order trying to sterilize the population what's your uh reasoning behind this what's your justification that you think they're doing it for there's a few different reasons the first reason is that a petroleum whole tar base dye is cheaper to put into a product than carrot juice watermelon juice blueberry juice that they're using in other countries to color these cereals okay and other products for that matter it's cheaper the second thing is it doesn't break down as fast right petroleum lasts forever uh carrot juice you know goes rancid so from a preservation standpoint of how long can keep a cereal on the Shelf it matters so it's all about money and it's all about greed in the same way they're you using BHT to line the insides of the cereal bags it's a preservation thing and the fact that the FDA has allowed our food companies here in the United States to create these chemicals to approve these chemicals for use under their own safety data not any third-party regulatory fashion this is happening in the food companies themselves they've decided it's okay to use these chemicals and the FDA hasn't even reviewed for example red number 40 since 1971 and they don't even know the amount that the American public is consuming at this point which we've done some studies and datas and there's been a a a study done in Purdue University about how the it's been a dramatic increase in terms of over 500% increase since food dies were introduced to our food supply in terms of how much we're actually consuming as the American public and this is something that um food companies continue to do because no one's holding them accountable and this is why I had to March to Kellogg's headquarters to do this because no one's doing it how much do you lay at the feet of the food companies how much do you lay at the feet of the FDA and why is America so unique in it's like this weird Island food desert type thing but it's not it's like a food additive desert but whatever the food additive Oasis right yeah we H we have the worst Food system uh in the world and we have all of the big food companies that are American food companies making better safer in products overseas for all these other countries and this is something that has to be addressed um first of all I believe that it is a moral obligation an ethical obligation if you can make your product safer then you should do that and not doing it is anti-American especially when it's an American company doing this and the worst part about it is that these food companies know their product is causing harm because 20 years ago when the Southampton study came out European Regulatory Agencies decided that they would put the cigarette type warning label on any product that contains dyes and when they did that these food manufacturers in America didn't want that warning label they said oh no we don't want to warn you know parents that this could cause hyperactivity so we're going to voluntarily remove these chemicals from our products and we're going to create a safer version for all of these other countries that right there is completely Sinister to find out that your product could cause this issue in children and decide not to change it across the board and that policy that unethical business practice has to stop with American companies and that's why we have targeted Kelloggs first with our campaign and me and other amazing Health leaders doctors activists are going to go after the entire food industry at this point because this is something that's happening not only with Kelloggs it's happening at McDonald's it's happening with PepsiCo it's happening with General Mills it's happening at craft Hines it's happening everywhere across the board and I want to send a huge message to the food industry that they can't get away with this anymore if they are already making a product that has less chemicals and is safer they have to do it for their own American citizens what's the story of the food industry over the last few decades how would you describe it we've created a toxic soup Chris over the last 50 or so years the majority of food chemicals that have been produced and put into our food supply have been invented for one sole purpose and that's to improve the bottom line of the food industry everything from a preservative chemical to an addictive chemical that makes you eat more of that product than you should the um the the mouth feel the emulsifiers the flavorings that trick your old factory SI system in your head um every time you open up a package or you rip open a a bag every single ingredient I would say 99% of them are there to make the food company's money and not improve our health and so the majority of foods in the grocery store right now I would say anything in a package or box or bag that doesn't have five or less ingredients is something that is literally harming your health because the ingredient itself first of all likely doesn't have safety data around it there's this underlying implication that when a food chemical or anything that's been introduced to the food supply go goes through rigorous testing at the FDA there is nobody at the FDA testing anything they actually look at the data that the food companies themselves produce and they just let it be called generally regarded as safe there's no one actually holding the food companies accountable and saying hey we need to look at these chemicals and see the safety data and prove that these chemicals are safe before we allow them in our food system is it a a hangover from previously food was just food it was something that you ate and maybe you wrapped it in plastic there are only so many degrees of perversion and molestation that you could do with food whereas for something like a drug if we're going to release a drug onto the market then we need to go through different trials and we need to do so on and so forth but that now it seems the uh level of