Big Food Corporations Include Unhealthy Dyes and Toxins For Americans - But Not Others, w/ Vani Hari
What this video covers
In this October 2024 segment of The Megyn Kelly Show, host Megyn Kelly interviews Vani Hari on what the show frames as a double standard: big food corporations using dyes and additives in products for Americans that they don’t use for consumers in other countries. Hari gives examples she says illustrate the gap — McDonald’s fries with 11 ingredients in the US versus 3 ingredients abroad, and Skittles carrying 10 artificial dyes plus titanium dioxide in the US while UK versions drop them (she claims titanium dioxide is banned in Europe over DNA-damage concerns).
Hari’s broader argument, as she lays it out, is that since 1958 the number of approved food additives in the US has grown from roughly 800 to over 10,000, versus about 400 approved ingredients in Europe, and she points to rising disease rates as the reason to act. She also discusses the pushback push: consumer pressure on Kellogg’s, which in 2015 pledged to remove artificial dyes from cereals by 2018 but, she says, never did — instead inventing new cereals themed on children’s properties like Baby Shark and Disney’s Little Mermaid. She cites the 2010 Southampton study as the basis for Europe’s warning labels on artificial-dye products (“may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children”) and echoes Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Senate roundtable line that if another country did this to Americans “it would be considered an act of war.”
The segment aired a month before the 2024 presidential election, at the height of her Kellogg’s campaign — that same month she led a protest at Kellogg’s Michigan headquarters, delivering hundreds of thousands of petition signatures gathered through her “Cancel Kellogg’s” campaign demanding the company remove artificial dyes from its cereals.
Key points
- October 2024 Megyn Kelly Show segment on the US-vs-abroad ingredient double standard — Hari’s framing, presented as such.
- Hari’s examples: McDonald’s fries with 11 US ingredients vs. 3 abroad; Skittles with 10 artificial dyes plus titanium dioxide in the US, neither in UK versions — her claims.
- She says approved US food additives grew from ~800 in 1958 to over 10,000 today, versus ~400 approved in Europe.
- She argues Kellogg’s broke its 2015 pledge to remove artificial dyes by 2018, and says the company built new cereals around children’s properties like Baby Shark and Disney’s Little Mermaid.
- She cites the 2010 Southampton study behind Europe’s warning labels on artificial food dyes.
- Aired during her October 2024 Kellogg’s protest, when she delivered hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to company headquarters.