Vani Hari
speaker
539 appearances
8 recordings
7 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 26 Jun
Vani Hari’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And so I started to compare products that we have here in the United States to products that they sell in other countries. But the exact same products. So like a Doritos package here in the United States versus a Doritos package in Europe. And I would compare the ingredients. And I did this large experiment. and I think the title is something like how US companies are exploiting Americans.
And I showed this stark differences between the same product that's being sold here and in other countries and how in other countries they're using better and safer ingredients. And while here they're using man-made chemical additives. And that side-by-side comparison went so viral that it was an opportunity to finally say, you know what, we need to hold the food companies accountable for this.
You know, one of the examples in that investigation was Quaker Oats. Here in the United States, Quaker Oats was a strawberry Quaker oak pack had dyed apple pieces to make it strawberry, dyed with a red 40, an artificial food dye linked to hyperactivity in children and can be contaminated with carcinogens. But in Europe, they're using real strawberries.
And, you know, that product, Quaker quickly got onto that and that product doesn't exist anymore, thankfully. But it was... Something that I just couldn't believe the stark differences. And so I decided to take on one of the largest food companies in the world, which was Kraft at the time. And they were serving little children mac and cheese with artificial food dyes, yellow five and yellow six.
While in Europe, they're using paprika and beta carotene. Wow. And, you know, it was a viral petition. It was so exciting. For the first time, we were on national TV. It gained a lot of steam, like 270,000 signatures very quickly. And on April 1st, it wasn't Happy Fool's Day for Kraft that day because I took the petition to their headquarters and I demanded a meeting. And they sat down with me.
They really did. And I sat down and I looked them in the eye and I just said, why? aren't you doing this for American children? You already have the formulation in other countries. Why are we getting the man-made additives that are linked to all of these health issues that we're experiencing? We have crazy chronic rates of disease for our kids, close to half of children on some kind of medication.
What is going on here? And they looked at me and they said, we have to agree to disagree. And they dismissed me. And I said, you know what? I'm not gonna let up. I'm gonna keep leading the charge. I'm gonna keep educating the public. I'm gonna tell people the truth about these chemicals.
And within six or seven months, they had to change because what happened was we were able to change the marketplace. People went from Kraft macaroni and cheese to their competitor, Annie's, who didn't use artificial food dyes. And then General Mills saw an opportunity. We're gonna buy Annie's for $800 million. And so at that point, Kraft's like, shoot, we're going to lose all our market share.
We need to change right now. And they did, which was great. And the funniest part of it all, which just makes me laugh to this day, is whenever they told the press that they were making the change, they're like, it had nothing to do with the petition, right? It had nothing to do with the worldwide press on this issue. So I took that momentum and And I continued it and took on more giants.
Well, shortly after taking on Subway, I ended up taking on the beer industry. I took on Starbucks. Starbucks removed caramel coloring level four from their drinks and posted their ingredients for the first time in history. They were actually hiding their drink ingredients for many, many years from the public. But
After I took all of those giants on, you know, I sort of receive a lot of attacks and they try to take my character down and they try to do whatever they can to get me to stop. And it was very intense. And at the time I could say I was super kind of naive about what I was doing because I was like,
wait a minute, if I just tell the truth and they do the right thing and these companies change, this is great for everybody, right? But I didn't realize that there's some factory that makes azodicarbonamide and now they got to be shut down and people are losing their jobs and there's money lost by these companies that have to change their formulations and all of that.
And I'm affecting a trillion dollar industry, really, you know? And so... I was like, oh boy, I'm going up against the giants. Like this is really intense. And it was the moment that I started the Kellogg's petition, which is when my daughter saw Baby Shark cereal at the grocery store. She was two at the time.
And I had remembered that Kellogg's said that they were gonna remove artificial food dyes. So I was like, oh my gosh, let me check the ingredients. It's 2019 now. They said they would do it by 2018. It's gotta be done by now. And this is a new product. So of course they've done it, right? They didn't.
They started creating new products and targeting the littlest modern children of today by using the most popular toddler song, Baby Shark. And now my daughter is interested in this product that they still are poisoning us with ingredients they don't use in other countries. In Europe, in Canada, in Australia, in India, Kellogg's doesn't use artificial food dyes. Here in the United States, they do.
And they said they would remove them. So I was like, why isn't anybody in Washington or the press or anybody holding them accountable for this commitment they made? They made Worldwide Press when they made the commitment and got the praise from it, but no one's holding these companies accountable for their actions. Their shareholders aren't doing it. Like, what is happening here?
And so I was like, you know what? I'm starting a petition. And so I was so glad and happy that two of my friends food fighters in this space I got connected with earlier this year, Callie Means and Jason Karp. We started working together again on how to take on big food. And it was, let's finish the job with Kellogg's. So Jason got into the fight.
He wrote a shareholder letter, sent it to Kellogg's and saying, you know, this is unacceptable. You must remove artificial food dyes. And they were gonna have a meeting with us. but they actually reneged on the meeting because we wanted to bring some doctors to the table because they wanted to bring the Consumer Brands Association with them.
Now, the Consumer Brands Association is the biggest big food lobby group in Washington. They're going to do whatever they can to belittle you or to make you look like your pseudoscientist or your fear mongerer. And they will use whatever they can to kind of spin the situation against you.
And so we're like, okay, if you're going to bring the Consumer Brands Association, a huge lobbying group with you, we'll bring our scientists with us that show that these artificial food dyes are causing harm to children. They didn't like that. And so they shut down the meeting. Once they did that, they left us no decision at that point.
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