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
Citizen activists like me and we've had enough. These companies are lying to us. They're poisoning us with ingredients they've already figured out how to remove from their products. They already have the formulations. They've shown it in so many different countries.
Taking 400,000 signatures at Kellogg's headquarters was quite the, I would say, pivotal moment in my career. When I started doing this work several years ago, over 10 years ago, I took some petitions to craft headquarters. And I was met there with maybe 10 people, right? We went there and it was such a different stage in terms of who I was met with when I went.
I mean, health leaders from all across the country came to meet me there and speak. And as well as a thousand people on the ground, moms, children, concerned citizens, people that are fed up, have had enough
with the food industry doing this practice, which is using ingredients that are banned or heavily regulated in other countries in the exact same products that they use here in the United States, using safer, better for you chemicals, and using more toxic, more poisonous chemicals here in the United States in the same exact product that they sell overseas.
And so Fruit Loops was a perfect example of this, the fact that They have a version of Fruit Loops in Canada and Australia and Korea and India and all of Europe that doesn't have artificial food dyes. But here in the United States, it does. And this is something that has been the crux of all of my activism since day one when I quit my job as a corporate consultant.
to become a food activist full time. It was the first investigation that I did was I compared the American products, the exact same American products that are sold here in the United States compared to those same products that are sold in other countries. And when I compared the ingredient list, I mean, I was shocked.
And back then, I just remember one of the first ones I discovered was so alarming. I mean, Quaker oats, it's no longer this way. But back then, 10 years ago, it was. Quaker Oats strawberries and cream here in the United States was artificially dyed apple bits with red 40, a petroleum, you know, crude oil based dye.
But if you bought the same strawberries and cream Quaker Oats in Europe, it had real strawberries in it. And seeing those stark differences and what's been done to our food supply versus other countries by the same company, that's what made me so mad because it was like it was just this unethical business practice that these companies were engaging in. And
When I found out that the European regulators back in 2010 created a warning label, a cigarette type warning label on their products that contain these artificial dyes that warned parents that said may cause adverse effects on activity and attention in children. And these food companies said, you know, hey, we don't want to put this warning label on our product anymore.
We're going to reformulate our products so that we don't have to warn anyone about our products. And so they should have done that for all of their customers. And, you know, That day when we went to Kellogg's headquarters to deliver those petitions, that was to signify that we no longer want American companies to engage in this practice any longer.
And I would say Kellogg's was such a great target because they also back in 2015, due to the widespread awareness of artificial food dyes, decided to remove them. They said, you know, we'll remove these from our cereals by 2018. And then when I'm, you know, I just had a baby. It was 2019.
My daughter had just turned two and I'm going down the aisle and she picks up a box of baby shark cereal and it's by Kellogg's.
and i look at that and i say oh gosh you know they've probably taken out the dyes by now let's let's look at this let's look at the ingredients right they said they were going to do it and i couldn't believe my eyes that they were coming out with new formulas new products to attract the new children of today using the most popular toddler songs right
And then they still didn't take it out and they just went back on their promise. And I'm like, why isn't anybody holding these companies accountable for, first of all, lying to the public, getting all the positive press that they were making these changes and then deciding not to go forward with it and then create new serials to target children of today?
This was something that I felt was so sinister. And this is why during my Senate testimony on September 23rd of last year, I made this the crux of my testimony because I was like, I wanted to look the leaders in the room in the eye, the senators and the other people
members and other elected officials and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running to be in a position of power under the Health and Human Services Department. And I wanted to look them in the eye and say, hey, guys, we need help. Citizen activists like me and the people that follow me and all the moms out there that want to see these changes, we've had enough. These companies are lying to us.
They tell us they're going to do something and they don't. And then they're poisoning us with ingredients they've already figured out how to remove from their products. They already have the formulations.
they can already do this they've shown it in so many different countries so why don't they do that why don't they do it well it all has to do with money right i mean a petroleum based dye sits longer on the shelf it doesn't break down as faster as a real food ingredient like a carrot juice or a blueberry juice but also it's a way for them to again just continue using
ingredients that are allowed here in the united states because the fda has had created this loophole which basically allows food companies to approve chemicals themselves in these chemical companies and inundate our food supplies the reason why we have over 10 000 chemicals here in the united states and there's only a few hundred in europe that are allowed for years 338 yeah so it's it's it's so sad that we have this huge disparity in
the amount of chemicals we're being exposed to but the but the worst part about it it's the american food companies doing this for me i feel like it's very un-american for american companies continue this practice and it's not just kellogg's you know it's general mills it's coca-cola it's pepsico doritos
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