Food Babe complains NYT article doesn’t include scientists who agree with her

Note: This is a response to the New York Times’ piece, “Taking On the Food Industry, One Blog Post at a Time,” posted on March 14.

I am very sad to have to post this rebuttal to the New York Times story about our movement. The Times is among the most respected newspapers in the world, but it violated its own standards of accuracy and fairness in Courtney Rubin’s story about me last week. This story is a classic one-sided hatchet job.

You know the work we do is important to the health of millions. We’ve demanded transparency, helped remove questionable chemicals from the food supply along with other respected groups, changed major multi-billion dollar food companies and educated many people. This unfortunately is not the focus of the story.

The reporter featured only the views of certain academics who attack us – every single one of whom has a conflict of interest due to their associations with the food or chemical industries (and this is not disclosed). Although I gave Rubin the names of scientific, medical and consumer experts who support our work, these did not appear in the story, with one exception (Ken Cook of the Environmental Working Group) and even his quote was chosen to support her obvious bias.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Consumer’s Union, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, The National Academy of Sciences, The Center for Food Safety, and many respected medical and scientific authorities support reducing the synthetic chemicals used in our food. Authorities in the UK, the EU and Australia have banned many of the ingredients we have campaigned against, based on the scientific evidence. None of these were quoted or mentioned.

Let’s examine who was…

Dr. Joseph Schwarcz is the director of McGill University’s “Office for Science & Society”, which has in the past received funding from the biotech (GMO) industry Dow, Monsanto, and Dupont through the Council for Biotechnology Information (1). Schwarcz is also on the Editorial Board for the magazine of the Chemical Institute of Canada, ACCN. Based on his advocacy, one could say Schwarcz hasn’t met a chemical he doesn’t like.

Furthermore, he has made sexist remarks about me including one that was quoted by Bloomberg Businessweek: “She gets on all these talk shows partly because she is easier to look at.” He’s been highly and personally disrespectful to me (2) more than once in public comments. He said “I’m addicted to the Food Babe”, called me “the stupid woman”, I have “zero knowledge”, that he’s concerned about “the location of my brain”, and I am “an American Hoax artist.” He cyberbullies by asking his students to post repeated questions about my credentials over and over again on my Facebook wall, although they already know the answer. I sent this information to Rubin, but again she failed to mention it – instead glorifying his comments like a thoughtful critic.

Since this reporter failed to do balanced reporting, I want to share this research by my friend and colleague Max Goldberg who documented the scientists and experts who do agree with our work. It’s a must read.

Read full, original article: Response: NY Times Lets Biased Freelancer Attack Food Babe – Vani Hari

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