manipulation that's happened to food and the different additives and the different preservatives and the different carrying methods that can be uh included in them and even the design of them too is the sort of the technology is getting to the stage where it can become very very far removed previously but we're still working with an old framework which is when food was largely just food and there was maybe a couple of different amendments that could be made this sort of I'm going to guess sort of 1900s to 60s model and then we start to Pivot a little bit more as food technology becomes more advanced is that kind of what's going on that it's just not held to the same rigor the other industries that people consume are because we assume well it's food food's just you know it's food well I mean there's a couple things at play here the food companies basically started to get bought up several years ago by the tobacco companies and the tobacco companies started to use the same technology that they learned on how to hook Americans to cigarettes and the world to cigarettes and basically use that same science and technology in in our in our brains when we would start to eat processed food and so they started to use this complicated kind of laboratory experiments where they would measure our Bliss point in our brain measure our taste response when we would eat a certain product everything down from the type of texture the product is a lot of people don't know that process foods are manufactured in a way for you to consume them very fast uh think about cheese balls for example they melt in your mouth right you just digest them so quick and so your body doesn't even have the time to catch up with it its own Society for you to stop and you end up eating half the bag right the same thing is with bread if you get grocery store bread a loaf of it it's so soft and so processed that you could eat five six seven slices of that in the same time it would take you to eat sour dough bread that you would make in your in your oven at home where you have to you know really chew through the crust you really have to you know take your time to chew it and eat it and your body in your Society hormones and everything start to work and you're like okay I've had enough bread but that's not the case with processed food it's literally manufactured so that you eat more than you should and everything from the texture to The Taste to the flavorings that they add and the different additives that they add I mean I want to talk about natural flavoring this is something that seems so innocuous that it it it it's on the label and you're like oh it's from nature it's natural flavoring but no it could be thousands of different chemicals under that label that create a flavor in your brain that you remember and that you crave and you taste that and you're like I have to eat one more and without that flavoring component the food manufacturers would would really be uh in in in a lot of hurt because we would stop eating just a little bit it's kind of I'm thinking about this from the standpoint of the food manufacturers that what we're asking them to do is almost make foods less palatable they need to be less enjoyable you think well who wants that who wants food to be less enjoyable surely the job of a food design company is to make foods that are tasty and people enjoy them and they want to have them and sure maybe they get them to eat more and that's you know capitalism or whatever so is it your sance that there is a a step change in how they've been able to hack our physiology our um allory system our texture detection or ification as it's known um they've been able to get in and play now sort of outside the bounds of what what is reasonable for food companies to do because assuming I'm I'm going to guess that you're not going to say all foods need to taste like gravel and it should make the experience as unenjoyable as possible for everybody involved like listen real food does not taste like gravel right I mean I I eat a real food diet I love everything that I have for breakfast lunch and dinner I think it tastes amazing but I I stay the same way my health is is is awesome because I'm eating real food with real nutrition and there's and my body isn't being subjected to these food industry tricks that have happened at a level that I can't even comprehend I mean our entire food system has been weaponized against the human body to the point now our rates of chronic disease are astronomical I mean like literally we were going to have a situation where we are going to break down as a human society unless we take a look at this and see what's been done and people know truth how much do you lay at the feet of ultra processed calorie dense hyperpalatable foods that are easy for people to find consume and eat too much of and how much do you lay at the feet of these specific ingredients and endocrine disrupting uh effects and so on and so forth it seems to me that most of the arguments come from either a overc consumption side leading to higher bmis Downstream from that lots of health problems but then there's this sort of other area which is maybe to do with what the constituent parts of these foods and so on and so forth how do you come to think about these two areas I mean both of them are synergestic you know both of them are problematic and you know you've got on one hand the overc consumption of food that that is not nutritious it's actually not doing anything for your mitochondria in your body uh it's leading to metabolic syndrome and that leads to so many different chronic diseases um so what's metabolic syndrome sorry oh metabolic syndrome is um a condition that happens in your body that basically turns on factors for diabetes and cancer and heart disease um it it basically is when the organs in your body stop functioning your liver your pancreas other other parts of your digestive