Latest news with #VaniHari
Bloomberg
03-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The Right And Left Are Teaming Up Against CEOs
One-time Democratic supporter Vani Hari is now a central figure in the Trump administration. It's a sign that some more progressive figures are willing to ally with the right if it means furthering their agenda, says Bloomberg Opinion columnist Beth Kowitt. (Source: Bloomberg)
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
MAHA report insights ‘extraordinary' for the public: Food influencer
(NewsNation)—The 'Make America Healthy Again' report was released yesterday. It covered a wide range of American health issues. Some advocates, like Vani Hari, saw it as a breakthrough for the country on several levels. 'We have never before had this kind of leadership on our food system, what's happened to it and the mass poisoning of it,' said Hari. The MAHA report acknowledged that chronic disease in U.S. children has been driven by four major factors: Poor diet, chemical exposure to foods, lack of physical activity, and pharmaceuticals. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the government will be looking over the next 100 days to treat what he called a 'younger, sick generation.' Nearly half of US states risk a caregiving crisis, study warns 'This is something that we have to take in,' Hari acknowledged. 'This is a beginning step on getting the information out to the American public in a way they could easily digest it.' Hari says that seeing how this report got made was 'extraordinary' in terms of making sure every single faction of government had a say in what was presented to the American people, including the chemicals she's been sounding the alarm on for over a decade. 'The artificial dyes, titanium dioxide, BHT, artificial sweeteners, aspartame, sucralose and safron, that still increase insulin in your body when you're trying to consume them to avoid sugar,' she added. MAHA report is call to look at root causes of disease: FDA commissioner Pesticides were a major part of the report, which Hari hammered home as a win for Americans. She says for too long, the chemical lobby has been so sophisticated at preventing the risks of their health products from getting out to the public. The MAHA report also called for increased scrutiny of the childhood vaccine schedule, a review of the pesticides sprayed on American crops, and a description of the nation's children as overmedicated and undernourished. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
How Vani Hari, the Blogging ‘Food Babe,' Became a Trump-Era Megastar
Vani Hari, who branded herself the Food Babe back in 2011 when she started blogging about green smoothies and buttocks-firming exercises, stood at a podium in the great hall of the Department of Health and Human Services last month in a sequined white tweed suit. The stage behind her was filled with mothers like herself who have become the face of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement. In front of her were reporters assembled to hear the government's strategy to eradicate petroleum-based food dyes. And there, gazing up at her from the front row, was the nation's health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helped transform Ms. Hari, once voted one of the sexiest Democrats in Charlotte, N.C., into the Taylor Swift of the MAHA moms. Ms. Hari took a deep and very audible breath. 'For over a decade I said the F.D.A. is asleep at the wheel,' she said. 'Now I can stop saying that.' Ms. Hari, a 46-year-old former business consultant with a computer science degree, can barely believe that after 14 years of food activism in which she chewed a yoga mat to make a point about the chemicals in Subway sandwich bread, she has surfed the wellness wave all the way to the center of the Trump administration's food agenda. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it': Meet the food blogger influencing RFK Jr.
Dressed in a purple jumpsuit and wearing her signature bright pink lipstick, Vani Hari walks through a grocery store aisle filled with Easter candy. 'Welcome to the holiday death aisle,' says the 46-year-old food activist and influencer, gesticulating dramatically. 'It's back, and it's in Easter form.' Hari, who blogs as 'The Food Babe,' rattles off a list of ingredients, taking pains to emphasize how unpronounceable the chemical names in a pack of roll-up candy are: 'poly meanite… what?' More: Robert F. Kennedy now heads Trump's MAHA commission: What to know That's part of her shtick: 'If you can't pronounce it, don't eat it." Last month, the White House invited her to the first Make America Healthy Again Moms' roundtable. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moderated the closed-door meeting with some of the most influential women in the new Republican administration including members of the Cabinet. The typical response from her 2.3 million Instagram followers? 'You've helped me adjust my entire food thought process. I look at everything in the store with suspicion,' commented one user with the handle @idyllwild_history_bits_and_pc. Hari's clout as a wellness influencer - Time Magazine in 2015 named her as one of 'The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet' - has given her sway over large companies and government officials, even as many scientists say that many of her claims aren't backed by science. Now the food blogger from Charlotte, North Carolina, is getting top billing at the White House thanks to President Donald Trump and Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again agenda. 'For years, it felt like citizen activists like me were the only ones holding these food companies accountable,' Hari, who was listed on the agenda for the private roundtable session as a "MAHA Influencer," told USA TODAY. 