The Dangerous Ingredients Harming Your Body with Vani Hari and Lewis Howes

So I started Food Babe. This was only a couple of years ago. Yeah. And I just started writing about things I was really passionate about. And I started to realize I had a knack of asking questions nobody was asking me for. Like, what were some of the questions? Well, no one had really asked Chipotle, I guess, publicly online, what's in your food? You say your food's with integrity, but what's actually in your food? What are the ingredients? No one had done that. Do some of these companies not show ingredients? I thought they have to show ingredients. Well, they don't. Or hide them? They don't. Actually, you know, they don't. Not all of them do. And so there's big, huge companies like Papa John's who don't release their ingredients online. However, their competitors like Domino's and Pizza Hut do. And Chipotle back then, when I started asking the questions, didn't. Right. And thankfully, because of my investigations, they started labeling their ingredients, GMO or not, started removing some of the bad ingredients and they're getting rid of the majority of bad ingredients I wrote about, the ones that were very controversial. When I realized someone as large as Chipotle or Chick-fil-A or Kraft or any of these big companies were listening to someone like me, I knew I could no longer stay at that job. And you started this at the other job that you were doing, right? And then it started to pick up. And I remember when I first heard about you, it was something about Kraft, like you basically changed the whole thing that Kraft does now. And I want to talk about that a second. But I also saw I remember you doing a video like eating a yoga mat and then and talking about some word that I can't pronounce. And then later, seeing like three months later, seeing Subway come out with a commercial saying they no longer have that ingredient because you were specifically talking about it. And I thought to myself, wow, if one person can create enough of a conversation so that a large company like a Subway or Kraft or Chipotle or Chick-fil-A listens and takes action to change something, I said, that is really powerful. And you've worked in kind of solving a lot of the issues with Kraft, Subway, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A and Starbucks and having them change their ingredients. And what was the thing with Kraft? What actually happened? Well, one of the things I realized as soon as I quit my job, which was the scariest thing ever, because I wasn't this was a pure passion project. So I didn't know how to sustain myself when I quit my job. And I was in the house and I was sitting here and I'm living in a condo surrounded by the banks that I used to work with and downtown Charlotte and going, oh, my God, I have no boss. I have no job and I'm a food activist now. Wow. This is crazy. I cannot believe I'm doing this. You know, when you're working on a passion project out, you know, and you're also working in the corporate world, you're not putting your hundred percent effort into it, even though it's like kind of taking over your world and your thought and you're sitting at work and you're thinking about your next investigation instead of what you're supposed to be doing. Like that started to happen. But I was still like straddling these two jobs. You had to take the leap. Right. Yeah. And then when you put your one hundred percent focus in something, wow, the doors just start opening. And so the first thing I started to investigate was how food in Europe is healthier than the United States. What has happened is Europe has been regulated on a precautionary principle that these chemicals are considered guilty before they're innocent here in the United States. They're innocent until proven guilty. And so in Europe, there are several chemicals that are either banned or not used or have warning labels. And one of those chemicals is artificial food dyes, yellow, five, yellow, six, but I don't use any of them there or they're labeled specifically with. Well, they label them with a warning. So they are banned in certain countries, but in the U.K., they have a requirement that you have to put a warning label on it that says may cause adverse effects and activity and attention in children. Kind of like cigarettes. Yeah. Warning on a cigarette box. Right. But it's a warning on a box of candy or a box of mac and cheese. Like if you were to import a box of mac and cheese from the United States to the U.K. and sold it in a specialty store, it would have to have that warning. But you know what Kraft did to try to get away with without putting that warning? They reformulated their product without yellow five and yellow six and used real ingredients, paprika and beta carotene free for European citizens, but not for us. Why not? So they found out that there was this health issue. Right. Associated with especially children. Who who's the biggest population of mac and cheese eaters in this country? Children. And to say, you know what, instead of putting that warning label on the box, we're just going to reformulate for them and we're not going to do it for all of these millions of people. The United States is immoral and unethical. So why do they do that? Because it's a lot more expensive to put the natural ingredients in, I'm assuming, and it is a little bit more cost. But in the long run, it's not that much. These corporations are making billions of dollars collectively. So it's it's really unfortunate that these companies have gone unregulated like this. And it's up for us consumers to hold them accountable. If we keep buying, they'll keep selling it to us. That's right. That's right. And so I started a petition and against Kraft. Yes. To remove these artificial food dyes. And I tell you, it was