CHAPTER 1
WE’VE BEEN DUPED
EVERY BITE OF FOOD that passes through our lips and every glass of water we drink are potential sources of toxic chemicals, including pesticide residue, preservatives, artificial flavors and colorings, addicting sugars and fats, genetically modified organisms, and more. These toxins can travel to, and settle into, all the organs of your body, particularly the liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal tract, and lungs—and do great damage. Scientists are now blaming chemical-ridden food for the dramatic rise in obesity, heart disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, infertility, dementia, mental illness, and more. Our food system is in dire shape—and so are we.
AN ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST
Several years ago, after learning that I could live a life beyond the clutch of chemically laced foods, I embarked on a challenging and unforgettable journey. At the time, I was a blogger by night, while my career in business consulting was rocketing up by day. Had it not been for frozen yogurt, I might still be living a double life.
I’m curious by nature. I like to find out all I can about a situation, and I love the process of discovery. I can’t imagine anything worse than not experiencing something new, whether it’s an organic food, a book, or a foreign country to visit.
So when I discovered Yoforia frozen yogurt, which I found more delicious than other brands, I started eating it like it was going out of style. Yoforia had just opened a new store at my favorite mall; it was the perfect stopping place for a snack.
Yoforia advertised its products as organic. Huge ads stating “organic tastes better” plastered the walls of the store. With that kind of messaging, the frozen yogurt just had to have some yummy, good-for-you stuff in it, right? Plus, you could get your frozen yogurt topped with fresh fruit.
I remember sitting in my cubicle one day talking to my coworker Rachel. She told me she had indulged in a big bowl of Yoforia frozen yogurt the night before while shopping—and that it was to die for. My mouth was watering, and I couldn’t wait to start spooning it in.
But I got to thinking: With so many flavors available, what ingredients did Yoforia use for the flavor? I went right into some of the stores and asked. No one would tell me what was in the yogurt; nor were any ingredients posted online.
I tried e-mailing the company. Radio silence. I got suspicious.
I finally convinced one store employee to show me a bag of powdered stuff they were dumping into the yogurt. I investigated more. I found out that there was a dark side to my favorite frozen treat. The primary organic ingredient was the milk. The rest was trans fats, food coloring, and all sorts of other nasty preservatives and additives!
I had been duped. Rachel had been duped. Many innocent people had been duped by Yoforia’s marketing. I wanted everyone to know the story, so I blogged about it on foodbabe.com. I emphasized that this was a travesty—to market the product as organic while not disclosing its complete list of ingredients. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my article went viral among a huge community of Yoforia’s customers.
There was backlash. The Yoforia CEO got so much grief on the company’s customer service hotline that he wrote me a personal letter to apologize and tell me that Yoforia was working to change the ingredients. The letter was rather excuse-ridden, honestly. But a few months later, he met with me personally at a trade show, and we discussed the issues. Using every single debate skill I could muster, I protested that Yoforia’s frozen yogurt wasn’t exactly what you’d call healthful or even natural, and that it was misleading, in my opinion, to prominently use the word “organic.” As far as I was concerned, Yoforia’s marketing was deceptive, and I told him so.
After that meeting, he did pull back on the marketing BS and posted the ingredients online. But as of this writing, Yoforia’s ingredients have not changed, and they are still using some misleading marketing messages.
Still, I was floored by the influence my blog had. I thought: “If I can get one company to change for the better, I have the power to hold other food companies accountable, too.”
I had stumbled, almost unintentionally, into the world of consumer investigations and citizen journalism. I was convinced that unless food companies changed, we’d continue to be plagued by dangerous additives in our foods. I knew that I, just an everyday girl writing a blog, had a shot at changing the food policies of major corporations. That’s when I became a food activist. My passion for exposing the truth about the food industry soared.
IS CHIPOTLE “FOOD WITH INTEGRITY”?
The Yoforia experience shocked me into action. Were other chains with “healthy marketing” pitches telling the truth, or lying through their food wrappers?
