Contextual Analysis

I'm not by any means a food fanatic. I've never really cared how many calories I intake or whatnot but having a big sister that has a Masters in Nutrition I've learned a few things. It's very admirable to want to know what is being fed to you! But it's a different conversation when your information is being told to you through a unintelligible source that's trying to scare you straight.

Physical Context:

Vani Hari is the online blogger "Food Babe" who uses her blog to investigate food companies. On her blog she says, "Through reading...you can expect to learn the truth about harmful ingredients in processed foods and how to avoid the stuff the food industry is trying to hide!" When she investigates these business that are hiding harmful ingredients, her and her following will petition them to get rid of that ingredient. She has confronted Beer, Chipotle, Chik Fil A, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, and General Mills Cereals. It has actually worked quite a few times; in 2013 she got Kraft to take out a chemical dye that was used to color their Mac & Cheese. Most recently she got Subway to agree to remove azodicarbonamide from it's bread. She told her followers that azodicarbonamide can be found in yoga mats and had them sign a petition to get it removed.

Psychological Context:

Being aware of what is in food and wanting to help everyone also be aware is a perfectly fine thing to do but the way Food Babe is doing it is hard for me to swallow. This article from Elle shows how she is psychologically bulling her followers. She is manipulative, sneaky, and not exactly help the situation. She deems an ingredient by telling her followers what else it is used in to gross them out or make them feel ignorant. Yvette d'Entremont gave an example of the scare tactics she uses "If I told you that a chemical that's used as a disinfectant, used in industrial laboratory for hydrolysis reactions, and can create a nasty chemical burn is also a common ingredient in salad dressing, would you panic? Be suspicious that the industries were poisoning your children? Think it might cause cancer? Sign a petition to have it removed? What if I told you I was talking about vinegar, otherwise known as acetic acid?"

Social Context:

Hari also uses the fact that she isn't a scientist, or an expert on food to connect her with her readers. In this article she is quoted saying, "What's really concerning to me is that the majority of the medical establishment, including registered dietitians, have some sort of industry tie. It's entrenched. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see the corruption. And to talk about it in a way that people understand. This just isn't stuff that you have to be a doctor or scientist to understand, and the fact that they're telling you that, there's a problem with that. That you have to be a food scientist in order to understand what these chemicals do in your body. Not really." She is completely open to the fact that she is not an expert, just like her readers. Hari says that "If a third grader can't pronounce it, don't eat it." 

Cultural Context:

The thing that Food Babe does that makes me sad is that she acts like the FDA is one of the "bad guys". When in fact the FDA are an underfunded agency that would like to help regulate the food industry.