7 Ways 'The Food Babe' Spectacularly Fails To Grasp Science

3. She Deals In Fear And Ignorance

Hari might not understand much science, but she's counting on you to understand even less.

A favourite technique of hers is to find a chemical in a food product that has an obscure sounding name, and find it in another non-food product. She did this with bread and yoga mats (still not over how stupid that is), and then with the propylene glycol alginate found in beer.

Now sure propylene glycol is a scary sounding product that's also found in antifreeze (then again, so is water, but get outta here with that logic), but propylene glycol alginate is a different thing derived from kelp. Not that it matters anyway, because they're both safe for human consumption - but you didn't know that, and that's what she's counting on.

Nothing encapsulates her anti-intellectualism more than the glib little catchphrase: “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.” This in an express instruction to dismiss out of hand what you don’t understand. Perhaps a better tagline would be "If you can't pronounce it, and you think it is cause for concern, learn to pronounce it and educate yourself on its effects in order to make an informed decision."

Perhaps that's slightly less catchy.