I decided to investigate Chipotle because of its slogan: “Food with Integrity.” Curious, I looked up the restaurant’s website, only to discover that Chipotle had never released its ingredients online. That made me extremely skeptical. I called the company’s headquarters to find out why.
“Do you have an allergy to something?” the Chipotle representative asked.
“Why do I have to have an allergy to know what’s in your food—don’t I have the right to know what I’m eating?”
“Sorry, we can’t give you the ingredients.”
Undeterred, I went into individual restaurants to find out. No one was willing to talk, except one employee who eventually let me know the truth.
So I said loud and clear on my blog that no one should trust a company that is not willing to disclose their ingredients. I wrote, “How can we trust Chipotle’s definition of ‘Food with Integrity’ when they refuse to post their ingredients or send the information to customers who ask?”
People got so angry and frustrated that they stormed Chipotle’s social media pages. Someone even started an online petition on my behalf to pressure the company into being honest about how their food was prepared. We gathered 2,000 signatures almost immediately.
I think what angered people most was the information Chipotle didn’t want to share—information that I had uncovered. For example: Hiding out in their famous burrito shell was trans fat. Several of their menu items were full of genetically engineered corn and soy. Almost nothing was organic.
Chipotle got so much negative publicity that they reached out and set up a meeting, where they pledged to start publishing ingredient information. At first I didn’t believe them. Nonetheless, I offered to help.
“Listen,” I said. “Because you know what’s in your food, publishing your ingredients is really very easy. What’s taking you so long? I’ll help you put them online for free. I know how websites work and can help you do it really quickly—we can get a downloadable PDF up by tomorrow.”
“Well, first we want to clean up some of our ingredients before we disclose them on our website,” they told me.
That was a good start, I thought.
On March 22, 2013, Chipotle sent me an e-mail that said “Ta dah!” with a link to their much-improved ingredient list online. Not only did they post the full ingredient list, they labeled the genetically engineered (GMO) ingredients on their menu and have vowed to eventually go GMO-free. I heard they are even working to fix that burrito shell. I got the e-mail on my birthday—one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.
CHICK-FIL-A OR CHEMICAL-FIL-A?
One day, my husband, whom I now affectionately call Mr. Food Babe, came home from work with a nutritional guide from Chick-fil-A. All I could think was “God, please, I hope he did not eat there!”
Instead, he told me about a woman at his office who ate at Chick-fil-A, and that he was trying to convince her not to. (I was very proud of him.) The woman came back to the office after eating there and handed a pamphlet to my husband, saying, “See, not so bad—the sandwich I eat is only three hundred and ninety calories!”
He quickly directed her to the more important information on the sheet: the ingredients, not the calories. There were nearly 100 ingredients in the most popular famous sandwich!
I took a snapshot of that list with my phone and immediately posted it on my personal Facebook page. The reactions I got from close friends and family were everything from horrified to “no one is going to stop me from eating those 100 ingredients of deliciousness.”
These wide-ranging reactions inspired me to write one of my most popular posts to date: “Chick-fil-A or Chemical-fil-A?” In fact, I wrote several blog posts during the summer of 2012 about the unholy ingredients in the company’s sandwiches, from antibiotics, to MSG, to artificial food dyes, to GMOs and TBHQ.
Let me take a little detour here to say that you can’t get much more toxic than TBHQ. It stands for tertiary butylhydroquinone—an ingredient that is listed twice in Chick-fil-A sandwiches, once for the chicken and once for the bun. TBHQ is one scary chemical. It’s created from butane (a very toxic gas) and can only be used at a rate of 0.02 percent of the total oil in a product. Why is such a limit imposed? Maybe because eating only 1 gram of this toxic preservative has been shown to cause all sorts of issues, from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children to asthma, allergies, dermatitis, and dizziness. It can even cause stomach cancer in laboratory animals.
