Food Babe vs. Science Babe: War? And Why is it OK to Call Oneself "Babe"

Science Babe's ridiculous article criticizing Food Babe on Gawker is causing a shake-up in the food blogosphere. At the crux of Science Babe Yvette Guinevere's criticism of Food Babe Vani Hari is her use of scientific terms and so-called "pseudo-science". But, is Yvette undermining actual science while failing to understand the plain English or colloquial use of expressions like toxin? Food Babe's calm and factual response addressed some of Science Babe's claims.

Toxin: definitions range from a poison produced by plants, animals or bacteria to a poison produced by any organism to poisons including man-made poisons which some refer to as toxicants. This wider broader definition or use of the word probably originated because the word toxic has broader meaning than toxin and people came to call all toxic things toxins. But, semantics aside, in the nutrition world, we regularly use the word toxin to describe things causing long-term damage to the body. This is a long understood meaning and the most famous doctors in the business. Dr. Mercola and Dr. Hyman have been using the word toxin on occasion to mean any additive or natural substance causing long-term or immediate damage. That is to say toxin does not imply one exposed to the substance will drop dead immediately. In fact the natural Bt toxin used to create GMO corn is in a safe form in the short term but most likely causes extreme long-term damage.

Science Girl (I mean is she really a babe?) seems to be on the wrong track using a semantics hit against Food Babe. Generally, junk food is bad for you. Food additives have long-term toxic effects. Unlike deadly bacteria, food additives, unhealthy ingredients in processed foods and bad eating habits tend to cause cancer, heart disease and obesity in the long run. In a science text book, we might use the word toxicant or avoid the word and just describe the problems. But Science Babe implies that these things are safe because they do not fit her definition (the narrow old-fashioned yet certainly reasonable definition) of toxin. I am quite sure from reading her blog and articles that her strong implication is these things are safe. Oddly, despite her story of losing 90 pounds, which included accelerated weight loss under Food Babe's cleaner regimen and a prescribed medication, Science Babe is wishing to lose 10 pounds that she gained back when she decided to return to a everything in moderation approach as opposed to a clean eating approach. In the article she references both her biggest drop in weight and her lowest dip in weight being while following a clean diet. She then gave up on that, went back to everything except gluten (because she has celiac's disease), (harshly ridiculed everyone who gives up gluten but does not have celiac's disease) and went on to belittle organic clean eating.

And, semantics again, Science Babe accused Food Babe of saying a lethal dose of sugar is in a Pumpkin Spice Latte. OK, it has 49 grams of sugar in grande, 62 grams in a venti. So, Food Babe says "toxic sugar." Does she mean drop dead instantly by toxic? No. But food scientists and public health advocates do want people to have the information that sugar is not merely correlated with sickness, it causes it. And, it is not alarmist to suggest there is a health crisis being caused by the type of calories people are consuming. This is not psuedo-science.

And, one more semantics issue. When we (in food and nutrition) say chemical we mean added item made in a lab. While this is obvious to our readers, apparently it is not obvious to Science Babe who assumed the dumb dumbs like Food Babe do not know WATER is technically by Science Babe's definition a chemical. OBVIOUSLY, we don't mean water when we say broad statements like chemicals in food are bad for you. It is well accepted in food science that additives are bad for you. In broad epidemiology we see that diets including foods processed with chemicals, containing chemicals added as preservatives or coloring are the worst diets in the developed world. I noticed in Food Babe's response she refers to synthetic additives, cleaning up her vocabulary after being bullied by Science Babe.

In conclusion, it seems mean-spirited to present no science at all, promote a diet no more scientifically supported and in fact proven by substantial studies to be unhealthy or less healthy than a clean diet. The nutrition blogs and articles that support clean eating, many written by doctors in the field, are a plea to play it safe. Additives that have never been tested lurk in food and drinks, unprecedented numbers of grams of sugar are added as well and there is no science even suggesting that the typical processed American diet is safe.