Health
The Food Babe
In this episode of 'My Ins Phase,' hosts Michael and Aubrey delve into the controversial figure Vani Hari, known as 'The Food Babe.' They explore her rise to fame through food acti...
The Food Babe
Health •
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Interactive Transcript
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[♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
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Hey, Michael.
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Not brave.
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Wait.
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Are you ready to tag us in?
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Oh, I thought we were doing the, uh, if folks could kill.
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I think you were about to ask me what do I know about the food babe.
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Very little.
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Oh, do you want me to, uh, I'll be Peter today.
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Uh, Michael.
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Aubrey.
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What do you know about the food babe?
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Well, I already said very little.
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Welcome to my ins phase.
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The podcast where we know very little about what we're talking about.
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Boom!
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Boom!
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It doesn't cut into the same way.
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Welcome to my ins phase.
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The podcast that is made from the same material as yoga mats.
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Ugh.
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This was like all I know of this person.
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So I'm going to be just killing time till we get to that controversy.
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It was also almost all I knew of this person as well.
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Because you mentioned her real name the other day and I was like, what?
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Yes, her name is Vani Hari.
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Uh, she has been running campaigns usually petition drives that are focused on food
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corporations for more than a decade.
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Interesting.
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That approach has garnered her quite a following.
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She has currently 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 2.3 million followers on Instagram.
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Mm hmm.
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She has targeted Anisar Bush, Kraft, General Mills, Kellogg's, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, Subway,
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Starbucks, In-N-Out, just a, it's a really long list.
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That all sounds bitching to me except for the goals that she sets and how she achieves
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it.
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Except for what she's doing and who she is as a person.
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So today, Michael, I'm Michael Humps.
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Oh my God.
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I'm going to love she got to far into it.
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It's not like we even say like what our little qualifications are.
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Just like here's my name as a person.
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We don't even have really a schedule anymore.
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Yeah, we don't, it's not a real show.
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It's not a real show.
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It's not a fake tagline and it just gotten less real from there.
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If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance
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phase.
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You can also subscribe through Apple Podcast Premium subscription.
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It's the same audio, content, stuff.
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Michael, today, I'm taking you into the world of the food base.
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You're taking me back to the blogosphere.
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And I think that, oh my God, shit is leaving my brain again, Michael.
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This cognitive decline.
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The podcast.
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We are in our 40s.
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A bunch of the sort of rhetorical devices that she uses are used by lots of folks in
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this space.
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So it seems useful to sort of break down and think about like what are the components
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of what she's doing here and what are the red flags that folks might be able to apply
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to other health and wellness media and go, oh, wait a minute.
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Yeah.
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So Michael, Bobri.
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Vani Hari was born in 1979 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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Her parents immigrated to the US from India.
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Her dad was an engineering professor at UNC Charlotte and her mom was a high school math
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teacher.
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Vani herself goes on to graduate from UNC Charlotte with a degree in computer science.
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And when I read that, I was like, I don't know why, but this makes intuitive sense.
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There's something going on with computer science majors.
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I know.
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Having like a bizarre sense of certainty that they excel at lots of fields.
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We need to get kids like reading like liberal arts should again.
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We need more wokeness in the schools.
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After college, she goes on to work as a consultant, a management consultant at Accenture.
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That's also foreshadowing.
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No offense to the management consultant's out there, but it's like if you look at the
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trajectory of something, it's real bad.
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Her origin story as the quote unquote food babe is similar to many, many, many we have
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heard before.
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She talks about getting sick.
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She talks about changing what she hate and she talks about feeling better.
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And then she says I started looking into nutrition.
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So here is a synopsis of that origin story from a New York Times.
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Okay, peace.
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It says she had exama, asthma, stomach problems and severe food allergies, the last of which
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critics and at least one person who said she knew her growing up dispute because Miss
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Hari has advocated lying to servers about allergies to butter, dairy, corn and soy to avoid
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possible sources of genetically modified food.
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At age 23, she had appendicitis, something she said was caused by her lifestyle of poor
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nutrition.
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Though most experts say it is a random occurrence.
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She read books like spiritual nutrition and conscious eating and applied the skill she
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learned as an award-winning debater in high school to food.
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She read labels cleaned up her diet and saw results.
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Her exama, asthma and allergies went away and she said she was off all prescription drugs
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up to eight or nine depending on the season within three to four years.
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Yeah, this is like all of the greatest hits of maintenance phase.
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It's like a Voltron.
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Yeah, she's got a condition without sort of clear causes or clear treatments which often
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sends people googling and then Google gets you into the like swim with dolphins to cure
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everything rabbit hole.
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And then she gets into this like my diet will save me kind of thing.
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My lifestyle was killing me stuff and then into like spiritual world and then these weird
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claims of like I was on prescription drugs.
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Right.
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But then I stopped eating seed oils and now I'm not on any.
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What she does with that experience is go, ah, this made me feel better.
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We need to change the law.
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Yeah, I feel better because I stopped eating this thing.
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So we should change how they make this thing that I don't eat anymore.
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What was the actual diet that she switched to?
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Was it anything specific or just certain foods?
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She's a little bit Dave Asprey style in that it's like a real sampler platter.
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Oh, yeah, it's GMOs.
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It's food colorings.
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It's additives.
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Okay.
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I always feel like there's this moment in an episode where I go like, do we just tip our
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hand and go, this person isn't good.
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And I think this is the moment you're not you're not pretending to be like this is a
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better.
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This person is a good.
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She's not.
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I mean, we're already getting like some of the woo woo stuff and some of the exaggerations.
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So like, I knew this was coming.
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What I will say, what we'll see in her pattern is that she reaches for like the biggest
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scariest and least understood concepts amongst her audience.
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Okay, nice.
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She's written two books and I read both of her books, Michael.
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Did you really?
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Yeah, I know.
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I know.
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Are you okay?
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I'm fine.
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They didn't end up being super relevant to the actual episode.
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So you wasted your time.
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I read these were nothing.
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You stopped eating seed oils months ago and you're like, why?
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What was it all for?
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I've cut out all the GMOs.
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What am I supposed to do now?
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But you feel amazing.