so you weren't saying don't don't make mac and cheese anymore. Don't sell us this. You're saying take these specific ingredients out that other countries don't have in their food. We should be able to eat junk food without the risk of hyperactivity or cancer because some of these artificial food dyes are contaminated with carcinogens. You know, we should be able to have things without them harming us. So I tell you, that period of time really changed me because what I realized quickly week, the petition got over 200,000 signatures in a week. Amazing. So you posted on your site or online with a petition. Right. And I'm on change.org. I actually use change.org back then and they were an amazing partner and they really helped carry the message and they really helped guide me, too. I'm like, what do you do? How do you do a petition? And how do you do all these things? And now actually I'm teaching some of those principles in this book. Like, how do you start your own petition? Interesting. OK. Yeah. There's an appendix in the back. Very cool. In the back of the book. So what happened with these 200,000 names? Did you say Herecraft? Like, look at this. Or what was the next step? Well, they continued to be really basically sending us PR. Can I say bullshit on this program? Pure bullshit to us. And actually the story of what happened when I went to go deliver those petitions to their headquarters is the first introduction chapter in this book. And it's it's it's gut wrenching. OK. You know, I don't hold back on how I felt when that was happening. And the the really unfortunate thing with Kraft is that they weren't really willing to hear all of these consumers. Now, this petition has close to 400,000 signatures still to this day. They're starting to slowly take out the artificial food dyes. They've taken it out for kids products and they've taken it out for their deluxe products. And I think they're going to eventually get rid of the rest. It's going to take them some time. you know, what's really the most critical point of that petition, what it taught me is that there are thousands of people really being affected by these issues. Thousands of parents sent me letters. Their kids asthma went away. Their kids eczema went away. Their kids activity improved at school. Their kids got off their ADHD medication. Their their autism lessened the symptoms of all. I mean, let personal letters from parents actually took those with me, printed them all out. It was a stack this big, took them to with me to Dr. Oz, the show, and and like waved them in the air on camera at Kraft. And what happened? Well, that's when I had to go deliver those those letters and that petition. And when I was carrying those boxes of signatures, I mean, I really felt the weight of those parents and those children that have been affected by artificial food dyes. And it still remains a problem today and a problem that I'm going to continue to fight for. Wow, that's incredible. What do you feel like has been the biggest challenge with all these companies that you've been addressing with the artificial ingredients or the ingredients that are healthy? What do you feel like has been the biggest challenge so far? Which company has been the biggest challenge to work with? Which you know, and which one has been the most enjoyable, I guess, if you could say that to work with or has been actually willing to listen to you and take your counsel and say, OK, we do want to make changes. What are some suggestions? So let's let's start with the positive. So a few years ago, there was something in my fridge that I had no idea what was in it. And it was a bottle of Newcastle beer. Everything else I knew what was in it. But the Newcastle beer had no ingredient list. And I was like, why doesn't it have an ingredient list? And knowing what I knew about the food industry and how GMOs have infiltrated everything. What's GMO stand for? Just so people know. A genetically modified organism. OK. And have just been where scientists have created an ingredient to then go into the food. That's right. It's a it's a new species of plant. Basically, they've redesigned. That's right. It's not from nature. This is this is in a laboratory. They inject either DNA or insecticide or some other type of concoction and put it into a seed and then grow that is new. Amazing. OK. So and the problem isn't so much that technology. It's not even about that. It's about the fact that they're paired with an increase in pesticides. So the chemical companies who have developed those seeds are the same chemical companies selling the pesticides. OK, so it's a pesticide issue. It's really not about it's not about it's not about biotechnology. It's really about the pesticides and the pesticides is what is really causing a huge environmental impact and the rise in cancer rates. If you look at the president's cancer panel, who independently looks at cancer rates, has said that 41 percent of us are destined to have cancer. Some of those reasons can be related back to these environmental toxins with pesticides, one of them. So if it says GMO, does it mean it has pesticides attached to a GMO or so the GMO is a GMO bad or does it just depend it? Well, I mean, it is creating new proteins that have never before. So it's different for your body to digest and it may react. There are certain studies that show different things. And what's really concerning to me is that there's no mandatory safety testing on GMO crops in this country before they're introduced. All the other countries around the world, they have this. They they they require it or they label it. Right. They either say, no, you can't you can't sell this here or you can't grow this here or we have to label it. So consumers have to know. Warning, this may cause certain right issues. But here in the United