Interview: Vani Hari | The Truth About the Lies We’re Fed

January 4, 2019, Charlotte, NC

Inconvenient facts are still facts. 

—Vani Hari, aka Food Babe

Kristen:           Vani Hari, otherwise known as ‘The Food Babe’, is a revolutionary food activist and New York Times best-selling author. She was named one of the ‘30 Most Influential People on the Internet’ by Time magazine. A reformed sugar addict, soda drinking, fast food eater, Vani went from starting a food blog in 2011 documenting her own journey to health to calling the Big Food industry to task.

 A woman on a mission for truth and transparency from the food industry and those who regulate it, Vani has initiated a movement of accountability and enlisted a mass of supporters in excess of 1M called the ‘Food Babe Army’. She has been widely profiled, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as appearing on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and the Dr. Oz show.

Vani is the founder of Truvani, a startup company offering real food without chemicals, products without toxins, and labels without lies. In her latest book, Feeding You Lies: How to Unravel the Food Industry’s Playbook and Reclaim Your Health — she blows the lid off what goes on behind the scenes while paving a new way of thinking for us all to approach our own health options. She shines the light so that we can become our own nutritional advocates and truth detectors. 

Vani, thank you for sitting down with Best Self Magazine today and for inviting us into your home — and mostly, for your crusading voice in the world. 

Vani:                It is a pleasure to have you in my home. I’ve been a big fan of yours and what you’re bringing forth through Best Self.

Kristen:           Thank you, this is a long time in the making. I’ve wanted to sit down with you for a while. 

For anyone in our audience that isn’t familiar with your work, I would love it if you could take us through your journey from fast food to hospital bed to food maven. That’s quite an arc. Was there a specific incident where you connected the dots and identified food as the culprit? 

Vani:                I grew up here in Charlotte, North Carolina with two immigrant Indian parents. The first thing my Dad actually introduced my Mom to — after they had an arranged marriage in India and came here for their honeymoon — was a McDonald’s hamburger. He felt that if they were going to live in America they were going to eat like Americans. That’s essentially how I was raised. We were one of the only Indian families in my school growing up, so I wanted to eat what everybody else around me was eating. As a result, I completely shunned my mother’s homemade cooking. 

 I wanted to eat the chicken nuggets, and Salisbury steak, and fried mozzarella sticks — and all the stuff that my peers were eating. The food that my Mom was making smelled funny, it was weird tasting, and my brother wouldn’t eat it. We ate a lot of fast food, probably three or four times a week if not more, because it was cheap, and it was available, and because my parents didn’t really understand what was happening with the American food suppliers. This was never an issue in India because everything was made from scratch there, and everything had medicinal spices and was truly healthy. 

 As a result of this processed food lifestyle, I was very sick as a child. I had eczema, asthma, allergies, and was always at the doctors getting a prescription drug, going on antibiotics. I was just a sickly child who never wanted to go to school because I didn’t feel well.

But it wasn’t until my early twenties that I completely hit rock bottom. I had been working in a high-powered job where they give you an expense account. I was traveling all over the place and they were catering breakfast, lunch, and dinner so we could work through our meals. The reality: I was letting my food be outsourced by this company. 

I had a lot of ambition. When you have Indian parents, they expect you to get a good job, a 401K, and health insurance; I was just trying to live up to that idea.

 Not surprisingly, my health just went down the toilet. I not only gained close to 40 pounds, I felt horrible about myself. I also ended up in the hospital with an appendicitis. Even to this day, it