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Your energy is off the charts.
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She doesn't say this, but reading her work, I was left with the distinct impression that
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her what she calls here sort of like looking into health and nutrition stuff in that phase
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of her origin story was much more her googling from a place of like, I feel better.
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Why did this thing make me feel better?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Then I want to understand the full landscape of this issue and understand the nuances
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in the body of research.
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Right.
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You're gathering ammunition for something you already believe rather than doing like an
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open ended like, what does the science say about this?
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Yeah.
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It's the kind of googling that most of us do most of the time.
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Right?
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It's really just to be totally honest, right?
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You're like, you're googling like e-bike benefits rather than like, okay, what are the
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pros and cons?
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Yeah.
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She's not googling like eczema.
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Yeah.
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What are the treatments that are available?
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What's the body of research?
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She's googling quit GMO's treatment for eczema or like, improve your eczema.
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That's my, I don't know that.
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I don't have her search terms in front of me, of course I don't.
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But like, that's the impression that I got from reading her work was being like, I feel
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better.
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Why do I feel better?
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Yeah.
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I feel like anytime somebody says like, I do my own research like 90% of the time, that's
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what I assume they're doing.
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100% from there.
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She starts blogging under the name The Food Babe in 2011.
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Is she like 25 at this point?
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She's born in 79.
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So what are we talking?
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Yeah, 32.
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So she has like a whole life as like a management consultant before she starts this like
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influencing stuff.
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She's been a management consultant for like the better part of a decade at this point.
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She's doing well enough with the blog within one year that she is able to leave her full
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time corporate consulting job.
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Dude, AdSense, getting that AdSense dollars.
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Truly.
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So she's getting money from AdSense.
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She's getting money from affiliate marketing of products that she says are safe and above
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board.
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And, uh-oh, Michael, she also now sells her own line of protein powder called truvani,
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which you can get at Target and Whole Foods.
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Truvani?
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That's almost truvada.
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No, it's the word true and then her first name.
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Oh, so mine would be true, Michael.
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Trubbery.
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So the early days on the Food Babe blog are frankly wild as fuck.
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There was one post.
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I only found synopsies of this one.
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It didn't get archived on the way back machines.
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I couldn't find the original post.
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But there was one post that has been much discussed and much reported on called Food Babe
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Travel Essentials.
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No reason to panic on the plane.
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Okay.
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We were just talking about this.
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I'm an anxious flyer in a way that I didn't used to be.
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So maybe I can benefit from these tips.
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Okay, Michael, did you know, according to Vani Hari, that the air on a plane quote isn't
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pure oxygen.
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Either it's mixed with nitrogen.
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Oh, what?
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This is very alarming.
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It is alarming because air itself is about 78% of the nitrogen.
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And she just like didn't know.
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This is a wild thing to publish without like a very cursory Google.
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Just a Google.
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Yeah.
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So people started to critique it both in the comments and also like on Reddit, it sort
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of made its way far and wide to be like, what is going on with this lady?
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The New York Times interviewed her about this post.
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This was in 2015, so several years later.
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And here is what happened.
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She says all you seed oil guzzlers in my mentions right now stay metabolically impaired
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and torped.
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That's interesting.
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You're afraid of subflatmas.
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That's never not going to be funny to me.
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It says in her interview, Ms. Hari said she didn't remember the post.
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Okay.
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Which Mr. Cook brought up by name.
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She then said it would have disappeared from the blog because it was old.
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Weeks later, in an email, she admitted that it had been removed because of mistakes
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and said that she planned to start noting when she clarified or corrected posts.
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Ms. Hari said that these particular posts, which she wouldn't acknowledge as having been
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discredited, were a feeble exercise in nitpicking that detracted from her mission.
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If you're going to pick apart every little sentence I've written, she said her voice
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is trailing off.
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She added of her critics, they have to dig so far and deep to find something that will
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make me look crazy because what I'm saying now is so sane and so real.
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That's good.
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I'm too real.
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And my haters are going back to my posts.
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She is doing seed guzzlers in my mentions.
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This is what these people always do.
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She's doing all my haters.
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Become my waiters at the table of success.
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Another good quote from a terrible person.
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That's all the show is now.
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Oh my god, I don't know why that one gets me so hard every time.
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You could have just said that and saved us both some time.
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I wouldn't have to read this fucking alarmingly weird quote.
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That's a really, really strange response to just like a factual error.
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Also, like, factual errors get through.
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Like people, we've said dumb things on the show too.
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Like, factual errors happen.
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I feel like the bigger thing with like if you're following an influencer or something,
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if they can't just admit to a mistake, I'd be like, yeah, that was really cool.
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I don't know why I said that.
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Thank you to everybody who pointed it out.
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Like the fact that she can't even admit like all their nitpicking and finding all this garbage.
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But also it wasn't even, it wasn't wrong.
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And also I deleted it without saying anything.
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All of this stuff is just like weird.
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Just say that you made a mistake and move on.
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It's not that big of a deal.
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To me, these are the reactions in the comments of someone who is seeing this as like an attack
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on their character and not as like, this is a thing that happens.
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Every reporter under the sun has published something that was like incorrect in retrospect.
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Or you didn't catch it at the time or what?
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I heard a podcast recently called Colostrum Woon Juice.
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I heard about that one too.
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Unclearhoo.
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The next post we're going to talk about is from July 2012.
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It focused on microwaves.
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The previous one was not archived on the way back machine.
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This one is archived in the way back machine and I got a fucking screenshot for you.
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Ooh, it's got an arrow, okay.
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It's got images.
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So I would like for you to describe.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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The images.
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Oh my god, what?
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I didn't know she was like this off the rail.
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I was like, oh my god, we're doing it.
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There's a before and after image and the before looks like some sort of like snowflake
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type of thing and then there's an after.
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There's a giant red arrow pointing at the after.
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I don't know why.
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And then alongside the arrow, it says harmful effects of electromagnetic waves as illustrated
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by Dr. Masaru in Moto in book, the hidden messages in water and then under the after image,
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which also has a microwave oven.
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So this is like a snowflake being microwaved, I guess.
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It just looks like a water droplet.