system actually stop functioning so that you become more insulin sensitive you become more prone to cancer you become uh more reluctant to have heart disease and so this is something that Dr Casey means and CI means talk about in their book good energy that this is something that is literally attacking the entire body when we're eating this food and and it's up to us to really know the truth about what this food is and and and if it is even food I mean can you even call it that at that point when it's you know 50 60 different chemicals in a in a Subway sandwich or you know in a a Chick-fil-A sandwich for that matter um it's it's something that we have to take a a good look at in terms of how these chemicals interchange with each other but here's why I think I've been effective at getting people's attention because I've broken down these chemicals for people to understand and I've told them why they're there and why the food industry is using them and they decide on their own that hey I'm not going to be part of this experiment anymore I don't want that chemical in my body if it if it is taken out in a study whether it causes hyperactivity or if it's linked to cancer or if it has some endocrine disrupting property those are all reasons not to consume those chemicals and I think those are strong reasons but what that does also is it puts a note in the person's brain of like wait a minute I shouldn't eat that much of this food either and so they don't bring it in their house as much and so for me my my methodology has always been ingredients you read the ingredients if you don't recognize the ingredient you don't understand it you need to go find out why and this is part of my book feeding you lies at the end I take people through a three-part question that they need to sit down and every time they sit down to eat they need to ask themselves number one what are the ingredients number two are these ingredients nutritious number three where the ingredients come from if you can't answer those three questions about what you're eating you need to go find out and when you go find out you will learn so much about your diet and your food that you will automatically start to make better choices and you don't need to be a nutritionist or a food scientist or anything to know if whe whether those ingredients are nutritious or not because if you know what the ingredient is and I'll give you a really good example in Breads in a lot of processed foods you'll see this ingredient and nobody knows why it's there unless they were to actually go look it up and teach themselves it's monod diglycerides okay this is a food industry manufactured product that they used to replace trans fats when the FDA banned trans fats because it was linked to 10,000 heart attacks a year and um in several deaths okay when they banned this chemical partially hydrogenated oils from our our food system the food manufacturers had to find a way to to still preserve oil and products and they came up with this monod diglycerides and so it still even has you know Trace Amounts of trans fats in it and it's a a chemical they're using from a preservation standpoint if you see that on a product that you're eating when you're when you sit down to eat you should automatically know that's not for my health that's not for my nutrition that's not going to serve my body that's there for the food industry and so if you start to make decisions hey I'm not going to buy products with those chemicals anymore you're automatically going to eliminate several thousand different products on the grocery store shelves and it's it's absolutely a critical thing people have to learn what are your hit list of what are the biggest concerns you've got in terms of ingredients you've just mentioned one there BHT was something else uh so we're talking about I guess packaging um what are the main culprits I'm aware that there's probably an awful lot what are the ones that are carrying most of the weight and doing most of the damage in your opinion yeah any kind of processed seed oil so cotton seed oil canola oil corn oil soy oil the majority of those come from genetically engineered seeds that are designed to withstand heavy doses of glyphosate which has now been linked to cancer in many different court cases across the United States and and awarded juries uh I'm sorry plaintiffs billions of dollars okay so this is close shut case on our our oils are being produced with this very toxic chemical then the way the oils are actually extracted they're extracting with hexane and different chemicals deodorizers and bleach agents before they get to the supermarket and the FDA unfortunately does not monitor the residues of things like hexane that are left in a lot of these oils not to mention cotton seed oil oil is something that is actually produced from the textile industry this is not even regulated like a food it's a textile so it has way worse pesticides and chemicals allowed for use on Cotton but they found out that they could use this byproduct in our food system and it's actually one of the what what was the main ingredient in Crisco and uh in trans fats for so long until I think a lot of Manufacturers have started to remove cotton seed Al although you see it all the time it's everywhere and this is something that is pervasive in our food supply and so when I'm looking for a product to buy on the Shelf I look for things made with olive oil I look things for made with coconut oil I look for things made with avocado oil and that's about it and I use grass-fed butter and ghee at home to cook with and I eliminate all seed oils so that's like the first thing that you'd want to do the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup not only is that also made from genetically engineered corn and have all those chemicals associated with the crops but the way it's produced also disrupts your it primes you for metabolic