States, these companies are spending millions of dollars to prevent their name from being on there like they don't want us to know that genetically modified foods. I mean, think about it. The Super Bowl is happening, right? It's around this time of year. And think about all of the companies that spend millions of dollars to put their name right there front and center. The biotech companies and the chemical companies are trying to take their name away from this. They're trying to hide this from us. So you've got to wonder, why are they trying to hide so much? I'm interested, though, you know, cigarettes. They have a big tax on I believe here in New York. They have a big tax on them to buy cigarettes. And also they have a big warning label. And a lot of them have like people with like cancer on them. It says you will, you know, cigarettes cause death. Even maybe I'm not even sure exactly what they say, but there's big warnings on them, but people still do it. Do you think of those warnings were on our food labels in the U.S. that we would still eat it just like people are addicted to cigarettes? Well, the GMO label is not even a warning label. It's just a transparency label just to know what you're buying. I mean, it's like how you know that you're drinking orange juice from concentrate. We should know for foods genetically engineered. And so when when these same food companies did this in Europe, they're still selling food there. It's just labeled there. So consumers are more educated. Yeah, absolutely. So so it's not, you know, this is a smart business decision for companies, especially to give them this information. But I tell you, there's something funny going on if they want to hide it so bad. So that's that's your first kind of when you start to investigate, you kind of wonder, well, what's going on here? And when you look deeper into some of the studies that have been done, they're very alarming and very concerning. And now we're seeing the main ingredient Roundup which has glyphosate in it in human breast milk, which is a huge toxin linked to autoimmune disorders, cancers, all sorts of things. So this is a huge issue. But going back to that Newcastle beer, tell me about it. I had no idea what was in it. Sure. So I was like, why don't why don't beer, why doesn't beer, alcohol, wine, liquor, why doesn't any of it have ingredient labels? Why can't I know what makes this raspberry flavored vodka or this beer? And so I started to investigate because it was the one thing that was in my fridge that I wasn't personally drinking. My husband was drinking. I care about his health and was looking into what was in there. And I remember going. It took me over a year, almost maybe maybe a little bit less or a little bit over a year to quiz the beer companies enough to even write an article about what I found out about the beer industry. And what I found out was shocking. Most of it had GMO corn added to it. So it's not the basic ingredients of beer, you know, malt, barley, you know, etc. yeast and water. It had a it had caramel coloring added to it so they could use a different kind of malt like Starbucks. Yes. Just like Starbucks. And it had artificial dyes added to it. I had different types of propylene glycol added to it, which is a derivative of antifreeze. There was things that vegan and vegetarian people would be concerned about. Icing glass, which is produced from a fish swim bladder, carrageenan, which is linked to intestinal inflammation. So all of these things were in beer that I had no idea what was in it. It wasn't on the label. So I felt like this needed to change. That blog post, when I wrote it, went so crazy viral. Millions of people saw it. And I realized that people are really fed up with this. And so I reached out to Anheuser-Busch and Miller Coors. And at first they wouldn't respond back to me. They gave me the basic mumbo jumbo. Sorry, we're not going to release our ingredients. We're not going to tell you because it's proprietary information. But as soon as I did a petition and got close to, I think, 40,000 signatures overnight. Oh, my gosh. They responded. And the first to respond was Anheuser-Busch. And they were, when you asked who was really nice to work with, they were incredible to work with. email me right away. And I told this whole story on the blog. So if you look at old blog posts, you can read this story. But they email me right away and they invited me to their headquarters in St. Louis. Yes. And to learn about their processes and look at their ingredients and meet their head brewmasters. So, you know, I went and did that on my own diamond dollar. You know, it wasn't consulting or anything like that. I went there and I met with them and I've been trying to convince them to develop an organic beer that isn't contaminated with any GMO ingredients. So that's interesting. Very cool. OK, well, are they taking any ingredients out or are they doing anything different or is it still the same thing? Well, they're labeling it. Well, they are posting all of their ingredients online now. They've slowly started adding all all the beers on there. I think they're almost all the way up there. So if you go to tap into your beer dot com, I think that's their website. You can see what's in their beer. And some of the things are, you know, really bizarre, like high fructose corn syrup in my beer. I had no idea. I mean, think about all the people who read packages and avoid high fructose corn syrup and they had no idea that they were drinking it. Now they do. And if you want to learn about the key foods you need to eat to master your health, make sure to watch this video right here. The lining of our gut and actually break through the border. Really? They really do. That's what causes eczema and causes breakouts. Yeah, exactly. Acne, brain fog.