7 Ways 'The Food Babe' Spectacularly Fails To Grasp Science
Lesson One: Everything Is Made Of Chemicals
The Food Babe, real name Vani Hari, is a self-styled lifestyle guru who has made a living out of creating softcore conspiracy theories about how everyone and their mother is trying to poison you through the food that you eat, the air that you breath and and coffee that you drink.
Unlike the usual brand of mystical crazy from the woo-brigade, Food Babe has styled herself on the "scientific" side of the wellness industry. This arguably makes her more dangerous, and her mental claims harder to spot beneath the technobabble.
For most people, their bullsh*t detectors will be quickly set off by crystals, auras and levitational deer antler, but when Foodie Bae starts banging on about the dangers of azodicarbonamide and level 2b carcinogens, many will be inclined to simply take her word for it. This is a shame, because she is generally wrong about pretty much everything (this is only a little bit of an exaggeration).
Look, you don’t need to be a fully qualified dietician, you don’t even need to have a rigorous science background, to interrogate the claims of figures like the Food Babe (although, for anyone with a grain of science in them, some of her claims border on hilarious).
Most people, scientist or not, know that vegetables = good and pop tarts = bad (but delicious), but Vani Hari, whose background is in computer science and not nutrition, hasn't limited herself to simply telling you that vegetables are good for you (after all, where's the mone-, er, fun in that?), but involves herself with people's lives, people's health and even government legislation, and that's what makes her dangerous.
So, what's my problem? Glad you asked...