syndrome it primes your body for insulin uh insulin resistance and so this is something you want to take out of your diet and this is you you'll find everywhere it's in Coca-Cola it's in soda it's in the majority of things that you find on grocery store shelves unfortunately then you want to look at sorry go ahead no no no no I'm I'm enthralled keep going and then you want to look at all of the different artificial ingredients that are allowed in food I'll give you a great example red number three was banned in cosmetics because it caused cancer but when the when they were ready to ban it in food the alcohol industry lobbied the FDA and said no you need to allow it still in food because it makes our Mar Marino cherries that we have in all of our popular alcoholic drinks red and so we need to keep those marido CH cherries with that red number three die so you need to still allow it in food so you can't use it in lipstick but it's still allowed in food and that shows you what a wild wild west kind of situation we have with our government agencies and how they're completely co-opted by industry and one of the things that I think needs to happen immediately at the FDA is remove all industry funding from the FDA and it should be a government-funded uh uh or organization it should not have any type of um industry funding coming into it talk to me about the conflict of interest in studies and food scientists and stuff like that well one of the things that has happened recently and I wrote about it in my book feeding you lies is the food industry will use groups that look very reputable to defend their chemicals and their their food greed policies right they will hire corporate uh you know different organizations like I'll give you one great example the uh the American Council of science and health sounds so reputable sounds so like you yes we need to listen to the American Council of science and health but this is an organization that has taken funding it it was it's like the who's who of Corporations everyone from Big Pharma big chem and big food they've taken money from Kelloggs they've taken money from cocaa Cola they've taken money from bear they've taken money from senta McDonald's I mean it is insane and their main objective is to do character assassination on anyone who is speaking out about their products and then to also confuse the public into thinking consuming these chemicals and these foods are completely safe and they just released a hit piece on myself and Eva Mendes who has been yeah you saw it so huge supporter of uh our campaign on Kelloggs and Dr will Cole and and this is what they do and back in the day when I was going up against a lot of these food Giants I was very naive I didn't know that I would literally have paid organizations trying to take me down and it was it was it was pretty much right after I think I got Subway to remove azodicarbonamide a chemical that you find in yoga mats and shoe rubber you know if you turn a yoga mat sideways and you look at the the the air bubbles it's like evenly it looks like a Subway sand oh no well well it's it evenly disperses the air bubbles in rubber well it does the same thing in bread and so they wanted the bread to look and feel the same in every single Subway you know that's that's what fast food is right you want it to be the same in uniform and so uh this was a chemical they were not using in other countries uh if you got caught using it in Singapore you got fine $450,000 and I petitioned Subway to remove this chemical because I didn't think eating that chemical was eating fresh and Michelle Obama at the time had partnered with Subway in her let's move campaign and I was like wait a minute does she not know the truth about Subway that there's close to 50 ingredients in a in the in the piece of bread at Subway like she needs to to know and so I started this petition and it went so viral that the company by the end of the week made the decision to remove the chemical and not only that but every single bread manufacturer in America virtually removed the chemical too so we shut down the azodicarbonamide chemical Factory okay so you can only imagine how much money was involved with reformulation removing that chemical changing all the ingredient lists all the packaging all the things that the food industry to do at that point you're a big spanner in the works of a lot of the operations yeah they were not they were not happy and so as a result I started to be targeted by these organizations these front groups and paid for in quote unquote independent experts that started to show up in every single article that was detailing my work on one hand it would say you know Bonnie has gotten these chemicals out with her food babe Army and all these concerned citizens and on the other hand she doesn't know what she's talking about she's pseudo scientific she's got no education she she has no right to talk about any of these chemicals and uh she uh is dumb as a doornail uh she's a food bimbo uh she gets no that was that was the headline of one of the biggest lobbyists against me and and for the food industry and um he's he's quote unquote do he's his nickname is Dr Evil because he he does that I mean he was against mothers for drunk drivers I mean he's just an evil man but uh that was a headline in the I think it was the Washington Post food bimbo um uh another one is she gets on all these programs because she's easier to look at that was written by a professor in Migel University in Canada who was getting paid by Monsanto bear uh to to attack me which I found out through Freedom of Information request acts that I submitted to his university uh these are the conversations that we're having to destroy my character at the time and because I was so unaware of what was going to go down taking on the industry I became very scared because they went hardcore I mean death threats rape threats