Food Babe’s Ingredient Attacks Draw ‘Quackmail’ Backlash | Hacker News Reader

Food Babe’s Ingredient Attacks Draw ‘Quackmail’ Backlash

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34 pointstokenadult51 comments

>“Well, I’m a computer scientist, so I had to take a lot of engineering courses for that,” says Hari, with an awkward laugh. He bores in. “But you are not a food scientist. You’re not a chemist. You’re not a scientist in that aspect.” Then he quotes an editorial, in which a Yale School of Medicine neurologist calls the Subway claims “the worst example of pseudo-scientific fear-mongering I have seen in a while.”

Sums up my feelings on this sort of activism perfectly. "You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce" is an ignorant claim deserving of ridicule.

Yet Another misinformed anti-GMO/"natural food" advocate yawn "Did you know the salt in your potato chips is also used as a chemical agent to melt ice on roads! Ban salt! Chemicals are poisoning your body!!!!!"

EDIT: http://foodbabe.com/2012/10/31/getting-conned-cheap-toxic-ch...

^ This actually highlights lactose as a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate.

    This actually highlights lactose as
    a "toxic" ingredient in chocolate.

Where?

>Just look at the ingredients in popular chocolate candy out there; they are despicable and it’s why I don’t buy these brands any longer, even for an occasional “treat”:

Below it is the following image (mirrored to avoid hotlinking):

http://i.imgur.com/FpnP87r.jpg

Notice "lactose" highlighted in an alarming orange color next to Almond Joy

You're reading it wrong, I think she just highlighted the words she needs to look up later in the dictionary.

Clearly she understand the word milk, but is confused by lactose, so she needs to look it up later so she can figure out that lactose is in milk. Then when she highlight the bad ingredients she can highlight milk AND lactose.

I'm interested to know her opinions on breastfeeding and whether lactose, HGH, and IGF-1 are bad for babies.

Her basic point -- as should have been obvious from reading the article -- is that chocolate should have: cacao beans, cane sugar, and vanilla. And milk for milk chocolate. Everything else may not be in your interest to eat. Including sugars extracted from milk with who-knows-what processing done to it.

Not eating ingredients you can't pronounce or recognize is a great rule of thumb, particularly in the incredibly permissive US food regulation regime.

Quickly checking Wikipedia sort of favors the lactose for having a cleaner process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane#Refining

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose#Isolation

> Not eating ingredients you can't pronounce or recognize is a great rule of thumb

Bullshit. So because we call cacao beans cacao beans, they're okay to eat, but because we call whatever whatever, it's not? Do you really base your decisions for what's okay and not based upon whether you've heard the English word for a substance? How do you cope when you travel to a place wherein you do not speak the language? Do you engage in a panic when someone tells you about residual radioactivity in almost every living thing on the planet?

So you have vanilla in your chocolate. Should I explain to you the chemical composition of vanilla? What you call "vanilla" is actually a compound of unpronounceable things; would you be concerned if I told you a number of them have MSDS sheets? The primary component of vanilla is vanillin. You know what vanillin is really called, its IUPAC name?

4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde.

Your comment represents everything wrong with the Internet era of pseudoscience. Absolutely everything. You're really in the same bucket as Jenny McCarthy with a comment like that. I realize this is a mean reply (I'm honestly just passionate about willful and flagrant misinformation on the Internet), but come on. You are actively harming the public if you proselytize stuff like this, especially considering that most people just parrot what they hear without comprehension; one need look no further than Jimmy Kimmel's "which is better, the ACA or Obamacare?" segment for evidence of that.

And you're stupid for pretending that because vanilla has a chemical name therefore people shouldn't wonder what all the chemicals are doing in their food. QED.

Beware of dihydrogen monoxide.

http://www.dhmo.org/

>Ban salt!

I'm guessing you're parodying the Subway yoga mat ingredient azodicarbonamide. It's banned in Europe and Oz as a food additive but if you'd like it in your sandwiches feel free.

Do all your chips/crisps come unsalted or something?

I loled at the yoga mat comparison because unless I'm mistaken no one is eating their yoga mats

Someone is probably eating one right now. People are weird.

Our pet foxes ate one once, does that count?

Only if they have done a TED talk about it.

He's saying the fact that it is used in a yoga mat is not compelling. There's probably some water in there as well.

You say "it's banned in Europe and Oz as a food additive" as if that was material or interesting. GMOs are banned in Europe too, but no one takes that as a serious indictment of GMOs. It is, rather, a demonstration of the anti-scientific stance of European law-makers.

If you have some data that increases the posterior plausibility of the proposition "Azodicarbonamide is toxic at the levels found in Subway bread", give it to us! Note that that statement is quite different from "azodicarbonamide is toxic at some level", because that statement is true of virtually everything and is therefore completely irrelevant to the question about it's use in Subway's bread.

I just mentioned the ban as an indication that there may be some drawbacks to the stuff. I see in the wikipedia mention that the UK has 'determined that containers of it should be labeled with "May cause sensitisation by inhalation."' Sounds like healthy and tasty to me.