I interviewed parents and asked them why they took their kids to Chick-fil-A. The top three answers were: “My kids requested it” (who’s in charge—you or your kids?); “It’s better quality and tastes fresh” (not with nearly fifty additives in one sandwich); and “If I turn in the toy from the kids’ meal, I can get an ice cream cone that my kid loves” (that little treat has all sorts of processed sugar, trans fat, and artificial food coloring).
Word got to the company about my posts, and out of the blue came an invitation from Chick-fil-A. I was traveling, living in a tent near the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Burma, and Laos meet. Suddenly I had a cell phone signal, and an e-mail came through. I woke up my husband, who was half asleep, and screamed, “This is crazy! They’re inviting me… me! They must hate what I’m doing and are trying to stop it.”
I was scared, nervous, and unsure how to respond at first. I didn’t answer the e-mail right away. I waited several days and then decided that to change the world, you have to be willing to meet with your enemies.
In October 2012, I flew to the company’s headquarters in Atlanta. I had convinced Chick-fil-A to let me bring a videographer to capture the meeting so I could fully report on what happened. I was chauffeured in a “Cow Mobile,” a car outfitted with cow-patterned wrapping. Upon arriving, the first thing I saw was the real Batmobile, the same vehicle used in the blockbuster movies. All I could think was “Damn; they sold a lot of factory-farmed chicken laced with harmful additives to buy that iconic relic.”
I spent a whole day there, and they treated me well, presumably to try to win me over. That wasn’t going to happen; I was on a mission. I discussed my laundry list of concerns. During the meeting, execs asked me to prioritize the list of requests on a whiteboard. I told them eliminating artificial food dyes would be a quick change to implement. I quizzed them specifically on their vanilla ice cream. “Why do you have Yellow #5 dye in your vanilla ice cream, when that product should be white, anyway, and not yellow?” Their excuse was that they had originally used egg yolk, but it had to come out for processing reasons. I wasn’t buying it and insisted that they return to using natural ingredients and making that recipe work.
My number one request, however, was to provide safer and more sustainable chicken raised without antibiotics or GMO feed.
The elimination of antibiotics would be a significant commitment. The more we use antibiotics in our environment, the less effective they are in treating certain superbug infections. The widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed has given rise to new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that could, frankly, wipe out the human race if we don’t start doing something about it now.
To date, Chick-fil-A has indicated they will be working with their current suppliers to make the transition, rather than outsourcing antibiotic-free meat that might already be available. But this might take five years—a strategy that gives me some heartache. I’d like to see them influence their suppliers, like Tyson, Perdue, and others, to move faster, or at least consider using other suppliers who are not using antibiotics in the meantime. Regardless, their decision to make this switch will have an enormous impact on the fast-food industry and put pressure on other major chains to finally do the right thing.
My other demands called for the wholesale removal of all artificial ingredients from Chick-fil-A sandwiches. I stressed to the company that they’d be surprised how many people would choose clean, organic food if offered. And if Chick-fil-A did make their menu items additive-free and organic, I promised the company that I’d rent a chicken or cow costume or whatever they wanted and run up and down the street on live TV.
Not long after this meeting, I received an e-mail from Chick-fil-A executives confirming that the company would:
Remove Yellow #5 and reduce sodium in their chicken soup recipe. The new soup rolled out chain-wide in 2014.
Remove high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors from several sauces and dressings. The new, improved condiments were tested and rolled out in 2014.
Test peanut oil without TBHQ in multiple markets, with plans to roll out the new formulation in 2014.
Create and test “cleaner” additive-free white buns—without the chemical azodicarbonamide in them. I call azodicarbonamide the yoga mat toxin, because it’s found in yoga mats. Commercial bakers love it because it helps keep bread nice and spongy—just as it keeps your yoga mat cushiony. However, this chemical has been linked to respiratory problems, including asthma in factory workers, and when heated, it produces semicarbazide, a known carcinogen.
