The Food Babe
I’ll start by jumping straight to the conclusion; Vani Hari
must be the most scientifically illiterate person that there is
out there at the moment. Her blog is used to fear-mong the general population,
commenting on things she has no idea about. Her field of study is computer
science, although, she doesn’t stop talking about chemicals and quoting how ‘toxic’
they are. After reading her blog, one thing very
clear: If she cannot pronounce it, it is a ‘known carcinogen’. Vani applies an
appeal-to-nature fallacy to her life, that is, if it isn’t natural, it isn’t
good for you (or is a known carcinogen to her). It may be no surprise, she is
also anti-vax. My first encounter of hearing of her was through her campaign to remove azodicarbonamide from bread in the popular chain ‘Subway’ because the chemical
is also used in foamed plastics. She also launched a campaign against Starbucks‘Pumpkin Spice’ because it doesn’t contain pumpkin (think of how consistent
that would be in a cup of coffee), but contains some ‘chemicals’, caramel
colour to be exact. She really, really doesn’t like that colour I guess?
Assuming you have read those links or heard this prior, I am guessing you came
to the same conclusion: there is not one scientific bone in that woman’s body.
Use Microwaves? Pfft.
One of her particular
posts is a ‘popular’ post on microwaves. Yes, the seemingly ordinary
household appliance, or the DEATH MACHINE, from what I can gather. Firstly, she
seems to have a misunderstanding between life and death, describing food as
live. Which, yes, sometimes I suppose it is. However, using a microwave to cook
a lobster probably wont yield the best of results. Food is ‘dead’ before it
enters the microwave, let alone your refrigerator. If she is ‘cleverly’
applying the word ‘dead’ to ‘cells’ in food, then still, they are already dead.
“The more dead food people eat, the more calories they
consume trying to get the nutrition their body so desperately needs”
“Live, healthy, and nutritious foods can become dead in a
matter of seconds when you use a microwave”
I don’t want to say eating this ‘dead’
food will kill you, but that’s your funeral. She uses a study from 2003 to
propagate the fact that microwaving destroys nutritional content as the study “found that broccoli cooked in the microwave
lost up to 97 percent of its antioxidant content”. However, this study states
that steaming broccoli also destroys antioxidants. Not only that, it shows that
at certain times of cooking, microwaved broccoli was higher in antioxidants
than the steamed broccoli. Which is backed up by further studies.
“In conclusion, antioxidant components, such as phenolics,
ascorbic acid and carotenoids, in broccoli and antioxidant activity have been
shown to be heavily lost during cooking.”
Talk about cherry picking to back up your claim eh? The
conclusion shows that cooking food breaks down nutrients and antioxidants, it
is unavoidable, however you do it. As someone who is interested in food,
and runs a blog about it, you would assume she knows that cooking food,
whatever methodology is used, breaks down antioxidants would you not? She
then goes on to claim that microwaving food releases carcinogens from the
plastic and that ‘plastics release dioxins’, a claim without any merits.
“After all, human cells are made of molecules and molecular
bonds are broken and destroyed when exposed to radiation.”
What the hell is she on about?
Microwave radiation isn’t energetic enough to break molecular bonds, as it is
non-ionising radiation. She really doesn’t even know the basics of chemistry. Furthermore
claiming that the radiation from cell phone towers kills millions of birds
every year in the same way microwaves kill people. I couldn’t find any study
showing this, however, millions of birds do die every year because of cellphone towers lights and wires.
Water Remembers, Please Don't Swear.
Those are by no means the best (and
most hilarious) part of this blog. She goes on to claim a study, without really
giving much detail, found blood changes in subjects, causing fatigue.
“The
doctor in this study was actually able to cure people who were diagnosed
with chronic fatigue by having them literally throw out their microwave.”
The cure for chronic fatigue is to
LITERALLY throw out your microwave. I bet they felt the benefits the second
that metal hit the curb. It gets better still:
“Last by not least, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who is famous for
taking pictures of various types of waters and the crystals that they formed in
the book called “Hidden Messages in Water,”
found water that was microwaved did not form beautiful crystals – but instead
formed crystals similar to those formed when exposed to negative thoughts or
beliefs.”
Included with this is a picture of a
nice ice crystal. Beautiful in its structure, perfect even. Next to it shows a
bit of melted water. Dr Masaru Emoto takes a photo of this water and compares
it to another water sample under a microscope. The difference? The second water
is water in which he has shouted ‘Satan’ and ‘Hitler’ to, which really does go
to show: people will believe anything as long as it is written down.
“For the experiment pictured above, microwaved water
produced a similar physical structure to when the words “Satan” and “Hitler”
were repeatedly exposed to the water.”
Concusion
The conclusion? Well water has memory. It remembers negative profanities shouted at it and microwaved water is just as
evil and vindictive as this ‘Hitler-satanic’ water. These facts may be a bit too hard to digest. Maybe because you are
reading this through a screen that’s giving off radiation, killing your ability
to comprehend such miracles in this world. Anyway I am off to microwave a potato.
P.S. If Masaru Emoto was at a dinner
party, presumably with a drink of water on the table, and they were discussing
Hitler does he drink it?
