In 2015, Kellogg’s announced that it was going to remove all artificial flavors and colors from its cereals by 2018. Consumer advocates cheered.
But 2018 came and went and the food dyes were still in the cereals – including popular children’s cereals like Froot Loops.
In Europe and Canada, Kellogg’s was marketing the same children’s cereals without artificial flavors and colors. Instead, they were using juices like blueberry juice, watermelon juice and carrot juice.
Enter Vani Hari, aka – the Food Babe (foodbabe.com). Hari, the child of Indian immigrants, was not happy with Kellogg’s. A former corporate consultant, she is now a ten year veteran of the food wars. She has a huge following online of young moms wanting to feed their children healthy foods.
Having already persuaded Chipotle, Subway and Chick fil-A among other chains to clean up their acts to one degree or another, Hari focused laser like on Kellogg’s.
Kellogg’s had made a promise to remove food dyes from children’s cereals. And they reneged on that promise.
In September, she was invited to testify before a Senate Roundtable on food and health called by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).
The hearing garnered millions of views. At the hearing, Hari announced a boycott of Kellogg’s and said that in October, she would deliver over 400,000 petitions to Kellogg’s headquarters in Battle Creek, Michigan.
When she arrived in Battle Creek, over 1,000 people were there to join with her in the march on Kellogg’s headquarters.
When you arrived at the headquarters building, were you allowed in?
“No, I was not,” Hari told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “We were met by security. Security said – we’ll take these to leadership.
“We heard that Kellogg’s told all of their employees to go home. At one point, I looked up and I couldn’t believe what I saw. We saw somebody looking down smiling. And one gentleman had wheeled his office whiteboard over and he had written on it – get off my lawn.”
You were petitioning to get the food dyes and BHT out of the cereals. You got mass television coverage, network news, wire services.
What has been the company’s response?
“They say – we’re following FDA rules. Eighty five percent of our cereals don’t have these dyes. But they sell 91 million boxes of cereals a year. Froot Loops is the number six cereal in the United States. Eighteen percent of children have had a bowl of Froot Loops in the last week. The stats they are giving out are fake news.”
When Kellogg’s said in 2015 they were going to get the food dyes out of their cereals, they weren’t lying, were they, because in fact they took them out of the cereals in Europe.
“No, they did lie. The dyes were already out of the cereals in Europe at that time. They had been out of cereals in Europe for almost twenty years.”
Other companies like Chipotle’s have reacted more positively to your petitions. Why this hardball response from Kellogg’s?
“I don’t know. Maybe there is a bad PR person in charge. All they had to do is to hear us out and there wouldn’t have been this mad mob of people at their headquarters building and now a spreading boycott of Kellogg’s across the nation. They have instead energized a complete movement to take them on. We’ve got celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Eva Mendes going out there and saying – you need to boycott Kellogg’s.”
“We announced the boycott that day in Battle Creek. I’m telling every American to boycott Kellogg’s because they don’t care about your children. They care more about children in other countries. They are anti-American. Nobody should trust Kellogg’s. I will not stop. I will take every single interview to tell the world about how they treat children in our country.”
Hari’s campaign against Kellogg had its genesis back in 2015.
“Back in 2015, I petitioned Kellogg’s and General Mills to remove BHT. In response, they made an announcement that they were going to do that. BHT is an endocrine disrupting chemical linked to cancer. They use it to line the packaging of cereals here in the United States. But they are not allowed to use it in other countries.”
“In response, they said they would take out this chemical and remove artificial food dyes. That was in 2015.”
“Fast forward to 2017. I have my first child. They said they would make these changes by 2018. I was busy being a mom. I wasn’t really paying attention. In 2019, they released a cereal called Baby Shark. My daughter was two years old. And Baby Shark was one of her favorite songs. She sees this box of Baby Shark cereal at the grocery store and says – mom, look, Baby Shark.”
“And I said – why is Kellogg’s making a cereal targeting little children and the cereal has artificial food dyes? And they said they would get artificial food dyes out of children’s cereals by 2018. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“That is when I started to look into this. I started to get very upset because they lied to us. They got all of the positive press. Every single national news outlet covered the story when they decided to make the change. But nobody was holding them accountable, nobody was holding their feet to the fire.”
