Vani Hari

Vani Deva Hari (born March 22, 1979), who blogs as the Food Babe, is an American author, activist, and blogger who criticizes the food industry. She started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and it received over 54 million views in 2014.

Hari is a New York Times best-selling author. Companies such as Chick-fil-A and Kraft are reported to have changed or reconsidered ingredients in their products following her campaigns.

Hari's ideas on food safety have been criticized by scientists as pseudoscience and chemophobia, and others have drawn attention to her financial interest through promotion and marketing of natural foods, often through affiliate marketing.

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina to Indian immigrant parents from Punjab, India, Hari first attended the University of Georgia before transferring to University of North Carolina at Charlotte. After graduating in 2001 with a degree in computer science, she worked as a management consultant for Accenture. In her early 20s, Hari was hospitalized with appendicitis. In response, she began looking into health and nutrition issues. She started the Food Babe blog in 2011, and left Accenture in 2012 to devote her time to activism and blogging, as well as marketing dietary and other products. By 2014, her blog was receiving over 54 million views. Hari has over 97,000 Twitter followers, and an official Facebook page with over one million likes. She refers to her followers and supporters as the "Food Babe Army."

Hari has capitalized on her following by selling books, subscriptions to her eating guide, meal plans, products through which she gains affiliate commissions, and through marketing her own line of supplements under the Truvani brand.^{[better source needed]} Critics argue that the controversy she engenders through her activism helps drive sales through her site.

In 2011, Hari wrote a piece about ingredients in Chick-fil-A sandwiches which she alleged to be harmful. Chick-fil-A responded to Hari's post in May 2012, inviting her to its headquarters in Atlanta to discuss her concerns. As part of a larger effort to improve the nutrition of their products, Chick-fil-A announced in late 2013 it was removing dyes, corn syrup, and TBHQ from their products. They also announced a plan to only use antibiotic-free chickens within the next five years.

Hari has said that President Barack Obama did not keep a promise that he made during his 2008 presidential campaign to force the labeling of genetically modified food (GMOs). During the 2012 Democratic National Convention, which she attended as an elected delegate, Hari sat in the first row on the convention floor and held a sign that read "Label GMOs!" during Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack's speech.

In 2012, Hari wrote a blog post regarding Chipotle describing her quest to get clear answers about what Chipotle used in their food, saying: "Most of their food was contaminated with genetically modified cooking oil, corn oil, and they were using genetically modified ingredients in their tortillas. Even in the black beans there was GMO soybean oil. You couldn't even order vegetarian and avoid it. It was really unfortunate. Then, when I saw their flour tortillas' package, it said that they use trans-fat. That's crazy." After she published her blog post, Chipotle set up a meeting with Hari where she urged them to publish their ingredients publicly. In March 2013, Chipotle's Communications Director emailed Hari with a link to a new page on Chipotle's website with the ingredients in all of their menu items, along with a statement on the sidebar, "Our goal is to eliminate GMOs from Chipotle's ingredients, and we're working hard to meet this challenge." In April 2015, Chipotle followed up on their commitment to remove GMO ingredients from their food and became the first national restaurant chain to use only non-GMO ingredients.