part0022

When I was a kid, I was always asking questions. I’m happy to report that my inquisitive nature never left me. In high school, I became a nationally ranked debater and was recruited to the top debate colleges around the country. After I became a food activist, I dug deep into the skills I learned as a debater and started researching the most nutritious and healing foods on the planet. I also decided to figure out what was in the food I had been eating. I investigated food issues ferociously, because my own health issues had shown me the importance of the subject. I discovered the ugly truth behind additives, that food coloring is made from petrochemicals and the bodies of ground-up insects, why preservatives can cause cancer, how the sugar and flavor industries create addictive foods, and so much more .

I believe it’s imperative that we eat the healthiest food possible. Good nutrition is about feeling better, looking better, and living longer. But with guilty parties lying to us about the food they sell, it gets harder all the time to sort the useful advice from the flawed or false.

I have a solution: become your own food investigator. Educate yourself about what you’re buying in the grocery store and putting on your plate. Learning about what you eat fosters both the desire to live well and the confidence to weigh conflicting advice from different parties.

This is easier than you think. You don’t have to make a full-time career of food activism and investigating like I have. You just need to ask, and answer, three simple questions about food:

Write these questions down and tuck a note in your wallet or purse. Hang them on your fridge. Save them in the notes in your phone. That’s really all there is to it. I believe that if you can select food based on your answers to these three questions, you’ll put yourself—and your loved ones—on the path to a healthy lifestyle right away. Plus, you’ll be fighting back against those guilty parties who are trying to contaminate our foods in the name of profits.

Head into your kitchen right now and give these three questions a try. Yes, really right now. Go ahead and open up your fridge or pantry and grab one of your favorite food items. Now let’s take a closer look.

This is probably the most important of the three questions. Know what is in your food. For starters, you must read ingredient labels. If the food contains any additives or preservatives, ask yourself why they are used and whether they’re really necessary. If you don’t know what an ingredient or additive is or how it can affect your health, put the product back and look for a product made with real food instead.

The front of the package tells you very little about what’s really in a product. This is the primary place where most consumers look when choosing healthy products, but this is a big mistake! Food manufacturers know this, and exploit it to their advantage. Take a bottle of V8 Splash Fruit Medley juice drink, for instance. The front label has brightly colored pictures of fruit and boldly claims it contains antioxidant vitamins A and C, which certainly gives the impression that it’s a healthy food. However, the ingredients list paints another story, as you’ll find its first two ingredients are water and high-fructose corn syrup—making these the most prominent ingredients in this drink. As you read down the ingredients list, you’ll further find that it’s artificially colored with Red #40 (made from petroleum) and sweetened up even more with the artificial sweetener sucralose (made by chlorinating sugar molecules). V8 Splash may contain those antioxidants A and C, but you’ll be gulping them down with copious amounts of sugar and chemical additives. Now that doesn’t seem very healthy, does it?

There’s an erroneous implication out there that all the ingredients allowed in processed food—preservatives, artificial sweeteners, thickeners, stabilizers, emulsifiers—have gone through some sort of rigorous safety testing by the FDA proving they’re okay to eat, but in many cases they haven’t. As we discussed in Chapter 3 , new ingredients are often approved by the food manufacturers themselves, and not by the FDA, and it’s a system fraught with loopholes. This is why we need to take responsibility for our own health and not rely on the FDA (or anyone else) to protect us from all the additives and untested chemicals in our food.

The bottom line: try to stick to whole foods with simple ingredients lists. The fewer unnecessary ingredients added to your food, the better. The more real whole foods you eat, the healthier your body will be. Examples: fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes, and lean meats—all organic if possible. Choosing real food is the simplest way to answer this question without having any doubts .

It makes me incredibly sad that people out there are doing whatever it takes to get healthy and look and feel their best—but are facing an uphill battle because of what the food industry has done to our food and the way they are marketing it to us.

Marketing terms like “diet,” “light,” “free,” “natural,” and “healthy” are blazoned on food packages that are filled with controversial additives that provide the body with zero nutrition. What kind of viable nutrition does your body get when you nosh on Yellow #5, carrageenan, and natural flavors? The answer is none.

When it comes to the additives in our food, it makes sense to be wary. The majority of food additives invented in the last few decades have been created with the sole purpose of improving the bottom line of the food industry, not with our health or nutrition in mind.