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It says the distilled water heated in the microwave resulted in a crystal similar to that created
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by the word Satan.
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I'm not seeing Satan in this image though.
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Do we have to look upside down?
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No, we'll read the paragraph.
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Okay.
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And then we get this big brick of text.
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The paragraph that we're about to read is from Vani Hari's post.
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She says last by not least.
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Okay.
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Dr. Masaru in Moto, who's famous for taking photos of various types of waters and the crystals
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that they formed in the book called hidden messages in water, found water that was microwave
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did not form beautiful crystals, but instead formed crystals similar to those formed when
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exposed to negative thoughts or beliefs.
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If this is happening to just water and then an M- which doesn't make sense, I can only
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imagine what a microwave is doing to the nutrients, energy of our food and to our bodies when
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we consume microwaved food.
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I didn't know what a bad writer she is.
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It's not great.
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For the experiment pictured above, microwaved water produced a similar physical structure
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to when the words Satan and Hitler were repeatedly exposed to the water.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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This fact is probably too hokey for most people.
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Again, a weird M- but I wanted to include it because sometimes the things we can't see
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with the naked eye or even fully comprehend could be the most powerful way to unlock spontaneous
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healing.
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What does it mean the words Hitler and Satan were exposed to the water?
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Like the water was nearby?
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He just said Hitler, Satan, Satan, Hitler.
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Is that real?
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He just chants it at the water and then he looks at it under a microscope?
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This is the first thing we talked about on the show, Aubrey, where I'm like, don't bother
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like, just like so off the rails and it's like, this isn't even like a real like, what
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possibly could he be fucking talking about?
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So the author of this book is Masaru Imoto.
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He is a pseudo science entrepreneur.
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You're kidding, pseudo science.
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One of his inventions is called the vibration ometer.
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Got his degree in alternative medicine from a disgraced and discredited institution that
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no longer exists.
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His fucking Wikipedia page is listed under pseudo science and I'm going to say if Wikipedia
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as a whole is like, this is garbage.
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Yes.
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Then like, that is the fucking drag.
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I love the ones that are like early life and it's like a paragraph and it's like controversies
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at the like six pages.
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So his belief was that water structure responded to human consciousness.
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And then its structure changed when exposed to curse words and words like Satan and Hitler.
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Is it only like curse words in English or is the water multilingual?
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Mike, I'm going to blow your mind.
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I didn't read this book.
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She's slipping.
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When asked about these, she said quote, these were before I decided to make this my career.
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It's like saying that the New York Times or whoever aren't allowed to make mistakes.
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Back then I was blogging as a hobby.
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It's so funny to be like, how was I to know that the guy who exposed water to Satan and
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found crystals in it was lying?
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This was only a part time thing.
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It's my hobby.
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Of course I'm allowed to lie.
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Right.
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There's a part of me that read that is like, you know, get mad at the New York Times
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for having it's a little hobby.
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Wordal.
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Yeah.
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Her profile continues to grow.
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In 2015, she was named one of the 30 most influential people on the internet by Time magazine.
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Michael, do you want to know who else is on the 30 most people to this?
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I mean, give me the list.
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Are they all like discredited like crypto weirdos now?
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I'm going to go rapid fire.
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PewDiePie, Tana Hossie Coats, Matt Drudge, Anita Sarkeesian, Shakira, JK Rowling, Nurendra
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Modi, Taylor Swift, and Caitlin McNeil, the woman who took the picture of the blue and
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black slash golden yellow, golden white dress.
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Let's do it again, but do Mary Bough kill for each one of them.
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It's very important to me.
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You have to rank these people.
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Oh, it's going to be so many kills.
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What I know mostly kills on that.
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So all the while while her profile is rising, there is more and more and more overt criticism
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from scientists.
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A Yale neurologist named Stephen Nevella has called her the Jenny McCarthy of food.
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That's a good dig.
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Kevin Fulta, who leads horticultural sciences at the University of Florida said, quote,
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she found that a popular social media site was more powerful than science itself, more
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powerful than reason, more powerful than actually knowing what you're talking about.
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That is accurate and very sad.
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Mary Ann Nestle told one reporter, quote, I think she means well, but I wish she would
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pick more important issues and pay closer attention to the science.
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Classic Mary Ann Nestle.
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She's saying the same thing, but like way nicer, yeah.
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Trying to put it in a nice way.
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It is like pick better goals and also look at science.
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I love your energy, but if you were a different person, it would be better.
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When asked to respond to her critics, she generally responds in one of a few different ways.
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Her most common one is by asserting that the scientist in question is a paid industry
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shell.
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Classic.
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Another one comes from a quote that she provided to the New York Times.
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She said, quote, this whole idea that I'm not scientifically accurate.
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Okay, fine.
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If you want to say that, but I'm translating stuff so that the laymen can understand it.
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And that's why I'm so effective.
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Yeah.
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How else would we know that the water exposed to Satan and Hitler is poisoning us?
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She's like, I'm trying to make this available to the people.
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As a retort to your information for the people is incorrect.
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I know.
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We are the scientists that you are allegedly interpreting and we are saying that this
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is wrong.
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In addition to those sort of more public responses to criticism, a lot of the media around
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Vonnehari includes references to her penchant for blocking people who express discomfort
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with her marketing or who are like, hey, wait, what are your credentials for talking about
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this?
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Although as someone who blocks extremely liberally, it's quite to like slightly defender
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on this.
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Do you have a Facebook group called Band by Food Babe with over 10,000 members?
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Oh my God, is that true?
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Yeah.
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No way.
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I definitely think there's like a point at which it just became like a little hater factory
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and all the people who disliked her joined in.
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But like, it seems like initially it really was like a shit ton of people who had been blocked
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by her.
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This was also summarized in one of the Times profiles.
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Quote, Ms. Hari said that people are only blocked for obscenities, but Dr. Schwartz, who
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is among the band, though not a Facebook group member, said he merely questioned her credentials.