"You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce" is an ignorant claim deserving of ridicule.

Depends how you take it. The other way round it is saying that if you are eating something you should probably learn what it is, and as an extension, that things with common names have a longer history to establish bio-compatibility. Sure, you can poison yourself with well known things, but if something is so new nobody has bothered working out a common name, it is worth at least questioning if you really want to eat it.

edit - taken as dogma, I would agree it is obviously nuts.

I thought this was another pseudo-science overreaction too, until I read about what azodicarbonamide actually is....

I understand that it probably is safe at low concentrations, but I also feel like it's a logical fallacy to say that because it's probably not poisonous in low levels that I want to eat it.

Rather, it seems to me the question should be- do I want to have this ingredient in my bread. And I although I suppose that in some ways it makes the food cheaper, because it lasts longer, mostly the answer would be no.

We clearly understand the reasons why this ingredient is in the bread, but to me qualitative differences in the product don't seem sufficient to warrant it's being there.

(Contrast this with some other synthesized additives like carrageenan or something that has a bigger effect on the qualities of the food)

My problem with the "you can't pronounce it" argument is that it seems to have more to do with ignorance of chemistry [0] than with health. The idea that having industrial applications makes a chemical compound less likely to be healthy, or that chemical nomenclature has any impact on health at all, is just wrong - and while I'm not opposed to people making their own choices as to what to eat, I'm equally not going to ignore the effects of those choices (and of activism) on the wider food industry [1] (and by extension, on other people).

It probably doesn't help that I keep some of these ingredients in my pantry. What qualifies as an easily recognizable substance is very much a matter of background.

[0] http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/21/eight_toxic_...

[1] http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/04/30/is_that_food...

(I can't match Dr Lowe for eloquence, so I really do recommend reading him for yourself. The same holds for the rest of his blog, too!)

I agree that it is fear mongering to say that you'll get cancer or schizophrenia (!?) from a certain additive... but on the other hand I think to simply dismiss any warnings is to throw the baby out with the bath water....

Maybe the argument is too subtle and people feel like they need to ratchet up the intensity of their argument to make a point, but I think the basic premise holds true: why are these things in our food?

The real reason is almost always either marketing (it needs to look as it does on the box, i.e. dyes, stabilizers and such) or supply chain issues (shelf life, total outputs, i.e. preservatives/growth hormones) all dressed up with it's own pseudo-science of GRAS (generally regarded as safe)... which does not mean some multi-year double-blind longitudinal study, it simply means lack of evidence that something is harmful. In the parent's link [1] #6 he goes as far as to say that overall cancer rates dropped during the introduction of bha/bht- how is that scientific to say that an ingredient must be safe because everyone in the US has less cancer than before this ingredient was put in food?

I don't object to the use of additives per se, but most of these chemical additives are in there to either make the food a couple of cents cheaper or to make them one percentage point more profitable.

And in fact perhaps these supply chain issues may be solved in the near future if people order/buy their food online/get it delivered, eliminating the need for a product to last 6 weeks on a shelf; You could say that the use of preservatives is just an inefficiency of the market.

"You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce"

She drinks almond milk.

Quote from Wikipedia: "Almonds contain polyphenols in their skins consisting of flavonols, flavan-3-ols, hydroxybenzoic acids and flavanones analogous to those of certain fruits and vegetables."

Can she pronounce all of those names?

Also, in case anyone still thinks that anything "natural" must be safe, here's another Wikipedia quote: "Bitter almonds may yield from 4-9 mg of hydrogen cyanide per almond." Yum!

Don't forget that heating almond based saturated fats can create a significant amount of free radicals...at least in almond flour.

Can you substantiate that claim?

Almonds are full of polyunsaturated fats. These types of fats are known for their heat instability, causing breakdown. This often leaves free radical sites on the molecules that can damage cells. Google a bit for it and you'll find the science behind it. Because of this, it's a standard warning on almond flour stuff nowadays.

Lactose intolerance is relatively non-controversial. And it's the red ingredients she is mostly concerned about.

> "You shouldn't eat anything you can't pronounce" is an ignorant claim deserving of ridicule.

Wrong. It's a pithy rule of thumb that -- while obviously imperfect and not to be taken literally -- makes it easier for busy people, people with kids, and people uninterested in researching every single thing they eat to protect themselves in a society where the industrial food industry puts all kinds of horrible shit in mainstream 'food'.

Personally, I prefer Michael Pollan's "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

But what both of these sayings actually mean is: Don't blindly eat the garbage that the industrial food complex tries to sell you. Eat stuff that you are pretty sure is a healthy thing to eat.

Natural broccoli? Sure. Genetically engineered insect-resistant broccoli? Might want to default to no on that one, until you have time to look into it. Locally-produced cornflour-and-water tortillas? Sure. Sandwich bread made out of yoga mats? Hmm, might be okay, but why not avoid it until your buddy wcummings does a bunch of internet research and persuades you that it's safe.

I'm just gonna leave this link debunking all GMO is bad anecdotes here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-...