This is why it is so important to look critically at our food choices. Thus, an easy way to answer this question is to clarify whether the food is “whole” or “processed.” A food that is “whole” simply means a food as found in nature. Whole foods are typically “one-ingredient foods” and they don’t contain any preservatives, dyes, or any of the additives listed in the Appendix.

Whole food is real food: real meat, real broccoli, real apples. If the food and its ingredients don’t fit the descriptions of whole and real, chances are they’re not good for you. Eating a well-balanced diet packed with whole, fresh foods is vital to health, energy, and longevity.

Rather than a food sweetened with sugar (which is highly refined and devoid of nutrients), it’s better to choose one sweetened with dates, maple syrup, or honey (which all contain healthy nutrients from nature). Instead of a food made with bleached wheat flour that is “enriched” with synthetic vitamins and minerals, choose those made with whole organic grains, nuts, seeds, and other healthy foods.

The first thing many people look for on a product is the calorie count because they believe the lie that it really doesn’t matter where your calories come from, as long as you don’t eat too many of them. This theory is broken and leads people down the path of eating heavily processed foods full of artificial sweeteners, thickeners, and other health-wrecking additives that are devoid of nutrients. Instead, start focusing on whether a food is nutritious or not. That’s the key question. Instead of focusing on the quantity of calories, fat grams, or carbs we eat, it’s more important to emphasize the quality of those calories. Seek out nutrition first and the rest will follow.

Avoid Processed Foods to Cut Cancer Risk

One recent study by European scientists in the prestigious British Medical Journal carefully tracked the diets of more than 100,000 participants. Then they looked at how different diets influenced the likelihood of getting cancer. Their main finding was that people who ate more “ultraprocessed foods”—think mass-produced breads, cookies, chicken nuggets, sodas, instant soups, junk like that—were more likely to get cancer. The numbers are telling: a 10 percent increase in ultraprocessed foods led to a 12 percent increase in cancer incidence. 1

While the researchers note that this correlation between junk food and cancer could be caused by many factors—there’s so much wrong with ultraprocessed food, it’s hard to know where to start—suspected culprits include food packaging materials and the cocktail of additives in these foods with the potential to create interactions in our bodies.

When you shop for food, or dine out, you deserve to know where that food comes from, and people overwhelmingly tell me they want to know. Unless you do all your shopping at a local farmers market, the produce you buy has generally made a journey from grower to packer to distributor to supplier to grocery store. Preservatives were probably used to extend shelf life, or the food was cultivated with pesticides, chemicals, fertilizer, antibiotics, and growth hormones.

Still, there are ways you can trace your food back to its source. Look at its PLU (price look-up) number. A 9 at the beginning of a five-digit sequence indicates the produce is organically grown. A four-digit code beginning with a 3 or 4 means it was conventionally grown and may be GMO if it’s a GMO crop. The current list of GMO crops includes corn, potatoes, apples, zucchini, yellow squash, and papaya. You can also use apps like HarvestMark for more tracing.

As for animal proteins, it’s best to avoid meat from animals raised on conventional factory farms (which are notorious for using hormones and other growth-promoting drugs, while feeding the animals antibiotics and GMO feed in cramped and unsanitary conditions). The vast majority of meat in the average grocery store is from these types of farms, even if it’s labeled “all natural.” The best strategy is to look for labels that really mean something, such as Animal Welfare Approved, Certified Humane, and Certified Organic.

When I eat meat, I always try to buy local and organic. One of the best ways to obtain meat and other foods that are optimum for your health is to buy directly from local farms, where you can shake the farmer’s hand and talk with them. You can connect online with farmers markets or use subscription-based Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) to purchase organic meat that wasn’t raised in a cramped and filthy factory farm.

Buying animal products directly from the farmer is becoming increasingly common. I like to know that food animals had a “free-range” life and weren’t kept in a crate and pumped with antibiotics in some Big Ag operation. Ideally, my meat comes from a healthy, contented cow that grazed on an open, green pasture its whole life.

And it’s not just meat: I try to buy as much food as possible directly from my local farmers. Eating locally puts you in touch with the person who produced what you’re about to eat. This way you support local agriculture, and enjoy food that is more nutrient dense because it hasn’t been preserved to travel hundreds of miles to your store. If you’d like to learn how to do so, you can connect online with farmers markets, subscription-based CSAs, buying clubs, and farms at:

At restaurants, when a plate of food is placed before you, have you ever thought about where it has come from and how it was prepared?