people coming by my house every single talk I gave that was a public talk had to have security there because people were trying to shut down the conversation presumably that's not operators from Kelloggs or Monsanto sending you that directly presumably that's people who are Downstream from the news articles and that have read the criticisms of you and stuff like that yeah so it it was being funded by the chemical and food industry however they were using these front groups that you can't tell what the industry fundings happening behind the scenes because they hide it and we weren't able to discover a lot of this until we were able to see it through Foya documentation that this was actually happening and then on top of that there was and this just happened three weeks ago Lighthouse reports released a ex expose about a private social network that was being funded and directed by the communications director at Monsanto to hold information about critics to the chemical and Food Industries personal data personal information your my address my parents phone numbers my parents names my spouse's name uh on my profile a three-page dosier on how and and doxing information on given to people of the chemical industry in O the entire chemical industry to use this information against me anytime that my name would come up and this is this was just found out um three weeks ago and it's an incredible investigation I'm still actually comprehending at all that this even was allowed to exist but the worst part of it all was that the government was funding this through a program called usaid and so the government and the chemical corporations were working hand inand against activists like myself and other people were in there too notable people like Michael pollen Vonda NASA other activists who have spoken out about the food companies so suffice it to say they're not your number one fan probably at the moment you know you know the New York Times coin me the you know Public Enemy Number One of the food industry and I take that badge with a lot of Pride because honestly it's it's it's something that I I've had to I've had to Grapple with becoming an activist because it's been very hard on me personally in terms of being able to withstand these attacks keep going and keep sharing this information and not letting it distract me and for a while I would say about 10 years ago it was very distracting to the point where I almost stopped and it wasn't until I really took a moment and and and went inside and prayed and decided that what I was doing was bigger than myself that what I was doing was not about Bonnie The Vessel me as a person this was for the health of the world and for the right for people to know the truth about what's happened to the food industry and I dug deep into the power and the passion that I have because I remember the little girl who I was so sick on nine prescription drugs hitting rock bottom and wanting to change with my health and I didn't know where to start and I didn't know what to do and thank goodness I found out the truth about the food and industry and removed the processed foods from my diet and went to real food and now realize a level of Health that I never thought was possible I don't think I would have been here today alive had I continued the lifestyle that I was on and there's so many people out there that are like me and they continue to walk around completely weaponized by these food chemicals and these different um um ingredient that are in their body that are wre wreaking havoc on them and they are very trusting of the food industry you know when my parents came here to the United States in the 1960s they didn't know any of this information no one knew this information that this was being done to our food supply they were they were like wow you could get a hamburger and McDonald's for a dollar this is fantastic I could feed my kids this is amazing very fast you know I'm busy working I'm trying to make a name for myself I'm trying to you know my my parents were both teachers and so they were always always working and and it was like they just wanted to feed their kids like real you know just any kind of food and it wasn't they didn't know it was so fake and now this information because of the internet and because of social media I feel like we have a really unique point in time right now where we can wake up the world and something that is so fabulous that is happening in the political landscape that people are listening and now not only the Democrats who who who who it was largely a Democrat liberal issue to talk about the environment and the health and these chemicals the other side is now talking about it too and I can't think of anything better for this country than for everyone to know the truth about the food industry and it has been the most exciting time of my career in the last two months because of this happening I mean I literally when I saw on national news political candidates talking about chemicals in the way that they were my my job was just wide open I just couldn't even believe it and not only has this kind of woken up the world but it's now a time where I really think that we might have an opportunity because because of this widespread awareness to enact real change you mentioned before uh you had a run in with uh Chick-fil-A uh I quite like Chick-fil-A can you just explain for some of the people listening what are your lowest ranked most concerning uh American food establishments and then where what are some options that people can go to that you think are a little bit better so let me just get this straight you like Chick-fil-A I love the taste of Chick-fil-A it tastes good well everyone loves the taste of Chick-fil-A I my mouth Still Waters when you say the words Chick-fil-A so you like Chick-fil-A oh it's fantastic are you kidding me and they've engineered it that way the second ingredient in