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I blocked people for being annoying mostly.
spk_0
10 years ago, I was like a zero block purist.
spk_0
Like no blocks, not doing it.
spk_0
You can't do that.
spk_0
You can't do that on the internet.
spk_0
Today, no.
spk_0
I'm not a responsive blocker.
spk_0
I'm like a preemptive blocker.
spk_0
You're like, this is only a bit more annoying.
spk_0
100% like if I see someone doing some real fucking bad behavior in someone else's comment
spk_0
section, I'm just like, cool block.
spk_0
So we stand a queen, a blocking queen.
spk_0
A blocking queen.
spk_0
Join Facebook group, everybody.
spk_0
The thing is there is a block by Michael Hobbs Facebook group, but it's just Mumsnet,
spk_0
where she really starts getting traction is by running a series of campaigns focused
spk_0
on food corporations.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So in 2013, Michael Vonihari set her sights on craft foods, crown jewel.
spk_0
It's boxed mac and cheese, which to be honest is like the most ultra processed food in
spk_0
vegetable.
spk_0
Yes, all of these are.
spk_0
Yeah.
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All of these are.
spk_0
And I think this is one of the things that like absolutely blew my mind about her work
spk_0
is that she is targeting things like Chick-fil-A sandwiches, craft mac and cheese.
spk_0
She had a whole fruit loops campaign.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
All of them are like, can you believe they're putting this in there?
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
We deserve healthy, safe food.
spk_0
And I'm like, why are you campaigning around boxed mac and cheese?
spk_0
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
spk_0
Like, do you not want to advocate for higher levels of money and food stamps programs?
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
There's like a bunch of stuff that you can do that isn't focused on like craft mac and
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cheese.
spk_0
It's poisoning you or what?
spk_0
Like it's an odd path to take.
spk_0
Although to be fair, it is powdered cheese.
spk_0
Dude, I'm on record.
spk_0
She's just as delicious.
spk_0
How dear it is delicious.
spk_0
But it's like there are some like mega ultra processed foods that are like, yeah,
spk_0
this stuff is killing us.
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Sure.
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That if there was real evidence for it, I would buy in wholeheartedly.
spk_0
Again, I think this is sort of her model.
spk_0
Right.
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This pick things where you're like, that sounds about right.
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And then say the scariest version of the thing about that and get a bunch of people on
spk_0
board, right, with that and then on her list and then buying into her framework and so
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that's what I'm saying.
spk_0
So her complaint with craft mac and cheese was the use of artificial food dyes.
spk_0
She wanted them to remove artificial dyes from craft mac and cheese, particularly yellow
spk_0
five and yellow six because they shrink your balls.
spk_0
Oh, good.
spk_0
That was what I learned in middle school.
spk_0
Yellow five, which was in Mountain Dew, shrank your balls.
spk_0
And also the last sip of Mountain Dew is 80% backwash.
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Richard Geer, gerboles.
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Yeah.
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These are the truth.
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They're just community knowledge.
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My sincere goal in high school was to start a nationwide rumor.
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You fucking Gremlin.
spk_0
Of course you started a fucking podcast.
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I know.
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This is what I'm saying.
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She's crazy.
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This is all I want.
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So in this craft mac and cheese campaign, she did what would become a real sort of classic
spk_0
tactic of hers, which is she launched a petition on her website.
spk_0
And according to her, she got 350,000 signatures.
spk_0
Oh, wow.
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She's a huge audience.
spk_0
And each one of these campaigns grows her audience considerably.
spk_0
She gathered all of these signatures.
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She did a big theatrical petition delivery, like physical petition delivery at craft mac
spk_0
queue and had a meeting with executives there.
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Craft initially said that they weren't going to change the recipe, but two years later
spk_0
they announced that they would remove artificial coloring from all of its mac and cheese products.
spk_0
But they said the change had been in the work since 2012.
spk_0
It's not because of this lady.
spk_0
Although that could also be PR stuff on their part.
spk_0
Yeah, absolutely.
spk_0
Both of these actors involved have an incentive to lie.
spk_0
Also, this is a common response from businesses.
spk_0
Yeah.
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They're just like, we're doing the thing.
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I don't want to talk about it.
spk_0
We didn't really get into some seed oils, but like fundamentally, like, I don't care.
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If they've removed food dyes, it's not like I'm like married to food dyes.
spk_0
It's like, I think evidence should guide these discussions.
spk_0
But ultimately, like, if craft removed yellow five, like, okay, fine.
spk_0
Do you know what the concern is with food dyes when people are like, get artificial food coloring out of our food?
spk_0
Shrink in your balls.
spk_0
No.
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That's all I've ever heard about.
spk_0
I've never heard anything specific.
spk_0
This one dates back to the 1970s with something called the fine gold diet.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
The core idea behind the fine gold diet, it was the like strip all of the additives out of your kids' diet.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
The assertion behind this in the fine gold diet was that additives and food dyes caused ADHD.
spk_0
Was it like a line go up thing that like rates of ADHD have increased at the same time as yellow five consumption has increased?
spk_0
Kind of thing.
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No.
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The fine gold diet came out in the 70s.
spk_0
So even our language around ADHD was very different than what it was.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
There is some evidence today that in kids who already have ADHD, some of those kids,
spk_0
when consuming foods that have food coloring in them, will sometimes experience a temporary increase in their hyperactivity symptoms?
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Really?
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Yes.
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It's very strange.
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So as a result, some countries require a warning label on foods with food coloring.
spk_0
Wow.
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Okay.
spk_0
The US does not require that warning label.
spk_0
But that body of research did not exist when the fine gold diet came out.
spk_0
This was somebody who was just like, run fucking vibes.
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Yeah.
spk_0
That's what I think is right.
spk_0
And again, this is like 70s natural food freak out sort of suspicion about newer foods kind of stuff.
spk_0
So this fit right into a worldview and a discomfort with sort of like the modern world as a whole.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And also a fundamental discomfort with neurodivergence.
spk_0
Also like yellow five and red 40 and these things do sound kind of like sci-fi discopiens.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
Because what happened to the first 39 reds?
spk_0
Oh no.
spk_0
We've had to iterate on this.
spk_0
We're finally at the decent one after 39 tries.
spk_0
The idea that food dies cause ADHD has long, long, long since been discredited.
spk_0
The other concern with food dies that pops up is about cancer in rats.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
That is a result of a die called red three.
