The "Food Babe" tries (and fails) to answer her critics...

I've seen this woman talked up here at DU.

Vani Hari, a.k.a. “The Food Babe,” finally responds to critics

It’s no secret that we here at Science-Based Medicine (and many scientists and skeptics with a knowledge of basic chemistry and biology) have been very critical of Vani Hari, better known to her fans as The Food Babe. The reasons for our criticisms of her are legion. Basically, she is a seemingly-never-ending font of misinformation and fear mongering about food ingredients, particularly any ingredient with a scary, “chemically”-sounding name.

Not surprisingly, as the Food Babe has gained prominence her antics have attracted more and more criticism for her toxic combination of ignorance of chemistry coupled with fear mongering. The criticism started with science and medical bloggers and leaked into the mainstream press, most recently in the form of a recent NPR blog entry entitled “Is The Food Babe A Fearmonger? Scientists Are Speaking Out” that liberally quotes from yours truly and our fearless founder Steve Novella, as well the professor and chair of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida, Kevin Folta, who in October complained about the Hari being invited to speak at his university, where she didn’t take questions after spewing her usual disinformation. Indeed, her most recent foray into fear mongering, an attempt to attack Starbucks for its pumpkin spice latte because it not only contains “no real pumpkin” but also contains a “toxic dose of sugar,” and—brace yourself—uses dairy from “Monsanto milk cows fed GMO,” failed.

With a book and media tour scheduled for early 2015, apparently the Food Babe is feeling the heat and has finally responded to criticism on Saturday in a rather long post entitled “Food Babe Scam: My Response To The Attacks On Me and Our Movement“. Utterly predictably, she started with a quote commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Never mind that Gandhi almost certainly never actually said it. Rather, Nicholas Klein of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America did. It’s also a misquote of what Klein did say. What Klein actually said was, “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

Yes, they did build monuments to Gandhi, but I highly doubt anyone will be building monuments to The Food Babe, either now or many years from now. Her response to criticism is worth examining, however, because her defense itself reveals the many flaws in science and reasoning that led to the criticisms in the first place.



http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vani-hari-a-k-a-the-food-babe-finally-responds-to-critics/