5 ms·

Food Babe’s Ingredient Attacks Draw ‘Quackmail’ Backlash

34 points by tokenadult 12y ago

aaronbrethorst 12y ago
Thought experiment: if the subject of the article was a man (perhaps "Food Dude" instead of "Food Babe"), how much of the article would have to be rewritten or dropped entirely?
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  (Shrug) She picked the moniker for a reason, I'm sure. Attention wh-, um, solicitor solicits attention.
  - FireBeyond 12y ago
    That part amused me. “Oh, I chose something different. But my husband said ‘boring’. This isn’t who I am and I didn’t think about my looks or anything.” ... “but I went ahead and used it to build my brand identity” is a non-sequitur from the protestation.
- cobrausn 12y ago
  If it was an attractive, well-muscled man who went by 'Food Hunk' and he used his appearance as part of his shtick, I don't think it would be changed much. But I don't think it has quite the same draw.
  - nostromo 12y ago
    So... Tim Ferriss?
wcummings 12y ago
>“Well, I’m a computer scientist, so I had to take a lot of engineering courses for that,” says Hari, with an awkward laugh. He bores in. “But you are not a food scientist. You’re not a chemist. You’re not a scientist in that aspect.” Then he quotes an editorial, in which a Yale School of Medicine neurologist calls the Subway claims “the worst example of pseudo-scientific fear-mongering I have seen in a while.” Sums up my feelings on this sort of activism perfectly. "You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce" is an ignorant claim deserving of ridicule. Yet Another misinformed anti-GMO/"natural food" advocate yawn "Did you know the salt in your potato chips is also used as a chemical agent to melt ice on roads! Ban salt! Chemicals are poisoning your body!!!!!" EDIT: http://foodbabe.com/2012/10/31/getting-conned-cheap-toxic-chocolate/ http://foodbabe.com/2012/10/31/getting-conned-cheap-toxic-ch... ^ This actually highlights lactose as a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate.
- aaronbrethorst 12y ago
  This actually highlights lactose as a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate. Where?
  - wcummings 12y ago
    >Just look at the ingredients in popular chocolate candy out there; they are despicable and it’s why I don’t buy these brands any longer, even for an occasional “treat”: Below it is the following image (mirrored to avoid hotlinking): http://i.imgur.com/FpnP87r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FpnP87r.jpg Notice "lactose" highlighted in an alarming orange color next to Almond Joy
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - fleitz 12y ago
      You're reading it wrong, I think she just highlighted the words she needs to look up later in the dictionary. Clearly she understand the word milk, but is confused by lactose, so she needs to look it up later so she can figure out that lactose is in milk. Then when she highlight the bad ingredients she can highlight milk AND lactose. I'm interested to know her opinions on breastfeeding and whether lactose, HGH, and IGF-1 are bad for babies.
    - x0x0 12y ago
      Her basic point -- as should have been obvious from reading the article -- is that chocolate should have: cacao beans, cane sugar, and vanilla. And milk for milk chocolate. Everything else may not be in your interest to eat. Including sugars extracted from milk with who-knows-what processing done to it. Not eating ingredients you can't pronounce or recognize is a great rule of thumb, particularly in the incredibly permissive US food regulation regime.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        Quickly checking Wikipedia sort of favors the lactose for having a cleaner process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane#Refining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane#Refining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose#Isolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose#Isolation
ashwinaj 12y ago
"Choosing Food Babe as a blog handle has prompted some critics to say she is using her looks to get undue attention" Her looks are very subjective. Not to sound sexist (but I know I will since being victimized is so in vogue), if you're so concerned about GMO stuff, you better start with valid scientific data and not hearsay.
SEJeff 12y ago
I'm just gonna leave this link debunking all GMO is bad anecdotes here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-...
- tzs 12y ago
  That author misunderstands the issue. He thinks it is a science problem, and so tries to resolve it by looking at scientific studies. The problem with GMOs is not a science problem. It is a responsibility problem. As Ben Parker said, "With great power comes great responsibility". GMO gives food industrialists great power compared to what they have without using GMO techniques. Many do not believe that the food industrialists can handle the great responsibility that should accompany such great power.
fleitz 12y ago