Constant pressure on Chick-fil-A for two years had worked.
GMOs, POLITICS, AND ME
While all of this was going on, I ran against 250 people in my district and was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. A delegate is someone who represents the constituents of a voting district at a political convention in order to elect a party’s nominees for president and vice-president. Attending these conventions, which are held every four years, are politicians, media, and decision makers from all over the country. I wanted to get their attention.
I ran to be a delegate so I could discuss with key leaders of our government the failure of the Obama administration to pass a law requiring food companies to label foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). President Obama had abandoned this stance. Why? Upsetting Big Agriculture and the chemical industry was not going to help him get reelected in 2012. Protecting the rights of American consumers and keeping his campaign pledge were obviously of secondary importance.
Genetic modification occurs when genes, viruses, or bacteria from one organism are artificially injected into a fruit or vegetable in a process that occurs in a laboratory and not in nature. The result is a GMO, or a genetically modified organism. Genetic modification is done to make a fruit or vegetable more hardy or impervious to the application of specific pesticides. These pesticides are linked to myriad diseases.
GMOs are found in more than 70 percent of processed foods. More than sixty-four countries around the world require GMOs to be labeled or regulated. The United States does not.
At parties and meetings the week of the convention, I had as many conversations as I could about GMO labeling with national Democratic leaders, media, and celebrities. Jesse Jackson, former presidential candidate, and Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and former chief of staff for President Obama, both said they didn’t know anything about the issue and had me repeat the question twice. President Bill Clinton deftly avoided answering the question and instead told me about being vegan. Chris Matthews, talk show host on MSNBC, rolled his eyes at me and asked, “When has that [GMO labeling] ever been an issue brought up on one of my shows?”
I now know why a GMO labeling law has never passed.
To bring attention to this issue, during Michelle Obama’s speech, I whipped out my lipstick, a shade called True Blood, and marked the back of my program in big, bold letters: LABEL GMOs!
The next day, I came prepared with real markers. When Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke at the convention, I made sure to get into the front row so that I could protest right in front of his face. It was hard to listen to what he had to say because I was besieged by video cameras and photographers trying to capture what I was doing. For the rest of the convention, a dedicated security guard watched over me, and they banished me to the back row, a punishment that was well worth it in my eyes. If a convention isn’t the time to speak up and stand up for your rights, I don’t know what is!
Later, when I reread Vilsack’s speech, I was reminded that he is a bureaucrat, not a man willing to go against his financial ties to protect the rights and health of American citizens. Despite polls consistently showing that more than 90 percent of the population want GMOs to be labeled, our leaders in Washington refuse to acknowledge this truth and will not implement mandatory GMO labeling at the federal level.
During this time, I was still working at my demanding job as a management consultant. I was successful and earning a good living. The problem was that my passion for food activism was overtaking my life as a corporate wonk. But the die was cast; I realized I had a voice, I had power, and I could change the food world. In the grand scheme of things, I felt a calling to do something greater with my life and have a larger impact on the world. I began to contemplate quitting my job.
Yet I was terrified. I was worried about how I’d make my mortgage, have health insurance, and feed my family. I felt like I was jumping without a net. Nonetheless, I decided to end my thirteen-year management consulting career in December 2012.
As the new year rolled around, I was making no money, and I had no “real job.” I was operating in the red, really, because I was putting out money to support the cost of running my blog. But once I made the leap, I was unstoppable.
As soon as I was able to dedicate my full attention to the blog, things started to change dramatically. I plugged away, working from morning until night. My articles went viral. There’d be more than 100,000 Facebook likes on an article, and millions of views, for example.
I realized that my last career had been a bridge to this new path, and frankly, money didn’t matter. Everything I had learned up to this point had groomed me to make this transition. I had been able to apply my business acumen and combine it with my passion for food quality. I realized that every good thing that had ever happened to me happened because I had decided to make a change.