“And they were doing a whole range of children’s cereals – Peeps, Elf on the Shelf, Minecraft, Disney’s Little Mermaid – all of these cereals with artificial food dyes.”
“I knew I had to start a petition. I started a petition and was about to deliver them to Kellogg’s headquarters, and then the pandemic hit. And it stopped the whole world.”
“Then, earlier this year, my friend Jason Karp, who I’ve known for a long time, who started Hu Kitchen and Hu Chocolate, said to me – I’ll help you. “
“Jason became a shareholder of Kellogg’s and wrote a letter to their executives, saying – they had to uphold this commitment. There was some back and forth with the lawyers. And they were going to meet with him. And Jason asked – who is going to be at the meeting? And they wanted to bring the Consumer Brands Association, the lobbying group for Big Food. And Jason says – if you are going to discuss the science behind this, I want to bring some doctors with me. And they didn’t like that so they canceled the meeting.”
“I just have to think that if they just listened to Jason and had these conversations, they wouldn’t have the biggest PR nightmare they are experiencing today. When corporations listen and have conversations, they can avoid something like what happened at Kellogg’s headquarters last week.”
“Their inability to listen to consumers, shareholders or elected officials is appalling.”
“So by June, they decided not to have the meeting. June was busy with kids in the summer. I was trying to figure out when the right time was when to deliver these petitions. And I reached out to Calley Means, who has been writing about the corruption at the FDA and other government agencies. And he called me and asked – hey Vani, do you want to testify before the U.S. Senate? I said – no, I don’t. I don’t want to get involved in politics.”
“But then I realized that this is the opportunity to show the world about these issues. I bet most members of Congress don’t know that these companies are serving one set of toxic ingredients here to our citizens but not overseas. Canada, Australia, all of Europe – they get safer and healthier ingredients.”
“I spent three weeks on my testimony. I went before that Senate roundtable on September 23. It was organized by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). When we released the testimony online, it went viral. A combined reach of all of the testimonies before that committee was over 100 million views. That re-energized the Kellogg’s campaign. We are now over 446,000 signatures. We were receiving them up until the last minute before we went to the headquarters. I put as many as I could on a thumb drive.”
“At the Senate roundtable, I announced that I was going to deliver the petitions because nobody is holding them accountable. I looked at the politicians in that room and asked – why do concerned citizens have to do this? Isn’t this the job of our elected officials? That line got a standing ovation in the room. It propelled everyone wanting to join me in Battle Creek.”
“On October 15, we went and delivered the petitions. We had over 1,000 people there from all over the country.”
I saw a report that said the crowd size was a couple of dozen.
“The AP report said a couple of dozen. But then Good Morning America reported it more accurately, which was over 1,000. All I know is that when I was marching to Kellogg’s headquarters, I could not see the back of the line. There were so many people.”
Unlike Kellogg’s, many corporations have learned not to underestimate Hari and what she calls her Food Babe Army.
Take Vani Hari’s case against Chipotle, over ten years ago now.
“I wrote an article about how Chipotle has the tagline – Food with Integrity. But when you email them and ask them – what is in their tortillas, what’s in the beans, what’s in the meats? – they wouldn’t tell you. And I was – what? You can’t have this tagline – Food with Integrity – and not tell us the ingredients in your food. That really angered me.”
“I eventually marched down to different Chipotle locations and convinced someone at those outlets to show me the back of the packaging. I took pictures and posted them on my blog so people could see the ingredients they were eating when they went to a Chipotle.”
“We found out there were a lot of genetically engineered oils, problematic preservatives. Someone started a petition on my behalf to get Chipotle to release the ingredients in their foods. And then Chipotle called me. Chris Arnold, the chief marketing officer of Chipotle, called me and said – hey Vani, settle down.”
“He said – Vani, we’ve got this. We are going to release all of the ingredients – and we are going to clean them up, too. We will remove the genetically engineered ingredients. I was like – what? This is amazing. Within a few months, they announced they were going to be the first fast food chain without GMOs in the foods – other than the Coca-Cola that they serve.”
[For the complete q/a format Interview with Vani Hari, see 38 Corporate Crime Reporter 42(11), October 28, 2024, print edition only.]