Hopefully she can get broccoli growers to stop using MSG in their products.
- dubfan 12y ago
  Likewise, hopefully she can get bok choy growers to stop using toxic glucosinolates.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Of course, broccoli is already a hybrid and completely unnatural.
  - mieses 12y ago
    This exemplifies why Common Sense 101 should be an Engineering requirement.
bequanna 12y ago
Maybe she is a quack. But, people are visiting her blog and talking about her. She gets attention and ad revenue. That is likely all she cares about. She is the female, food activist version of Glenn Beck.
dubfan 12y ago
> Companies have spent years cutting costs by replacing natural ingredients with artificial ones, while overselling the message that the products still taste great and are good for you, Dibadj said. Now that consumers are calling them on it, a reversal to natural ingredients is sure to hurt profit. That seems to be the point of this natural food movement. Rally the troops of uninformed but passionate rubes who think artificial == bad and natural == good to pressure companies into substituting out ingredients for more expensive ones, hurting their profit margin. This might have the effect of making these products cost more, which further strengthens the anti-corporate ideology this movement ultimately stems from. All the while they make a nice living off of book sales and newsletter subscriptions. The industry of fear is certainly booming in this social media era.
- x0x0 12y ago
  The point of the natural food movement -- as is patently obvious -- is suspicion about the health effects of many chemicals put into foods; suspicion of the health effects of the way food animals are drugged, raised, and treated; and suspicion of regulatory capture of the FDA. We should treat, in the absence of safety studies, artificial ingredients as dangerous and prefer not to use them. Just for example, people don't want bpa or similar substitutes in their food. And while it appears that bpa may be safe-ish [2], we got around to checking that well after manufacturers put it in all of us. The CDC had found bisphenol A in the urine of 95% of adults sampled in 1988–1994 and in 93% of children and adults tested in 2003–04. While the EPA considers exposures up to 50 µg/kg/day to be safe, the most sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower doses, and several studies of children, who tend to have the highest levels, have found levels over the EPA's suggested safe limit figure. [2] [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-containers-may-be-just-as-hazardous/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-c... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
- pbreit 12y ago
  I have a hard time criticizing people who encourage the eating of natural foods.
nnnnni 12y ago
She's the food equivalent of Jenny McCarthy...
mzs 12y ago
Anyone have a link to the NPR interview? I searched the NPR site and only found a story back from February of this year.
- mzs 12y ago
  Author of linked piece replied to an email from me, the radio piece was this one from February 25, 2014 of WFAE from Charlotte (the first part is also pretty interesting - about HAM radio): http://wfae.org/post/ham-radio-update-food-babe-vani-hari http://wfae.org/post/ham-radio-update-food-babe-vani-hari That radio program mentions this blog entry from Feb 14 2014 and the blog often covers issues from the POV of a skeptic: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/eating-yoga-mats/ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/eating-yoga-mat...
fibbery 12y ago
"Food babe" is a dumb name and food hysteria is definitely worth scorn, but what's the alternative? I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line. The problem is that the former encourages, rather than opposes, the latter. Are you familiar with the boy who cried wolf?
  - tim333 12y ago
    I think the public actually do have some ability to distinguish what is nonsense and what is not. I think her arguments against azodicarbonamide seem quite reasonable to me and have been acted on. Her arguments on microwave ovens on the other hand appear well nuts: 'Hari has argued against the use of microwave ovens, for reasons that include the claim that they cause water molecules to form crystals that resemble crystals that have been exposed to "negative thoughts or beliefs," including the names of Hitler and Satan.' (Wikipedia) but I don't think many people take that seriously.
davidy123 12y ago
«Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says that while Hari sometimes “hyperventilates” about small risks in food, she is helpful on balance. ‘Populist Voice’ “Going after food dyes is worth doing and she brings a populist voice to the table,” he said. Internet-savvy food activists “do nudge companies to change their practices, often for the better.”» In any industry, many of the experts are inherently bought off, and it's helpful to have everyday individuals develop an interest in diverse topics that affect them.