CRAFTY KRAFT
Now that I could devote my full attention to activism, I knew I needed to address the prolific use of artificial food dyes in the food system. I had received thousands of letters from parents telling me how their children had gotten healthier after getting off all artificial dyes. Kraft macaroni and cheese, of course, is laced with all sorts of petroleum-based dyes that at least one study has linked to hyperactivity in children. I was shocked that they’d put their consumers, especially kids, at potential risk and that the FDA would allow something like that to be put in products. I wanted Kraft to remove these dyes. They did it with their UK product, why not in the United States?
I started a petition with my friend Lisa Leake on March 5, 2013, targeting Kraft, requesting they remove artificial food dyes from their macaroni and cheese. The petition received more than 24,000 signatures in twenty-four hours, and this response created a media firestorm. Every news agency under the sun called me that week. They wanted to know what had motivated me and why I was petitioning Kraft. I told the news reporters I was sick of Americans getting exploited for profit and that the food industry couldn’t hide any longer. When I was invited to appear on The Dr. Oz Show, I jumped up on my bed and screamed. I knew The Dr. Oz Show would give me the leverage I needed to get Kraft to change. I had stirred up a lot of hornets’ nests, for sure.
But my appearance on The Dr. Oz Show didn’t do anything right away. Kraft sent a statement to the show, saying that the FDA deemed these artificial food dyes safe. In this statement, however, Kraft neglected to say anything about the fact that they had removed these dyes from their European versions. Labeling of food containing dyes is mandatory in Europe. Unless they removed dyes, Kraft would have to label their products like this: “May cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children.” It was easier for Kraft to remove dyes from their European products than to have to smack their products with warning labels.
In just a few weeks, I had petitions with more than 270,000 signatures. It wasn’t enough just to ship the petitions, I wanted to hand-deliver them—these voices of parents all across the country—to the Kraft headquarters myself. And I did that on April first, April Fools’ Day. This was no joking matter, though.
It was a bone-chilling morning in the Windy City. I donned a heavy coat, gloves, and earmuffs to protect me from the freezing weather. Fox News Chicago interviewed me live and invited their medical correspondent, a doctor, to confirm that at least one study has shown a correlation between hyperactivity and the consumption of food dyes.
To prove that the UK version of Kraft macaroni and cheese made with natural dyes was just as yellow and tasty as the US version, I held a taste test on a Chicago street. The media swarmed like fireflies, flashing questions like mad.
A crowd gathered and grew. Holding a tray of macaroni and cheese, I tried to talk to as many people as I could. My fingers went completely numb even with gloves on. Almost everyone, especially the kids, said the UK version tasted great; they loved the color and couldn’t tell the difference. It was gratifying to know that so many people, once they understood the issue, would choose the macaroni and cheese product without dyes.
I posted a message on Facebook asking fans to call the headquarters on my behalf to ask Kraft to meet with me. I wasn’t the only one who did this; several other food advocates (and personal friends) shared this message with their fans, too: the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI); the Cornucopia Institute; the CEO of Nutiva, John Roulac; Zuri Allen from GMO Inside; Leah Segedie from Mamavation; Cheri Johnson from Label GMOs Hollywood; Max Goldberg from Livingmaxwell; Lisa Leake from 100 Days of Real Food; and countless others.
After our taste-testing stunt, I headed to Northfield, Illinois, where Kraft headquarters was located, to deliver the petitions. I walked the boxes of 270,000 signatures across the street to the corner of the security entrance (technically on Kraft’s property) and set up on the sidewalk to give speeches on our mission. Members of Change.org and several supporters of the petition joined me that day in the freezing cold.
After the speeches, we picked up the boxes and headed to the front gate. Immediately, the security guard emerged from the booth and handed me a clipboard on which to sign my name. She said, pointing at me, “You are the only one allowed in,” and asked us to put the boxes down so they could be collected.