a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich is mono sodium glutamate mono sodium glutamate MSG is added to Chick-fil-A so that you remember the flavor your mouth starts watering you want to have that sandwich you you you love it right and MSG is one of those additives that when they're studying obesity related diseases they give to rats to make them fat so that they eat more than they should and they crave the flavor and they keep eating and eating and eating and so for me when I found out that was the second ingredient at Chick-fil-A I lost my you know I was mad I was really mad and I was so mad that I wrote an article called chemical filet or Chick-fil-A because it had close to a hundred ingredients not I mean that that's just one of the problematic ingredients in in Chick-fil-A but several others and and it went so viral that the company reached out to me and invited me to their headquarters and when they invited me to their headquarters I had to take off for my regular day job I was not when I was write when I initially was starting my blog food babe I was doing it just be for my own passion so it wasn't it wasn't to make money or do anything like that it was you know I was I was a a banker you know I was a consultant that was my day job and this is what I was passionate about and what I would write about in the evening and on the weekends and so when my article went viral and they invited me to the headquarters to consult and I had to take off work it was that moment that I was like wait a minute I'm Consulting all these big financial institutions this doesn't really mean much to me but Consulting with Chick-fil-A and changing their ingredients like that's real change and like wow I could really change the food industry and that's when after that meeting and the subsequent changes that Chick-fil-A made as a result of the that meeting convinced me that I should quit quit my job to do this full-time okay so who else is on the list I've seen floating around uh a McDonald's comparison between fries in like the UK and Europe and in America uh you've already mentioned Subway who else is on the The Hit List and and what are you worried about that they've got in the foods so yeah let's just talk about McDonald's you've got McDonald's in the UK three ingredients and then salt is optional very simple here in the United States it's over 14 and you've got the chemical called dimethyl polysiloxane it's an ingredient that can be preserved with falah according to the FDA although there's no safety data on this chemical it's the main ingredient in Silly Putty and when when it's combined with tbhq which is another crazy chemical that's a preservative that you'll find in Reese's Peanut Butter Cups here in the United States but not in Japan um this TBH Q ingredient turns on your immune response so you become more allergenic to your surroundings in in your environment and if you're already allergic to something it triggers that so it triggers are they uh preservatives what what's the justification for them being in the food presumably they're not in there for no reason so the tbhq is a preservative for the oil and dimethyl polysiloxane is a anti- foaming agent so that they don't have to change the oil as often at fast food places and and dimethyl poly soloxine by the way is is in a lot of fast food french fries not just McDonald's um and this is something that you will also find which when I did drink soda I always thought a fountain soda always tasted better I don't know why but you will find this in a fountain Diet Coke where you will not find it on the label of a Diet Coke that you buy in a bottle when it's coming out of a fountain they add dimethyl polysiloxane to Diet Coke who's better who who where can I eat that you're not going to shout at me for going to well first of all I just want you to stop eating a Chick-fil-A well look this give me give me another option where else am I gonna go um where do you live Austin Texas okay gosh you have so many good places to eat well you go to True Food Kitchen uh you uh you can go to Chipotle Chipotle is a great option they removed all GMOs as a result of one of my campaigns as well um and they have probably the least amount of chemicals in their food in terms of a fast food uh sweet green do you have sweet green there they multiple yeah they removed all seed oils that's a great option for a fast food what about flower child love flower child uh a lot of their ingredients were organic they've also removed most seed oils um you know I would also say make your own food Chris come on you know again no no no look I so this is a point I really I really wanted to get into which I think is for the few food purists out there and you know Callie's been on the show he's fantastic um I'm really interested in the work that you're doing at the moment I've been at dinner with RFK a bunch of times it's it's great to hear this mostly whole real food from a variety of sources as unmolested as possible I get it but I think that the biggest barrier to entry to a lot of people a lot of people that will listen to the show people like me it's just convenience right we're busy um we need to be able to balance the things that we want to do in life and I know I know that you know if you eat sufficiently badly talking about well what I'm doing is I'm saving myself time because I'm so busy it's like you're going to lose time if you get sick in future so I understand that it's a value trade but I think that we of need to meet people where they're at and where I'm at is someone who a lot of the time doesn't have all that much time to actually get into the nuts and bolts of of cooking stuff and you know there's I guess two two elements there first off how can someone shop better in the supermarket and secondly uh what are the labels you've mentioned that there's some perverse incentives uh regulatory bodies and agencies