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The FDA has banned red three.
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You can use red three in the US.
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Okay.
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However, the amount of die that exists in food for people is way lower than the dose given
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to rats in studies.
spk_0
This is the Diet Coke Aspartame Conundrum where it's like, yeah, yeah, you're drinking
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Aspartame.
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You're worried about like brain cancer from rats.
spk_0
Are you having Aspartame directly injected into your brain?
spk_0
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
spk_0
At like double your body weight.
spk_0
No, okay, cool.
spk_0
It's always like an indicative mechanism, not necessarily like a direct danger.
spk_0
On the other hand, like fine, we don't have the cancer causing die in our food anymore.
spk_0
It seems fine to me.
spk_0
I think the other thing to know about food die regulation in the US is that the FDA, quote,
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requires evidence that a color additive is safe at its intended level of use before it
spk_0
may be added to foods.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
And it adds a maximum allowable amount.
spk_0
So it's not just you can use unlimited red 40, right?
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
It is you can use up to X amount of red 40.
spk_0
Yeah, yeah.
spk_0
According to one scientist interviewed by New York magazine, a 60 pound child would have
spk_0
to eat eight bags of skittles a day to get to harmful levels of red 40.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
It really is being regulated, right?
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
There is a regulatory mechanism there.
spk_0
Make Skittles beef tallow again.
spk_0
So a big part of Vani Hari's pitch around craft is the idea that these food colorings
spk_0
are banned in the EU.
spk_0
So why are they allowed in the US?
spk_0
This comes up all the time in these conversations.
spk_0
Yeah, that came up with a seed oil thing too.
spk_0
It sort of sounds right that the EU would have a stronger regulatory food system than the
spk_0
US, but that is not the case.
spk_0
Oh, interesting.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Every food coloring that is allowed in the US is used in the EU.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Yellow five used in the EU.
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Red 40 used in the EU.
spk_0
Blue two used in the EU.
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They are just named differently.
spk_0
Oh, is it like red 41?
spk_0
Red 40 is called allura red.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
And when it shows up in ingredient lists, it is listed under its e-code name.
spk_0
So all of those have like an e-dashable.
spk_0
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
spk_0
So people are looking for red 40 on a label of food from like the UK and they're like,
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where is it?
spk_0
And it's e 129.
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That's red 40.
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Right.
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Yellow five is E 102.
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Blue two is E 132.
spk_0
These are labeling differences between the US and the EU.
spk_0
The EU is more likely to use technical names or these sort of code names for ingredients
spk_0
in labeling.
spk_0
But regulation in the US prioritizes consumers' ability to understand what's in their food.
spk_0
So we're more likely to use and to require language that's more accessible to more people, right?
spk_0
I'm more direct like this is a food diet rather than just like a random number.
spk_0
I think it's also worth noting that there are like a number of food dies that are loud
spk_0
in the EU that are banned by the FDA and are not allowed in the US.
spk_0
Ponso for R is a red food coloring that is allowed in the EU but not approved by the FDA.
spk_0
That doesn't mean it's necessarily unsafe.
spk_0
It just means that these two sort of regulatory systems deal with them differently.
spk_0
I think there's a temptation to go, this food system is doing a better job on every measure
spk_0
and not like, hey, these are different countries with different needs and different priorities
spk_0
about how this stuff ought to get disseminated.
spk_0
Reasonable minds can differ.
spk_0
Different systems can make sense for different places, right?
spk_0
This is actually one of those enriching things about living abroad for many years.
spk_0
I feel like when I moved to Denmark, I was like, they're better at everything.
spk_0
Socialism is cool.
spk_0
And then you get there and you're like, oh, we actually do a couple of things better than them.
spk_0
And they do some things better than us.
spk_0
So, Michael, the craft campaign was in 2013.
spk_0
In 2014, she sets her sights on Starbucks.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
She writes a blog post called, you'll never guess what's in a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte.
spk_0
Is it union besting?
spk_0
Is it union besting?
spk_0
No, there are two main claims that she makes.
spk_0
One of them we're gonna dig in on and one of them we're not.
spk_0
The one we're gonna dig in on is that the caromal coloring used in pumpkin spice lattes
spk_0
is, quote unquote, link to cancer.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
The other big bombshell that she drops in this blog post is that pumpkin spice lattes contain no pumpkin.
spk_0
Is she the one that originated this?
spk_0
This has been driving me insane for like a decade.
spk_0
It's nuts.
spk_0
So, I don't know if she's the one who originated it, but she is definitely a big force in popularizing it.
spk_0
This made me laugh because I just always assumed that a pumpkin spice latte did not contain pumpkin,
spk_0
that it was pumpkin spice.
spk_0
Yeah, we're both bakers.
spk_0
We both understand that the pumpkin spice is the spice you put on the pumpkin.
spk_0
It does contain pumpkin.
spk_0
So, here's something that I find fascinating.
spk_0
How worked up I am about that?
spk_0
According to Bonnie Hari, it took Starbucks one year to announce that they had removed caramel coloring
spk_0
for higher pumpkin spice lattes.
spk_0
Again, each of these campaigns, she gets what she wants.
spk_0
Yeah, that's weird.
spk_0
But often what she wants is not the full picture or not correct or whatever.
spk_0
Yeah, like physically incorrect.
spk_0
Like, I remember that they added pumpkin to pumpkin spice lattes.
spk_0
They absolutely fucking get so I looked this up because I was like,
spk_0
is there a fucking, I've never, I don't think I've ever had a pumpkin spice latte.
spk_0
They're so good.
spk_0
Are they really?
spk_0
Yeah, it's delicious.
spk_0
Of course, all of those Starbucks, like we just like poured a pound of sugar in here.
spk_0
Yeah, exactly.
spk_0
Yeah, it basically a pie and liquid form.
spk_0
Of course, it tastes amazing.
spk_0
It's a milkshake.
spk_0
We made you a milkshake.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Well, here's the other thing.
spk_0
When you get a can of pumpkin puree, that's mostly not pumpkin.
spk_0
Oh, because butter has squash a lot of it.
spk_0
It's butter has squash, so I'm also like, well now who's hiding things?