I looked around, screamed “YES!” and hugged Pulin Modi from Change.org and the other activists and supporters who had come out that day. I was overcome. Our persistence had led Kraft to finally agree to sit down with me. I felt the magnitude of the more than 270,000 voices I was representing. Tears of joy ran down my face, mascara smeared everywhere. This was a monumental opportunity; people had been trying to boot artificial dyes out of food for decades.
Once inside the building, I met with representatives from Corporate Affairs—the soulless meeting I told you about at the beginning of this book.
During the next few months, I kept the pressure on Kraft. I continued media interviews to get the word out. I created charts on ways to boycott Kraft and choose safer brands. Activists around the country helped me spread the message.
People started to reject Kraft and chose Annie’s—a product without artificial food dyes. Annie’s saw their profits soar by over 14 percent the next quarter. Kraft was feeling the pain financially.
Then, just two months after Kraft reported their quarterly results, bull’s-eye. In October 2013, they announced that they would eliminate artificial dyes from three macaroni and cheese products, an action I considered a huge victory. The company now uses spices such as paprika to color the product marketed to children with cartoon characters and all of their deluxe varieties. I’m hoping that Kraft will extend its dye changes to all products. Pressure does yield progress, and I know Kraft will eventually make the switch.
TRICKY MARKETING TACTICS
It was June 2012. A police officer was about to kick me out of a building where Subway had a restaurant, for videotaping the sub-making operation. Thankfully, my best friend, Nicole, had already videoed what we needed on my iPhone. I wanted to show people the “real food” they were eating at Subway.
As a corporate consultant, I ate at Subway all the time while traveling. I considered it healthy road food, even though I had given up other fast food years before.
At the time, I had no idea Subway was using the very same processed foods used by other fast-food joints. I’d typically order a foot-long veggie sub (just like Jared) and eat half at lunch and the other half in my hotel room for dinner.
Eventually, I just got tired of Subway food. But I’d continue to see coworkers sling those clear plastic bags filled with foot-long subs on their desks at lunch. One coworker and a dear friend was Wes. He ate at Subway almost every day with his boss. This is what inspired me initially to investigate Subway. I wanted friends like Wes to have the facts. I researched the ingredient lists, with all the additives and preservatives, and wanted everyone to see the truth about what they were ingesting.
Food companies use a lot of marketing sleight of hand to make you think they’re serving up something fresh and nutritious. Subway is one of the best examples. As taken from Subway’s website, “We’ve become the leading choice for people seeking quick, nutritious meals that the whole family can enjoy.”
Subway wants you to believe they serve healthy food. They use many marketing tactics to drive this point home. The tactics that bother me the most are their partnerships with medical associations and our government leaders, because many people take their endorsements as credible and rely on them.
Here’s the reality:
Let’s start with the American Heart Association’s endorsement of Subway as “heart-healthy.” This is a farce.
Subway was the first restaurant to obtain the American Heart Association’s Heart-Check certification on certain menu items, namely, just a few sandwiches without any cheese or sauce. Subway, however, prominently displays this little logo all over their marketing materials and in their commercials, along with a disclaimer that could lead one to believe that everything on the menu is heart-healthy.
As for salads, the certification applies only to those served with fat-free sweet onion dressing. But that dressing is loaded with sugar and dimethylpolysiloxane, an additive found in Silly Putty and breast implants. I guess the American Heart Association thinks it’s heart-healthy to eat this additive, which is sometimes preserved with formaldehyde.
You may also notice that “Doctor’s Associates Inc.” appears on Subway’s menu, napkins, and packaging. What is this group, anyway?
Well, it’s simply the corporation that owns Subway restaurants and is in no way associated with any medical organization. Instead of naming their corporation like other restaurants do (e.g., McDonald’s Corporation, Arby’s Restaurant Group, Inc.), they chose a name that implies they are a medical organization. How do they explain the reasoning behind this? According to their employee guide:
“The name was chosen by Dr. Peter Buck and Fred DeLuca in 1966. Dr. Buck was a nuclear physicist by profession, and Fred had aspirations of attending medical school to become a doctor. So, the name Doctor’s Associates Inc. seemed to fit their situation.”
