NPR posited that its readers cannot simply ignore Hari, because her reach is growing. She wrote an op-ed about her success, and the widespread misuse of the term natural, for The New York Times. Hari is on track to become the next Dr. Oz-level health-media personality. She has already been a guest on the embattled doctor's daytime-television extravaganza, during the macaroni-and-cheese crusades. By the end of the campaign, the petition to remove yellow 5 had almost 250,000 signatures. She's clearly speaking to people in a way that resonates. Analytically-minded people, her scientist critics among them, often with big health ideas of their own, might do well to understand why and how these messages work. Or, as Hari phrases it, as a challenge: "People chastise me for being too simplistic, but it's like, okay, how are you getting through to people?"

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At the heart of her superhero-style name, The Food Babe has a superhero-style origin story. It's the archetypal one of a reluctant rise from humble beginnings; one that involves a transformation, a time at rock bottom, and a rise to fight a clear-cut battle of good versus evil.

One cold winter night, when she was in her early 20s, Vani Hari developed some pain in her lower abdomen. She went to a nearby hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was born and had returned to live after college. In the emergency department, she remembers being told to relax, that her ovaries were "moving," and she'd be fine. The next morning she went in for a second opinion, and she was diagnosed with appendicitis. Within an hour she was having her appendix laparoscopically excised. Recovering in the hospital that night, she remembers someone took a picture of her, and she ripped it up thinking she looked "so, so bad." And she definitely felt horrible.

Since graduating from college, Hari had been working as a consultant at Accenture. She kept long, exhausting hours. She recalls being afraid to leave to use the bathroom during meetings because the environment was so intense. She ate decadent catered meals from exorbitant expense accounts. "A bunch of stuff that really doesn't serve the body," she recalls. "But I wanted to fit in, I wanted to be a partner. I was ambitious." But the health issues she'd had as a child—allergies, eczema, asthma—flared up. Over the first year of the job, she gained between 30 and 40 pounds. She felt bad and "didn't look that great."

When the appendicitis hit, that was a breaking point. Lying in her hospital bed, Hari said, "I just had this light bulb awakening moment, you know? This isn't how I want to live."

She resolved to pay better attention to her health, and to figure out exactly what foods would best serve her in that. "I avoided processed foods like the poison they are," she recounts in the book. "I fed my body fresh organic foods—fruits, veggies, grains, good fats, and other whole foods—and made time to nourish my body back to health." Her eczema vanished, as did her asthma, anxiety, and gastric issues. "I got back to an attractive, normal weight, and I’ve stayed there," she recalls, "even by eating 1,800 calories a day, normally a lot for a woman with my frame." And, a message not to be taken as advice to readers, she eventually stopped taking any and all medications, prescription and over-the-counter.