spk_0
spk_0
Is it real pumpkin?
spk_0
I don't know.
spk_0
I would know Aubrey because I always bake my own pumpkin.
spk_0
Oh, wow.
spk_0
Oh, he's farm to table.
spk_0
I did live in Europe.
spk_0
You know what?
spk_0
I did live in Europe.
spk_0
I just like eat like this.
spk_0
That's why I'm like so healthy.
spk_0
He's got the superiority complex to prove it.
spk_0
That's why I'm like so masculine.
spk_0
The internet is saying he's so masculine and it's mostly the vegetables that I eat
spk_0
from Europe, the way that I make my vegetables.
spk_0
She gets hooked on this caramel coloring thing as being a source of carcinogens in pumpkin
spk_0
spice latte.
spk_0
I'm going to send you a quote here that is from an analytical chemist named Vett Dentremont
spk_0
who wrote a piece for Gokker called The Food Babe Blogger is full of shit.
spk_0
Nice.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So here is that chemist's breakdown of the PSL of it all.
spk_0
It says, and what about that carcinogenic caramel color?
spk_0
Well, it turns out that it's not the only thing in your pumpkin spice latte that's in
spk_0
carcinogen class 2B.
spk_0
There's also coffee.
spk_0
Coffee is class 2B because of the accrylamide accumulated during the roasting process.
spk_0
Coffee, before Starbucks turns it into a milkshake, is pretty healthy for you.
spk_0
Class 2B means that all possible carcinogenic effects haven't been ruled out, but that
spk_0
it hasn't been shown to cause a single case of cancer.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So it's like a maybe.
spk_0
We can't say it doesn't cause cancer, but there's no affirmative evidence that it
spk_0
causes cancer.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
The evidence doesn't allow us to prove a negative that it absolutely never causes cancer.
spk_0
This is a sort of classic thing where health and wellness influencers will pull from these
spk_0
rankings of carcinogens.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And we'll assume that they are ranked by their likelihood to give you cancer.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Those rankings are instead rankings of the strength and state of the evidence.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
I know.
spk_0
Science could be way better at communicating this to be honest, but like, yes.
spk_0
100%.
spk_0
spk_0
It's so easy to misinterpret.
spk_0
But also, this is like directly the result of people who are untrained sort of googling
spk_0
around, dropping around, and not attempting to understand the science on the sciences terms.
spk_0
Cause I wish scientists were better at communicating this stuff, but also ultimately the responsibility
spk_0
is of the influencers or whoever the pundits who are saying like this causes cancer without
spk_0
like reading the documents to the question, which are always very clear about like what
spk_0
these terms mean.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
And meanwhile, Vani Hari is out here in the press repeatedly saying, you don't need to be
spk_0
an expert to understand this stuff.
spk_0
Yeah, but you don't understand it.
spk_0
You really fundamentally misunderstanding like big, big, big parts.
spk_0
And not even caring to like check in with experts.
spk_0
You're like, hey, do I have this right?
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
This is what like we do with our episodes very frequently.
spk_0
It's like, we'll send a rough cut to somebody and be like, are we saying anything bone
spk_0
headed here?
spk_0
Does this sound roughly true?
spk_0
And like, it's really useful to check in with experts on that stuff.
spk_0
And we will absolutely get very useful feedback.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
Being like, ah, this part's not quite it.
spk_0
I think the only way you can do this and not bother to reach out to people is if you
spk_0
think scientists are like fundamentally part of the problem.
spk_0
Paid industry shills, right?
spk_0
Yeah, yeah.
spk_0
Michael, are you ready for our next campaign?
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
This is the way that both you and I first heard about the food babe.
spk_0
Yoga mat bread.
spk_0
Yoga mats.
spk_0
We're talking, yes.
spk_0
2015, we're talking the campaign against subway bread.
spk_0
I will say every subway in the whole world has the same weird smell when you walk in there,
spk_0
which does have like a sort of formaldehyde kind of quality to it.
spk_0
So I get why this sounded true to people.
spk_0
There's something weird about the way that it smells because it doesn't smell like baking
spk_0
bread, even though they are baking bread in there.
spk_0
Subway is not a top tier fast food place in the US.
spk_0
You're coming, you're going for it, you're coming for subway.
spk_0
You're like, we don't care about what you eat, how you live your life.
spk_0
However, if you go to subway, you're trash.
spk_0
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
spk_0
I just mean like she's reaching for a restaurant that not very many people are going to
spk_0
defend, right?
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
Last week tonight didn't excellent piece on there like extremely predatory business practices.
spk_0
Oh really?
spk_0
Why we have like three times as many subways in the US as any other fast food restaurant.
spk_0
Oh really?
spk_0
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
spk_0
Did he talk about how six inches isn't enough food in 12 inches is too much?
spk_0
That's my beef with subway.
spk_0
So this was the first campaign of hers that sort of made its way onto my radar.
spk_0
The allegations sort of at its core was that subways bread used ingredients that were
spk_0
used to make yoga mats.
spk_0
Love it.
spk_0
A friend of mine told me this at the time and I remember being like, that doesn't sound
spk_0
right.
spk_0
Yeah, I remember that too.
spk_0
Like it really felt like scientific information that had been delivered by like one of the
spk_0
minions memes on Facebook or something where you're just like the packaging of this alone
spk_0
is suspect, right?
spk_0
It's a little bit like the American bread is cake thing, which is also just about subway
spk_0
bread and about its tax status in Ireland or something.
spk_0
Although it's just such a like on its face, fast aisle comparison, you can say like, yes,
spk_0
I wash all my towels in vinegar and then I made a salad dressing.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
You use baking soda to clean things, but you also use it to put in your like quick breads
spk_0
or whatever or your cookies.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
So Vani Hari went about looking at subways ingredient lists and she found one ingredient
spk_0
in particular that troubled her.
spk_0
It's called azo di carbonamide.
spk_0
We'll call it ADA.
spk_0
That's what it's shortened to.
spk_0
Sounds bad.
spk_0
Sounds scary.
spk_0
spk_0
Vani Hari launched a petition in February of 2014 demanding that subway remove ADA from
spk_0
their bread and she made a video to go along with that petition.