'Finally, it was somebody in Washington willing to fix the issue that has allowed these companies to put chemicals in our food that they don't put in other countries.' More: Looking to avoid toxic 'forever' chemicals? Here's your best chance of doing so. Vani Hari wasn't always a healthy eater. As a child, she rejected her mom's Indian cooking to assimilate with her American friends who favored fast food. But that path led to mounting health problems, and, by her mid-20s, she began investigating what she was consuming and advocating for transparency in food labeling and the removal of harmful chemicals from processed foods. She'd spent hours researching and reading books on nutrition and studying food labels. On trips abroad, she'd often visit grocery stores comparing labels on food sold by American companies with what they offered stateside. In 2011, armed with knowledge she had acquired through her self-styled research, she launched to document her healthy eating journey and to share what she was learning about the chemicals in her food. After writing a viral blogpost about the ingredients found in a Chick-fil-A sandwich including food coloring, MSG and refined grains, the company invited Hari to their headquarters to discuss her concerns. On her blog, she mentions the fact that two years later, the company responded by announcing they were removing artificial dyes - highlighting it as a big win for the activist community. More: Girl Scouts hit back after Joe Rogan calls their cookies 'toxic' on his podcast By 2014, her blog had millions of people reading it. Her career as a food activist took off. So did the blowback. Yale neuroscientist Steve Novella dubbed Hari as the "Jenny McCarthy of Food" and dismissed her as a "scaremonger" who was sounding the alarm on completely safe ingredients. McCarthy, an actress, model and talk show host, has been excoriated by the scientific community for her belief that vaccines caused her son to develop autism. Novella, the founder and executive editor of Science-Based Medicine, run by the nonprofit New England Skeptical Society, wrote in 2014 how he believed Hari had "marshaled her scientific illiteracy to pressure Subway" into removing an ingredient from their bread. "She called azodicarbonamide, an ingredient to make bread fluffier, the' yoga mat chemical 'because it also has a variety of industrial uses, including making yoga mats," he wrote. "Soy also has a variety of uses, including making yoga mats." In 2017, Hari said her activism took a back seat when she became a mom and launched Truvani, a food company which is billed as offering "real food without added chemicals." Among the organic products the company sells online and in stores are protein powders, snack bars and toothpaste. 'He took my voice on the campaign trail,' she said. Hari said she ended her hiatus from activism last September to speak at a Senate roundtable on 'American health and nutrition: A second opinion' organized by U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin. Kennedy, who had suspended his independent campaign for president weeks earlier and endorsed then-Republican candidate Donald Trump, came to the session on Capitol Hill. At a dinner afterward, Hari and Kennedy sat at the same table and talked at length about food additives. More: 'You frighten people': 4 takeaways from RFK Jr's contentious confirmation hearing Hari sat one row behind Kennedy's wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, during his Jan. 30 Senate confirmation hearing to oversee the nation's food and health care systems as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Wearing a fuchsia pantsuit, she nodded along as Kennedy spoke about the role of additives and what he said they were doing to America's waistline and its long-term health. Hari doesn't have professional training in health or nutrition. Neither does Kennedy, 71, a longtime environmental lawyer with no background in medicine or health care, but who has long argued that chemical additives and food dyes are behind the 'chronic diseases epidemic' in the country. His vow to take on "Big Pharma" during his short-lived presidential run won the support of many, particularly mothers worried about what was in their kids' diets. 'I lost faith in my government and my regulatory agencies because I had to go and directly petition food companies to change because they weren't doing the right thing,' she said in an interview at the end of Kennedy's first of two confirmation hearings. 'It's because the FDA was allowing them to get away with it.' Hari said it felt like a 'defining moment" because Kennedy had 'heard the call.' More: Snapshot of RFK Jr.'s plan for changing the U.S. food and drug system Hari said she didn't know what to expect when she went to the White House for the Make America Healthy Again Moms' roundtable. That day, right before she entered the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building armed with charts for her presentation, she could see Trump on the South Lawn showcasing Tesla models with Elon Musk, the car company's CEO and leader of the Department of Government Efficiency. Looking around the room, Hari said she was "pleasantly surprised" to find that the majority of the women at the table had ties to the administration. She took her seat next to two other MAHA Moms. Kennedy sat across from her flanked by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Also at the table: Then-White House Counselor Alina Habba, now the interim U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who had her infant son on her lap. Drawing on her research during her foreign travels, Hari gave a seven-minute presentation showing the discrepancies between the ingredients listed in American versions of certain food versus its European counterparts. Kennedy moderated the panel, where he weighed in on a West Virginia bill banning food dyes and preservatives. He urged people to call the state's Republican governor to back the legislation. The HHS secretary promised things would change. "We're going to stop this from happening," Kennedy told the room, according to Hari, adding: "American companies can basically stop poisoning us with ingredients they don't use in other countries." A few hours later, the White House posted a video on social media highlighting Kennedy, Cabinet members and the MAHA moms struggling to pronounce certain ingredients in common food items. Social media users were quick to point out that just because you can't pronounce certain items doesn't mean they are unsafe. Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A seat at the MAHA Moms' table: Vani Hari on having RFK Jr.'s ear
Fox News
12-02-2025
- Fox News
Flight passenger 'bullied' after refusing to swap with seat squatter
'PLANE' BULLYING – An air traveler shared a story about being faced with "hostile" passengers who told the flyer to swap with a seat squatter who stole their assigned seat. 'FOOD BABE' – Vani Hari, known on social media as "Food Babe," is sharing her top five nutrition tips to help make you and America healthy again. TOURIST TAX – A popular travel destination has doubled its controversial day-tripper fee in order to combat overtourism. GIFTS OF LOVE – From body butter to a houseplant, cozy socks and more, these 10 eco-friendly Valentine's Day gifts are options for anyone who is trying to live more sustainably. Continue reading... CALLING ALL CROSSWORD PUZZLE LOVERS! – Play our Fox News daily crossword puzzle for free here! And not just one — check out the multiple offerings. See the puzzles... Fox News FirstFox News Opinion