It’s easy to order and just eat … right?

Yes, it’s easy … but it’s just as easy to ask where your meal comes from. Some tips: Quiz the restaurant about its meat supplier. When you’re dining out, ask your server where the restaurant purchases its meat. If they don’t know, or say it’s dropped off by Sysco or some other huge distributor, that indicates the meat is probably processed to the hilt. Don’t eat the meat or dairy at a restaurant unless you know it’s raised without antibiotics.

The same goes for fish: make sure it’s wild caught and not farm raised.

Find out which cooking fats are used. Restaurants are notorious for frying food in unhealthy inflammatory oils like “soybean oil” or “vegetable oil.” Check with the kitchen before ordering and ask what type of cooking oil they use. Go so far as to ask them to read the actual ingredients list on the oil container.

Learn whether the restaurant uses GMO food. When you go out to eat, ask your server if the food is non-GMO. He or she might not know, but at least you’ll start educating your favorite restaurants and their workers. If an item isn’t organic and contains a common GMO crop (like corn), choose other items instead that are not at risk of being GMO.

Lean toward homemade. Before you order soup or other dishes at a restaurant, ask if it’s homemade or if it contains additives.

Order something not on the menu. Ask the chef to create something for you. This request can be made easily at a fancier or more established restaurant where chefs are highly skilled and can experiment for you. Ask for your meat to be simply prepared with olive oil or butter and salt, or ask for steamed fresh vegetables.

Build a relationship with a favorite restaurant. When I’m too busy to cook but still want to eat healthy, I head to my favorite standby. I’ve gotten to know the staff and they make everything perfect for me every time. For example, my favorite sushi chef prepares a special roll with all veggies and no white rice or unhealthy sauces. He calls it the “Food Babe Roll.” He also knows that I like my ponzu sauce on the side of my sashimi. I always start with a big bowl of romaine with extra cucumbers and the ginger dressing on the side, and they serve great hot green tea. My meals there are fail-proof, and I never have to stress about what I’m eating.

Look, I know it’s hard to insist on eating right when you eat out, especially when you’re dining with a group. When I first started asking questions at restaurants, people teased me. “Oh, Vani is about to order. Time to take a nap!” Or, “The restaurant is going to hate us. Vani is ordering!” But after I left the hospital, I promised myself I’d stick to my principles. And sometimes, people even came to appreciate it.

There was one time I was invited to dinner at a fancy steakhouse. After looking at the menu and asking questions about the meat, I realized that I didn’t want anything on the menu. So I asked the chef if he could make me a vegetable plate instead. I was pretty nervous to do that if front of all the people I was with, so I whispered my order to the waiter. However, when the food came out, my vegetarian meal looked so much better that they started asking if they could get the same thing.

We all want to eat food that makes us feel good. Sometimes, we just need to be reminded that we can: it only requires that we read the ingredients and investigate what’s really in all those packaged and processed items. Because it’s time to stop outsourcing our food decisions to Big Food. It’s time to stop feeling awful. It’s time to stop getting sick and gaining weight. It’s time to take back control of our food supply from these companies that just want our money and don’t give a damn about health.

Of course, starting the food revolution we need won’t be easy, and it won’t happen overnight. I have no doubt that food companies will do everything possible to keep feeding us their highly lucrative junk food. But none of us needs to succumb to industry lies and ties. The truth is out there. If all we did was stop eating processed food and instead build our diet around whole, organic, and real food, we’d shield ourselves automatically from most chemicals, toxins, added sugar, and other additives in food.

Nobody’s perfect. We all have days when we end up eating something that we know isn’t good for us. That’s why it’s important to remember that making major lifestyle changes—and changing how you eat is one of the biggest changes you can make—is an ever-evolving process that involves recognizing what will and will not work for you. My goal is to simply keep you informed and help you see through the industry-funded lies so you can choose the best foods for yourself. Big Food spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year persuading us that it’s okay to drink toxic sodas and eat foods made out of chemicals we can’t pronounce. And then, when we get sick, they invest in propaganda that tells us it’s just our fault for not exercising enough. It’s time to stop believing them. It’s time to take back control.