'Food Babe': Artificial food dyes are 'NOT SAFE'
What this video covers
In this January 2026 Fox News segment from “My View with Lara Trump,” Vani Hari shares her personal health story and explains how it led her to food activism and the “Make America Healthy Again” cause. Filmed at a farmers market in North Carolina, where she grew up as the child of two immigrant parents, she describes a fast-food childhood and says that by her early 20s she was on nine prescription drugs and had undergone two surgeries — “I hit rock bottom,” she says. She credits nutrition books with the concept that most middle-aisle grocery foods are “dead,” and says switching to whole, real food cleared her brain and made her a food activist.
The segment’s headline claim is that artificial food dyes are “not safe.” Hari has made dye removal a signature campaign for over a decade, from the 2013 Kraft petition to her 2024 protests against Kellogg’s, and in this appearance she ties that fight directly to the broader MAHA agenda. The segment also walks through the new federal nutrition guidelines: she praises the guidance to avoid highly processed foods and cook at home, welcomes the return of butter and saturated fats she says were unfairly replaced by trans fats and engineered oils, and highlights the guidelines’ inclusion of fermented foods.
The timing matters. The interview aired in January 2026, months after Hari spoke at the Department of Health and Human Services’ April 2025 press conference announcing plans to phase out petroleum-based synthetic food dyes — a moment when her long-running campaign had moved from Change.org petitions to federal policy. “This is the first time in my lifetime that the government actually told the truth about what is happening to the food system,” she says, and thanks Secretary Kennedy directly.
Key points
- Hari recounts her personal health history — a fast-food childhood, nine prescription drugs and two surgeries by her early 20s, then “rock bottom” — and says it drove her toward food activism.
- She argues artificial food dyes are “not safe” and positions their removal as central to MAHA.
- She walks through the new nutrition guidelines, praising the shift toward avoiding ultra-processed foods, cooking at home, butter, fermented foods, and organic sourdough.
- On affordability, she says she learned to eat real food on a budget after quitting her full-time job: frozen produce, batch-cooking meals ahead, and meal planning.
- She notes she campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 and frames MAHA as a bipartisan cause, saying people should put politics aside.
- The segment aired in January 2026, after she appeared at HHS’s April 2025 event on phasing out synthetic dyes.