Can you believe it?
There’s more. First Lady Michelle Obama’s endorsement of Subway as a “healthy choice” for kids saddens me. Our First Lady is now on the record stating that “Subway’s kids’ menu makes life easier for parents, because they know that no matter what their kids order, it’s going to be a healthy choice” and “Every single item meets the highest nutrition standards.” This came after a huge announcement that Subway was launching a $41-million “Pile on the Veggies” advertising campaign using the Muppets, aimed at kids, in cooperation with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative.
I got so fed up with Subway’s “Eat Fresh” advertising campaign that I targeted the company in my petition to remove azodicarbonamide from their bread (the yoga mat chemical I mentioned above). Subway was serving Americans this ingredient, but not citizens in Europe, Australia, and Asia. Why were we eating yoga mat chemicals, while they were not?
Subway had completely ignored my investigation into their ingredients in 2012, further pressure in 2013 when I filmed a video of myself eating a yoga mat to drive the point home, and repeated phone calls and requests to their corporate headquarters. More than 97,000 people signed the petition.
Finally, on February 6, 2014, Subway announced that they would remove azodicarbonamide from their bread. Subway food still has a lot of other unhealthy ingredients. Clearly, they have a lot more work to do, but I remain hopeful.
Getting a company to remove a single ingredient is certainly a victory. But the real victory is that bringing awareness of one ingredient brings awareness of all the toxic ingredients in a food product. People start to see that our entire food supply is tainted—and they mobilize. Mobilizing concerned consumers to take action in order to change our food is truly at the heart of the Food Babe Way.
DON’T JUST BLAME THE FOOD COMPANIES…
Many people ask me why I choose to target specific companies in my campaigns. They’ve asked why I don’t go after the government agencies that approve the ingredients in our food. Unfortunately, because of the screwed-up system we live with, much of the food is controlled not by the government, but rather by the food corporations that are selling it to us. Food companies spend millions of dollars lobbying government officials to influence votes on laws, rules, and regulations, and sometimes they are able to avoid the system altogether.
You’d think our Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would protect us from all of this, wouldn’t you? Hell, no. They’re part of the problem. Most decisions about what goes in our food are made without the FDA’s knowledge—or ours.
A little history lesson: Back in 1958—the same year the Hula-Hoop was invented, Elvis joined the army, and Pizza Hut was founded—Congress enacted a law that was meant to guarantee that chemicals intentionally added to foods were safe. It was called the Food Additives Amendment, and it was a positive move for the health of all Americans. But Congress and the FDA had no way of knowing how food science and technology would transform our food supply in the future. Around the time the law was passed, there were approximately 800 food additives. A decade later, that jumped to 3,000. Today, an estimated 10,000 chemicals can make their way into our foods, many without any FDA review for safety.
Here’s why: The Food Additives Amendment exempts certain common food ingredients from FDA review as long as they are “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS. In 1958, Congress believed that certain additives—like vinegar and oil—were so obviously safe that they weren’t worth reviewing or testing. However, this amendment—and its enforcement—created a loophole so big I could park a semitruck inside it. The loophole allows companies to claim that their new chemicals and additives are GRAS without even notifying the FDA.
Today, the FDA allows food manufacturers to do their own testing to determine whether an additive is safe. If the company deems it safe, they go ahead and use it without any input from the agency or the public. This testing is generally performed on animals, where doses are questionable and given in a relatively short time. The whole process screams blatant conflict of interest!
In fact, the FDA has never reviewed the safety of more than 3,000 food chemicals. Most companies don’t even notify the agency. An estimated 1,000 chemicals are known only to the companies that use them.
What’s even more outrageous is that we can’t rely on the ingredient lists on labels to help us fully understand what we’re eating. More than 5,000 substances aren’t required to be listed.