spk_0
And Michael, we are going to watch that video.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
We're going to see this woman.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
We are going to see this woman.
spk_0
Oh, hi there.
spk_0
I'm the food babe.
spk_0
I love yoga.
spk_0
It is so amazing for your body and stress and well-being, but it really does make me really
spk_0
hungry.
spk_0
Oh my God.
spk_0
She's taken a bite out of the yoga mat.
spk_0
Wake up people.
spk_0
Take a look at the ingredients in subways, nine grain bread.
spk_0
Wake up people.
spk_0
Do you know that one of them is the same ingredients found in yoga mat?
spk_0
This stuff called azo carbon, you know, it's this stuff here.
spk_0
The name's on the screen.
spk_0
It's banned across the globe.
spk_0
If you get caught using it in Singapore, you get fined and put in jail.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
This is a very hazardous substance that is linked to long issues and workers who are exposed
spk_0
to it.
spk_0
If it isn't even safe to be around and breathe in, how could it be deemed safe to eat?
spk_0
Well the US is one of the only countries in the world that still allows this ingredient
spk_0
to be used here in the United States.
spk_0
In the US, big food companies use this as a flower bleaching agent.
spk_0
In other countries, they wait a week to turn their flower white.
spk_0
Not only is it on the screen and subways nine grain bread, but you'll find it in the
spk_0
food at McDonald's, Wendy's and even Starbucks, Chrysler.
spk_0
Keep the yoga mat out of your mouth and on the floor.
spk_0
Do you know friends and family that eat yoga mat?
spk_0
Then share this video with them and go to foodbabe.com for updates.
spk_0
Until then, I'm the FoodBabe.
spk_0
You have no real enemies.
spk_0
You're afraid of yoga mats.
spk_0
I shouldn't be, but I'm so annoyed at how she's pretending not to know how to pronounce
spk_0
it.
spk_0
Totally.
spk_0
You've written numerous posts as a whole campaign and you're like, oh, whatever, you
spk_0
could see it on the screen.
spk_0
Come on.
spk_0
One of her core rules about food is if a third grader can't pronounce it, you shouldn't
spk_0
eat it.
spk_0
The third grader can't pronounce very much.
spk_0
I couldn't say refrigerator when I was in third grade.
spk_0
She relies really heavily on this sort of proposed binary of chemical versus natural,
spk_0
which is, that doesn't exist.
spk_0
Almost everything in the natural world is also chemical.
spk_0
Has a chemical name.
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This is, once again, I would say neophobia and sheep's clothing.
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The assumption is that new techniques and new ingredients and new foods are inherently
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sinister.
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I thought that this quote from a professor of food science at UMass was a really good
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sort of encapsulation of what she's doing here.
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This is from a New York Times piece.
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It says, science spluttered with frustration that to Ms. Hari, the word chemical is always
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a pejorative and that she yells fire about toxins, but ignores that fruits and vegetables
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are full of naturally occurring toxins.
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Beach pits, for example, are very natural, but they contain cyanide.
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Said, Fergus M. Clyde's Dale, a professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts.
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Oranges have methanol, which is very toxic, and we've been eating those for thousands of
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years.
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Professor Clyde's Dale also pointed out that the body is made of chemicals and that we
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eat partly to replenish those chemicals with chemicals from food.
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Hey!
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Yeah.
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Everything is chemicals.
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Yeah, I'm against chemicals and I have four natural foods.
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Like, neither one of those things mean anything.
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So, ADA, what it does is that it's essentially like a foaming agent.
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It helps foams retain their structure and bread is a fucking foam.
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Okay.
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So this is an additive that helps you sort of maintain that like bread foamy kind of
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structure.
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She does point this out in her video that like the core reason that this is banned in
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other places is because of worker safety.
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Right.
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Right.
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It doesn't have anything to do with consumer consumption.
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It's just like completely apples to oranges and again, she's reaching for sort of the
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scariest thing.
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It's also wild to look at that and not to frame this as, hey, the people who make your food
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deserve safe work in conditions.
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I want food that's made by people who are able to be safe at work.
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You could run this whole campaign as is, but swap out sort of like aren't you afraid
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of what's in your food, what's lurking in your food for, hey, workers are underprotected
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in this country.
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That's fucking true.
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Hey, like food processing is like a notoriously exploitative sector.
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The leap from if it's not safe to inhale, why would it be safe to ingest without looking
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into what we know about whether or not it's safe to ingest, right?
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Like, that's sort of an unhinged thing.
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Again, like part of the way that she talks about this stuff is completely devoid of
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context.
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She doesn't talk about like, why is this used?
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Right.
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Right.
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Here is a little right up from Forbes.
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So how dangerous is this latest red flag food additive?
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Honestly, not so bad.
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At least when compared to some of the other chemicals like BPA that are raised a hue
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and cry in the past few years.
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Interestingly, ADA was actually brought in as a substitute for a much worse chemical,
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potassium bromate, which was phased out after Californians Proposition 65, called it into
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a question as possibly dangerous to human health.
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Right.
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So this was an attempt to actually improve the safety of the food system.
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Yes.
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And there's no real acknowledgement of that.
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There's just the like, look how sinister this shit is.
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She genuinely just makes it seem like they are straight up out to get you.
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And not like they're solving a problem in an in elegant way or they could solve that
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problem in a better way.
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Right.
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According to her website, the petition garnered more than 50,000 signatures just in
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the first 24 hours.
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Wow.
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Which is also how long it took subway to respond and agree to remove ADA from its
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bread within the next two months.
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That's actually fascinating.
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They came so quickly.
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They said that the removal was already underway, which tracks to me, right?
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If it's coming out in the next two months, right, I don't know enough about industrial
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like food creation, food manufacturing.
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So I couldn't say for sure, but I'm like, two months is a really quick turnaround for
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something that is part of the structural integrity of the bread that you serve in every
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dish at your place.
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Because you'd have to like reformulate and then like do a bunch of testing to make sure
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that the product is not going to be immediately different, which like takes time.
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There may be different equipment that's required.
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There may be different staff training.