34 points by tokenadult 12y ago

Thought experiment: if the subject of the article was a man (perhaps "Food Dude" instead of "Food Babe"), how much of the article would have to be rewritten or dropped entirely?

CamperBob2 12y ago
(Shrug) She picked the moniker for a reason, I'm sure. Attention wh-, um, solicitor solicits attention.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  That part amused me. “Oh, I chose something different. But my husband said ‘boring’. This isn’t who I am and I didn’t think about my looks or anything.” ... “but I went ahead and used it to build my brand identity” is a non-sequitur from the protestation.
cobrausn 12y ago
If it was an attractive, well-muscled man who went by 'Food Hunk' and he used his appearance as part of his shtick, I don't think it would be changed much. But I don't think it has quite the same draw.
- nostromo 12y ago
  So... Tim Ferriss?

wcummings 12y ago

>“Well, I’m a computer scientist, so I had to take a lot of engineering courses for that,” says Hari, with an awkward laugh. He bores in. “But you are not a food scientist. You’re not a chemist. You’re not a scientist in that aspect.” Then he quotes an editorial, in which a Yale School of Medicine neurologist calls the Subway claims “the worst example of pseudo-scientific fear-mongering I have seen in a while.” Sums up my feelings on this sort of activism perfectly. "You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce" is an ignorant claim deserving of ridicule. Yet Another misinformed anti-GMO/"natural food" advocate yawn "Did you know the salt in your potato chips is also used as a chemical agent to melt ice on roads! Ban salt! Chemicals are poisoning your body!!!!!" EDIT: http://foodbabe.com/2012/10/31/getting-conned-cheap-toxic-chocolate/ http://foodbabe.com/2012/10/31/getting-conned-cheap-toxic-ch... ^ This actually highlights lactose as a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate.

aaronbrethorst 12y ago
This actually highlights lactose as a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate. Where?
- wcummings 12y ago
  >Just look at the ingredients in popular chocolate candy out there; they are despicable and it’s why I don’t buy these brands any longer, even for an occasional “treat”: Below it is the following image (mirrored to avoid hotlinking): http://i.imgur.com/FpnP87r.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FpnP87r.jpg Notice "lactose" highlighted in an alarming orange color next to Almond Joy
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - fleitz 12y ago
    You're reading it wrong, I think she just highlighted the words she needs to look up later in the dictionary. Clearly she understand the word milk, but is confused by lactose, so she needs to look it up later so she can figure out that lactose is in milk. Then when she highlight the bad ingredients she can highlight milk AND lactose. I'm interested to know her opinions on breastfeeding and whether lactose, HGH, and IGF-1 are bad for babies.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    Her basic point -- as should have been obvious from reading the article -- is that chocolate should have: cacao beans, cane sugar, and vanilla. And milk for milk chocolate. Everything else may not be in your interest to eat. Including sugars extracted from milk with who-knows-what processing done to it. Not eating ingredients you can't pronounce or recognize is a great rule of thumb, particularly in the incredibly permissive US food regulation regime.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Quickly checking Wikipedia sort of favors the lactose for having a cleaner process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane#Refining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane#Refining http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose#Isolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose#Isolation

ashwinaj 12y ago

"Choosing Food Babe as a blog handle has prompted some critics to say she is using her looks to get undue attention" Her looks are very subjective. Not to sound sexist (but I know I will since being victimized is so in vogue), if you're so concerned about GMO stuff, you better start with valid scientific data and not hearsay.