If the FDA doesn’t know what’s in food, how can we?
We can’t, as long as the FDA is lax on the health dangers posed by additives.
In 1959, for example, the food additive carrageenan was officially granted GRAS status by the FDA. Despite its being rubber-stamped as healthy by the FDA, there’s still argument over the safety of carrageenan. Much of the doubt comes from a University of Iowa review published in Environmental Health Perspectives in 2001. Based on animal and laboratory research, this study revealed that carrageenan could cause ulcers in the colon and perhaps even cancer. The review indicated that FDA-approved food-grade carrageenan can be contaminated with non-food-grade carrageenan (degraded carrageenan), which is a known carcinogen. To me, the continued status of carrageenan as GRAS is troubling.
In 1993, the FDA granted approval to Monsanto for its genetically engineered recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), brand-named Posilac, for use by the nation’s dairy farmers. It increases milk production by about 10 percent over a cow’s life cycle. It’s the largest-selling cattle pharmaceutical in the United States.
But Posilac has always been controversial. More and more cancer specialists are apprehensive, because it may increase the risk for breast, colon, and prostate cancers in humans. Unless the milk you’re drinking is clearly marked “organic” or “rBGH free,” it probably contains this hormone. Incidentally, Posilac is banned in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. This should tell us something.
Even cows get sick from this drug. Just check the label on this hormone, and you’ll see a long list of toxic side effects inflicted on these poor cows. One is mastitis, an inflammation of the udders. The inflammation is then treated with antibiotics. Unfortunately, trace levels of these antibiotics may remain in the cow’s milk and other dairy products that end up on grocery store shelves.
Other scary GRAS chemicals include the preservatives butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), used to keep the fats and oils in foods from going rancid. They’re found in boxed cereals, canned frostings, dessert mixes, instant potatoes, microwave popcorn, baked goods, meat products, and chewing gum. BHA has been found to cause cancer in various animal studies, leading the National Institutes of Health’s National Toxicology Program to describe it as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” At least the FDA puts limits on BHA and BHT in foods; the preservatives can’t exceed 0.02 percent of a product’s fat content. But because these chemicals are found in so many foods, how do you know how much you’re ingesting? You don’t, not really.
Nitrites and nitrates (which turn into nitrites in the body) also are controversial GRAS additives. These chemicals are widely used in cured meats to prevent botulism. But cooking these products at high heat and, to a lesser degree, digesting them, produce nitrosamines—which cause cancer in laboratory animals.
Smoke and mirrors. It just makes me sick.
And now we’re finding out that filthy politics have entered the picture.
In 2013, an alarming report was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine by a group of top food additive researchers led by Tom Neltner. They looked at 451 GRAS notifications submitted voluntarily by companies to the FDA between 1997 and 2012, and they found “ubiquitous” conflicts of interest in GRAS approvals. Almost two-thirds of those safety assessments were made by “experts” selected by the food company or a consulting firm. About a fifth of those assessments were made by an employee of an additive manufacturer!
The FDA isn’t looking after you. They’re looking after food companies. Make no doubt about it, the food industry is in bed with the FDA.
SAVE YOURSELF NOW!
I know you might be upset about what’s happening in the food industry, and I don’t blame you. After reading about my investigations and finding out you’re being duped, you’re probably wondering how to avoid being a victim of these circumstances. I can totally relate, and I have a solution.
If you want to be healthy and in shape, you’ve got to take control. No government agency, big food company, or anyone else is going to do it for you. You can’t trust anyone but yourself.
Be fussy about your food choices. Get savvy about what you’re eating. The less a food has been processed, the more it benefits your health. Read labels—not so much the calories or carbs in a product, but the list of ingredients. Eat organic, real food; it’s the best way to protect yourself. Remember that there are more than 10,000 ingredients added to our food, thousands of which are untested. You don’t have to know them all. But there are 15 ingredients I want you to recognize. Let’s talk about them now.