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It just seems like a big undertaking to get done in like 60 days or less just because
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there was a petition.
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But I'm sure she declared victory anyway.
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Absolutely.
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For all of these she claims credit pretty unilaterally.
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But again, it's sort of goop style where like as as go to the paltrow said like each
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of those little cultural firestorms, increase traffic, increase her business, all of that kind
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of stuff.
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And that is also whether or not that's her intention.
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That is also an effect that appears to be happening here, right?
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Well, the thing is, I mean, it's also the thing that she didn't mention the actual danger
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with the voice saying, which is that if you arrange them in the shape of the word Satan,
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it changes their molecular structure.
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They actually get so much worse.
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The sandwiches respond to human consciousness.
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Yes, but only in English.
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And I guess the real issue with this isn't necessarily the subway removed this thing
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from their bread because honestly, who gives a shit.
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It's more like it's the opportunity cost of first of all giving people this bizarre
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like anti system anti government, everything message.
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And also like the energy of people doing petitions and lobbying the corporation could have
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been directed at something like bad that they're doing like the way they treat workers
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or union busting or something that's like actually real.
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I think that's the vibe with kind of all of her stuff.
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Yeah.
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Most of the things that she lands on, I'm like, I don't care.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But I think the issue is that she is doing a bunch of world building that is like they're
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poisoning you.
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The food supply is out to get you that she's sort of painting this much broader picture
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about like most of the sources of your food are inherently suspect and are trying to hurt you.
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And that leads directly into like pretty profound anti government sentiment.
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And erosion of trust in entities like the FDA, right?
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Right.
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You know, the FDA has a great deal of sort of power.
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But in terms of like a social media following, she's definitely winning that.
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Right.
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And instead of educating her followers on like the actual problems in the food supply,
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she's essentially like uneducating them and making them afraid of all these like
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phantoms rather than like things that we could actually be doing something about like things like improving the
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ability of like the FDA like inspect workplaces and
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like that.
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100% like a real issue.
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Yeah.
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The little coda to this particular campaign is that this year the FDA has announced that it's going to
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revisit ADA's place on the grass list.
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But isn't that just like RFK junior being like whatever that's what I was going to say is like
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whatever the FDA does is not a measure at this point of whether or not it's true or false.
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But I hate this so much because we're now going into a world where basically anything the FDA does.
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You're like, oh, fuck it.
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It's RFK junior's weird bullshit.
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Right.
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That's exactly the kind of distrust in institutions that she is fomenting.
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However, these institutions are not trustworthy anymore because they are run by degenerate psychos.
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Right.
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It's now true what she's been saying about these government agencies for decades.
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It's true as a direct result of what she has been campaigning for.
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Yeah.
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And then we result in this like low trust society.
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They were trustworthy or considerably more trustworthy on a bunch of different things.
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And as a result of her like straight forward misinformation campaigns on a bunch of this stuff,
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that is now eroding public trust, at least amongst her audience and sort of a Jason audiences
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for institutions that were by all accounts not doing a perfect job.
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But on the stuff that she was talking about, we're taking those decisions pretty carefully.
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And we're like really genuinely weighing consumer safety and that sort of thing.
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And also then now it puts us in a position where we're like, oh, those numbers are from the FDA.
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You can't trust them.
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Which makes us sound like loons, but like that might end up being the case.
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It also puts us in the position of being like, hey, lay off craft.
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What a thing.
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I have no idea.
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These are all sort of like institutions with very few defenders.
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This all sort of culminates with her attending the confirmation hearing for RFK Jr.
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Oh.
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It makes a lot of sense to me.
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Her approach is sort of right in the pocket of RFK Jr.
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Yeah.
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So that like their alignment makes a ton of sense to me.
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Yeah.
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The thing I wanted to close with is talking a little bit about sort of the rhetorical devices
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that Vonney Harry uses that I think are pretty common amongst Maha influencers.
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And wellness influencers sort of regardless of their political affiliation, right?
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A few of these sort of rhetorical devices we've talked about before.
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One is anecdotal evidence, stories in place of evidence, right?
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Another which we've talked about a fair amount is designating some foods as real foods
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and other foods as quote unquote fake foods, right?
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Yeah.
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There's also another one that we've sort of touched on in the past as this idea of like nutritional nostalgia, right?
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That's not an argument that relies on evidence.
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It relies on the sort of feeling that we weren't quote unquote meant to eat something.
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Right.
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We're a fallen society.
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There are also a few devices that we haven't talked about quite as much.
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One is that in her work, Vonney Harry does not spend much time explaining why things are the way they are.
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Okay.
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Again, there's only this sort of fallen society narrative.
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The last one that she uses very liberally is this deployment of questions with sort of heavily implied answers.
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The one that she uses the most is what are they trying to hide?
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Oh yeah, I love that.
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That's super conspiracy brain because it's like we can't find evidence of this, but that's evidence of the conspiracy.
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Right.
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This is the thing that will show up sometimes where people will be like, I called general mills and ask them who grew the oats that are used in Cheerios that they couldn't even tell me.
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That doesn't necessarily mean that someone is concealing sinister information from you.
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It may just mean, hang on, I don't have that answer handy.
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It might take me some time to find it.
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Or I don't even know how to get that question answered.
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Right.
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I'm so sorry I can't do it, right?
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Or maybe it does mean the company is evil, but you need actual evidence of the company's evil.
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It's not just that they won't answer a question.
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100% right.
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All of that felt important to sort of lay out because I think all of these are like increasingly commonplace.
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As there's more and more sort of health and wellness quote unquote information being shared on social media with the rise of maha influencers with like more and more sort of like algorithms tune toward rage bait and controversial shit.
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It means we're just going to keep seeing more and more and more of this stuff.
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So it felt like worth lifting up.
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Like here's how this shit shows up.
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And if someone opens with like, I didn't see this information.
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What are they trying to hide?
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It might be like considering that that is a person who hasn't done their due diligence or doesn't understand it's in front of them.
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Rather than just the person they're pointing the finger at or the company they're pointing the finger at is necessarily doing sinister things.
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And the only way around this stuff is to arrange your food so that it spells out gondy and then it becomes more healthy for you.