Americans Are Not Eating ‘Real Food’—Here’s What You Need to Know: Vani Hari
What this video covers
Vani Hari, the activist known as the Food Babe, sits down with Jan Jekielek on The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders in January 2025, days before the Trump inauguration. She lays out her core case — that American food companies sell versions of their products in the U.S. with additives they remove abroad — and discusses her Kellogg’s campaign, the FDA’s record, and what she wants from the incoming Kennedy and Makary leadership. Hari also tells her backstory: an appendix emergency in her early 20s that pushed her to investigate her diet.
Key points
- Hari says Kellogg’s and other U.S. companies remove artificial food dyes in Canada, Australia, India, and Europe — where, she notes, dyes carry a warning label stating they “may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children” — but keep them in the American versions.
- She argues the FDA “is asleep at the wheel,” saying the agency admitted it had not reviewed artificial dye safety data in over 10 years while children’s consumption of the dyes rose 500%.
- Hari cites what she describes as a regulatory gap of more than 10,000 chemicals allowed in the U.S. food supply versus roughly 400 in Europe.
- She recounts delivering more than 400,000 petition signatures to Kellogg’s headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan, and says the ensuing boycott cut Froot Loops sales 54% over 12 weeks and Kellogg’s stock price 14% (her figures).
- Hari points to Red 3 — banned in cosmetics for over 30 years but still permitted in food at the time of the interview — as a “common sense” fix, and says her first-day ask of a new FDA commissioner would be Europe-style warning labels on products containing artificial dyes.
- She describes petitioning Subway to remove azodicarbonamide, a dough conditioner she notes is banned in Europe and Australia, and compares U.S. McDonald’s fries (11 ingredients, including dimethylpolysiloxane) with the U.K. version (three ingredients, plus optional salt).
- Hari says she consulted for Chick-fil-A, which removed several chemicals at her urging but kept MSG — “they should actually call it chemical-fil-A,” she jokes — and argues tobacco companies that bought food makers applied cigarette addiction science to processed food, a theory now being tested in a Pennsylvania teenager’s lawsuit against 11 food companies.
- At the close, host Jan Jekielek reads an FDA statement saying the agency conducts about 150 ingredient safety evaluations a year, agrees better oversight of food chemicals is needed, and acknowledges its post-market assessment work “remains underresourced.”