and stuff what USDA is USDA any good I've heard that organic doesn't actually mean all that good but maybe it does I've heard that nonong GMO is maybe not all it's cracked up to be what are the things that people should be looking for Beyond not too many ingredients in the food obviously how can people shop more effectively and what should they be looking for on packaging yeah so let me just describe to you my favorite fast food first of all whenever I am strapped for time this is my favorite fast food a smoothie and this is one of the reasons why I started my company truvani where I created the protein powder with the least amount of unnecessary chemicals as possible with all real food and you know like our vanilla has five real ingredients all that you would recognize and so I start off with that but then I add fresh greens whatever I have growing in my yard and if you don't have a garden no big deal just buy greens from the store celery cucumber lemon ginger and then I add fruit and sometimes avocado for a little bit of fat or some hemp seeds and that's it and that shake is so delicious and so nutritious it's got all of my vegetables it's got the protein it's got fruit it's got everything all the fiber that I need in there because everything's intact it's in a smoothie and I consume that it takes me less than 10 minutes to make and and it's all real food ingredients and it's fast it's much faster than going through the drive-thru and it's much better on your body so that's my pack for fast food and I almost have that every single day for lunch because I'm working through lunch my I have two kids things are busy right um the second thing is when you're shopping at the grocery store choose the perimeter you know all the fruits and vegetables nuts seeds legumes um whole grains like quinoa oats um brown rice or or even regular rice is fine um just choose organic because organic has less arsenic um pasture eggs uh pasture raised or grass-fed uh cheese I I do a lot of goat cheese uh that I love because goat cheese is just easier to digest I I love um any kind of yogurts um that are grass-fed I like I love a coconut yogurt if you're vegan that's called Coco June great and so delicious they have an unsweetened vanilla version that's fantastic um I eat a lot of chia seeds um different nuts and then you know Meats make sure they're grass-fed pasture raised you can order any kind of sustainable meat now on the internet and have it shipped to your door Frozen and have it ready stock to to go and all you have to do is remember to defrost it really you can you can defrost things fast too but remember to defrost things the night before just plan out your meals so that you're not stuck in that situation of oh gosh I'm so hungry the only thing that I can eat right now is this fast food because I don't want to think about what to eat and how to prepare it and do whatever and you just need to come up with five or six meals that you can repeat at home that your family loves and this is one of the reasons why I've written two cookbooks food bab kitchen and food babe family with things that the whole family can sit down and eat you're not making different things for each person and being a short order cook you're eating one meal as a family everybody likes it it's it's nutritious it's real food and it's fast I don't like spending you know all day in the kitchen and you know I want things to be 30 minutes or less and so a lot of my recipes are that way so I would highly recommend that number one you start cooking at home you pick the ingredients yourself you know what you're eating that's going to be the the best solution to the situation that we're in in terms of our food system and that's the way I've decided to be revolutionary in my own life and to live this way is to be you know it's very unconven to live a real food lifestyle because every time you go out of your house you're being inundated with these processed foods everything from the checkout at the grocery store the fast food convenience places all the places in the airport uh all the places at any kind of event whether it's a sporting event or a show or anything else it's always pure crap you have to make a revolutionary act in your own life to say you know what I'm not going to be part of that system anymore I'm going to bring my own food to these places I'm GNA take my own food on the airplane I'm GNA take my own food into the show um because they don't have anything worth eating how do you advise people to deal with what I imagine will be an increasing problem as your uh platform grows and maybe people are feeling this today which is sort of health anxiety you know if they're permanently very Vigilant on the lookout maybe it's got mono phosphoric whatever the [ __ ] in it um how one how do you advise because it's it's this is going to be a slow transition for a lot of people it's not and that day the clouds parted and I listened to vanie talk and and she she said to me that and I never ate processed foods again no you you know you're going to have you're going to be at a baseball game and be starving hungry you're going to be on a road trip and you're going to end up doing this stuff you're going to be at someone's party and you don't get to chew oh I'm like you're taking us out for dinner and I'm going to bring my own thermos with like hot food from home like that's not going to happen so how do you advise people to you know take on board what you're saying with the right amount of uh concern that they probably need to have whilst not going right my [ __ ] life's over I might as well die now right well first of all you just need to stop making excuses because honestly in order to live a healthy life in the system that we have we have to be we have to have those situations that you might bring your own food to a party you know your own dish that you eat right because you know everything