That author misunderstands the issue. He thinks it is a science problem, and so tries to resolve it by looking at scientific studies.

The problem with GMOs is not a science problem. It is a responsibility problem. As Ben Parker said, "With great power comes great responsibility".

GMO gives food industrialists great power compared to what they have without using GMO techniques. Many do not believe that the food industrialists can handle the great responsibility that should accompany such great power.

Maybe she is a quack.

But, people are visiting her blog and talking about her. She gets attention and ad revenue. That is likely all she cares about.

She is the female, food activist version of Glenn Beck.

Thought experiment: if the subject of the article was a man (perhaps "Food Dude" instead of "Food Babe"), how much of the article would have to be rewritten or dropped entirely?

(Shrug) She picked the moniker for a reason, I'm sure. Attention wh-, um, solicitor solicits attention.

That part amused me. “Oh, I chose something different. But my husband said ‘boring’. This isn’t who I am and I didn’t think about my looks or anything.” ... “but I went ahead and used it to build my brand identity” is a non-sequitur from the protestation.

If it was an attractive, well-muscled man who went by 'Food Hunk' and he used his appearance as part of his shtick, I don't think it would be changed much. But I don't think it has quite the same draw.

So... Tim Ferriss?

> Companies have spent years cutting costs by replacing natural ingredients with artificial ones, while overselling the message that the products still taste great and are good for you, Dibadj said. Now that consumers are calling them on it, a reversal to natural ingredients is sure to hurt profit.

That seems to be the point of this natural food movement. Rally the troops of uninformed but passionate rubes who think artificial == bad and natural == good to pressure companies into substituting out ingredients for more expensive ones, hurting their profit margin. This might have the effect of making these products cost more, which further strengthens the anti-corporate ideology this movement ultimately stems from. All the while they make a nice living off of book sales and newsletter subscriptions. The industry of fear is certainly booming in this social media era.

The point of the natural food movement -- as is patently obvious -- is suspicion about the health effects of many chemicals put into foods; suspicion of the health effects of the way food animals are drugged, raised, and treated; and suspicion of regulatory capture of the FDA. We should treat, in the absence of safety studies, artificial ingredients as dangerous and prefer not to use them.

Just for example, people don't want bpa or similar substitutes in their food. And while it appears that bpa may be safe-ish [2], we got around to checking that well after manufacturers put it in all of us.

   The CDC had found bisphenol A in the urine of 95% of adults sampled in 
   1988–1994 and in 93% of children and adults tested in 2003–04. While 
   the EPA considers exposures up to 50 µg/kg/day to be safe, the most 
   sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower doses, and 
   several studies of children, who tend to have the highest levels, have found 
   levels over the EPA's suggested safe limit figure. [2]

[1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-c...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

I have a hard time criticizing people who encourage the eating of natural foods.

She's the food equivalent of Jenny McCarthy...

Hopefully she can get broccoli growers to stop using MSG in their products.

Likewise, hopefully she can get bok choy growers to stop using toxic glucosinolates.

Of course, broccoli is already a hybrid and completely unnatural.

This exemplifies why Common Sense 101 should be an Engineering requirement.

"Choosing Food Babe as a blog handle has prompted some critics to say she is using her looks to get undue attention"

Her looks are very subjective. Not to sound sexist (but I know I will since being victimized is so in vogue), if you're so concerned about GMO stuff, you better start with valid scientific data and not hearsay.

«Michael Jacobson, executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says that while Hari sometimes “hyperventilates” about small risks in food, she is helpful on balance.

‘Populist Voice’

“Going after food dyes is worth doing and she brings a populist voice to the table,” he said. Internet-savvy food activists “do nudge companies to change their practices, often for the better.”»

In any industry, many of the experts are inherently bought off, and it's helpful to have everyday individuals develop an interest in diverse topics that affect them.

Anyone have a link to the NPR interview? I searched the NPR site and only found a story back from February of this year.

Author of linked piece replied to an email from me, the radio piece was this one from February 25, 2014 of WFAE from Charlotte (the first part is also pretty interesting - about HAM radio):

http://wfae.org/post/ham-radio-update-food-babe-vani-hari

That radio program mentions this blog entry from Feb 14 2014 and the blog often covers issues from the POV of a skeptic:

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/eating-yoga-mat...

"Food babe" is a dumb name and food hysteria is definitely worth scorn, but what's the alternative?

I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line.

> I'd rather have people like her raising unnecessary media flurry over things that aren't that bad for us, than have everyone turn a blind eye to what the food industry does to maximize its bottom line.

The problem is that the former encourages, rather than opposes, the latter. Are you familiar with the boy who cried wolf?

I think the public actually do have some ability to distinguish what is nonsense and what is not. I think her arguments against azodicarbonamide seem quite reasonable to me and have been acted on. Her arguments on microwave ovens on the other hand appear well nuts:

'Hari has argued against the use of microwave ovens, for reasons that include the claim that they cause water molecules to form crystals that resemble crystals that have been exposed to "negative thoughts or beliefs," including the names of Hitler and Satan.' (Wikipedia)

but I don't think many people take that seriously.

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