SEJeff 12y ago

I'm just gonna leave this link debunking all GMO is bad anecdotes here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-...

tzs 12y ago
That author misunderstands the issue. He thinks it is a science problem, and so tries to resolve it by looking at scientific studies. The problem with GMOs is not a science problem. It is a responsibility problem. As Ben Parker said, "With great power comes great responsibility". GMO gives food industrialists great power compared to what they have without using GMO techniques. Many do not believe that the food industrialists can handle the great responsibility that should accompany such great power.

fleitz 12y ago

Hopefully she can get broccoli growers to stop using MSG in their products.

dubfan 12y ago
Likewise, hopefully she can get bok choy growers to stop using toxic glucosinolates.
sliverstorm 12y ago
Of course, broccoli is already a hybrid and completely unnatural.
- mieses 12y ago
  This exemplifies why Common Sense 101 should be an Engineering requirement.

bequanna 12y ago

Maybe she is a quack. But, people are visiting her blog and talking about her. She gets attention and ad revenue. That is likely all she cares about. She is the female, food activist version of Glenn Beck.

dubfan 12y ago

> Companies have spent years cutting costs by replacing natural ingredients with artificial ones, while overselling the message that the products still taste great and are good for you, Dibadj said. Now that consumers are calling them on it, a reversal to natural ingredients is sure to hurt profit. That seems to be the point of this natural food movement. Rally the troops of uninformed but passionate rubes who think artificial == bad and natural == good to pressure companies into substituting out ingredients for more expensive ones, hurting their profit margin. This might have the effect of making these products cost more, which further strengthens the anti-corporate ideology this movement ultimately stems from. All the while they make a nice living off of book sales and newsletter subscriptions. The industry of fear is certainly booming in this social media era.

x0x0 12y ago
The point of the natural food movement -- as is patently obvious -- is suspicion about the health effects of many chemicals put into foods; suspicion of the health effects of the way food animals are drugged, raised, and treated; and suspicion of regulatory capture of the FDA. We should treat, in the absence of safety studies, artificial ingredients as dangerous and prefer not to use them. Just for example, people don't want bpa or similar substitutes in their food. And while it appears that bpa may be safe-ish [2], we got around to checking that well after manufacturers put it in all of us. The CDC had found bisphenol A in the urine of 95% of adults sampled in 1988–1994 and in 93% of children and adults tested in 2003–04. While the EPA considers exposures up to 50 µg/kg/day to be safe, the most sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower doses, and several studies of children, who tend to have the highest levels, have found levels over the EPA's suggested safe limit figure. [2] [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-containers-may-be-just-as-hazardous/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-c... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
pbreit 12y ago
I have a hard time criticizing people who encourage the eating of natural foods.

nnnnni 12y ago

She's the food equivalent of Jenny McCarthy...

mzs 12y ago

Anyone have a link to the NPR interview? I searched the NPR site and only found a story back from February of this year.

mzs 12y ago
Author of linked piece replied to an email from me, the radio piece was this one from February 25, 2014 of WFAE from Charlotte (the first part is also pretty interesting - about HAM radio): http://wfae.org/post/ham-radio-update-food-babe-vani-hari http://wfae.org/post/ham-radio-update-food-babe-vani-hari That radio program mentions this blog entry from Feb 14 2014 and the blog often covers issues from the POV of a skeptic: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/eating-yoga-mats/ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/eating-yoga-mat...

fibbery 12y ago

"Food babe" is a dumb name and food hysteria is definitely worth scorn, but what's the alternative? I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line. The problem is that the former encourages, rather than opposes, the latter. Are you familiar with the boy who cried wolf?
- tim333 12y ago
  I think the public actually do have some ability to distinguish what is nonsense and what is not. I think her arguments against azodicarbonamide seem quite reasonable to me and have been acted on. Her arguments on microwave ovens on the other hand appear well nuts: 'Hari has argued against the use of microwave ovens, for reasons that include the claim that they cause water molecules to form crystals that resemble crystals that have been exposed to "negative thoughts or beliefs," including the names of Hitler and Satan.' (Wikipedia) but I don't think many people take that seriously.

davidy123 12y ago

«Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says that while Hari sometimes “hyperventilates” about small risks in food, she is helpful on balance. ‘Populist Voice’ “Going after food dyes is worth doing and she brings a populist voice to the table,” he said. Internet-savvy food activists “do nudge companies to change their practices, often for the better.”» In any industry, many of the experts are inherently bought off, and it's helpful to have everyday individuals develop an interest in diverse topics that affect them.