else is crap but you're contributing to the party you're still there you're having a good time like you may have to do those C situations I'm just going to have to say because depending upon the lifestyle that you live if you're in those situations a lot that can really take a toll on your body right so if you are in control of your food I would say 80% of the time you're going to be in a good shape and then so that allows you that other 20% to like be in those situations where you're caught with your your pants down right and you don't have some snack available or some food available and you need to eat something and and I've been in those situations where like literally there's nothing to eat that I would choose normally and sometimes I just decide to fast right I mean hey I can wait till the till I get to where I'm going and get something better but majority of times you can make better choices there's always a banana there's always an apple there's always some plain almonds available at the airport right there's always an option for a one ingredient food and so that's what I I tell people to do and and again if you're in these circumstances a lot then you need to really make a choice whether you want to stop to do this more effectively yeah yeah yeah so I think um you remember when intermittent fasting became a really big thing in the bodybuilding World there was another version called carb night carb backloading was a a version of this where you would F basically macro fasting throughout the day and then you would have your carobs on an evening time what most people are doing is they're setting very easy to follow rules that restrict them in simple ways bright lines in the ground no decision needs to be made I get the sense that the recent transition to uh specifically diets like carnivore and then most recently the Hipster trendy version meat and fruit uh which is what I'm doing currently uh I think that that is kind of the equivalent of the elimination Di thing which is bright lines in the ground but instead of aiming to get you into a calorie deficit what it's aiming to do is restrict the the vectors of potential infection from foods that have been highly processed if you go look if I just eat six things I I I can just sort my health out for a while so I'm I'm detoxing from a variety of different problems at the moment autoimmune America does not like uh foreigners uh shock horror no matter what uh people on the right May criticize Democrats definitely this environment is not very conducive to immigrants coming in uh because it tries to kill you uh through the food and through the building standards and through the climate and through the insects and through everything else uh my point being I would not be surprised if we see more people taking up these more extreme quasi elimination style diets very restrictive style diets in terms of what you're eating uh not from the bro I'm going to get jacked and and look at how lean I am perspective but more so from a well if I only have a very small number of things in my diet I'm hopefully going to be able to eliminate some of the stuff that was maybe messing with my health yeah you know I think the reason why some elimination diets work is because you remove so many foods from your diet and so it ends up working in terms of like losing weight or whatever but then when you add those Foods back that's when you gain the weight back and you end in this like kind of yo-yo cycle and the only thing they found researchers have found that actually work full-time and long term is removing processed foods altogether right if you eat real food and let's say less than 10% of it's processed that is the diet that literally withstands all of the other diet literature out there far as far as what actually works long term and keeps you off of that yo-yo dieting strain and I've seen that in my own body having two children where I you know I was a little concerned I was like wow I've gained 40 pounds having this child like am I going to be able to lose this am am i g to be one of those people that just can't lose it and it naturally left my body because I went my diet didn't change I'm still eating real food I'm trying to eat as real as possible because I'm now nourishing my baby baby through breast milk and it just went off naturally I didn't have to diet I didn't have to work go on some workout program I didn't didn't have to do anything extreme it's because I was eating real food this entire time and it's why I've been able to maintain my weight now for 20 years and and not have to do anything extreme and so like I my my plea to all of the people out there that are struggling with weight is go to real food because real food will send the signals to your brain for you to stop eating it will send the signals to your body to be healthy it will elim you will get off your prescription drugs you will start to realize a level of Health that you never thought was possible and even more than all of that those aesthetic reasons right and internal health reasons I think there's a bigger thing at play I don't think people's brains can function at the highest level that it needs to function until you get real nutrition and real food and you will not find out who you are meant to be in this world and give back to the world in the way that you're supposed to until you get your body completely clean of all of these chemicals fny Harry ladies and gentlemen fny I am watching with a a combination of Fascination and trepidation uh for this stuff that you're doing and the wars that you uh insist on getting yourself into where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the stuff that you're getting up to just come on over to foodbabe.com I'm the food bab on all social media and uh thank you for having me Chris thank yeah I appreciate you thank you thank you thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap