EP11 – Why Protesting Kellogg’s is a Waste of Time: Food Protests and Taking Back Control from Big Corporations
Why food protests outside corporations like Kellogg’s are a waste of time and what we can do to be more effective and take back our family’s health without relying on Big Food to feed us.
Taking control of your food choices and cutting through the noise of corporate influence isn’t just possible—it’s essential. We’re unpacking the complexities of government regulation and the integrity of our food supply, with a sharp look at the role of the FDA and political figures who might be key to driving change. From practical tips on nutritious breakfast preparation to the importance of supporting local farmers, this episode is a call to action. Let’s reclaim our health and independence from big food. Dive deeper with additional resources linked in our show notes.
👉My Properly Prepared Porridge recipe
👉EWG-Rating system App / Website
👉WAPF: Real Food App / Website
👉 12 spoons when you’re looking for a healthy restaurant
👉 Extra: Article on natural companies that have sold out to large corporations
If you’d like to share your stories and continue the conversation, you can catch me below:
👉Voicemail
Transcript
Sharise Parviz: 0:00
Why protesting Kellogg’s is a waste of time. Yeah, that’s something I’ve been considering as I’ve been watching the news and so forth. As you might know, there was a protest in front of Kellogg’s I believe it was their headquarters or corporate offices and there was a huge showing, a lot of support in this protest. A lot of parents, a lot of families were showing up in front of Kellogg’s demanding healthier cereal. Because what’s going on is that in Europe, kellogg’s is producing cereal and specifically they were bringing up Froot Loops because of all the colors and all of that. In Europe they produce Froot Loops let’s just narrow it down and keep it at Froot Loops with natural dyes that come from fruits and from vegetables and food-based dyes, whereas in the US they produce Froot Loops with toxic chemical dyes, dyes that are created in the lab. And so some very angry parents and very angry people as rightly they should be angry why is Kellogg’s basically poisoning their cereal sold in the US? So these protesters went there and were demanding better, healthier cereal and while I deeply appreciate the passion and the intention behind the protest, it wasn’t really very effective in changing Kellogg’s mind. In fact, kellogg, in response, holds up a sign outside the window, not in our lawn. Now, that was an employee, I’m sure you know. And maybe Kellogg’s will come back and say, oh no, we didn’t mean that. You know, they may try to cover it up, but here’s the truth. But here’s the truth. Kellogg’s doesn’t care.
Sharise Parviz: 1:50
These big food companies well, let’s just say, every company, every company, has one goal in mind to make money. You don’t go into business to lose money. You go. You know, if you don’t worry about making money, you go into charity work. But every business has an interest in making money. That’s true and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is when you have a business that wants to make a profit but has no integrity in the way that they do it. Now, these big food companies, their biggest goal is to make money and turn a profit, and the way they do it is they choose the cheapest ingredients they can find and sell it at the highest price that they can.
Sharise Parviz: 2:29
Now, in Europe, the government has said, hey, we’re not going to allow these chemicals in our food. So if Kellogg’s wants to sell their product in Europe, well, they have to abide by the regulations that the government set forth in what is allowable in our food, in their food? Well, in our country, unfortunately, our government is not looking out for us, so the FDA is very loosey-goosey with what is put into our food, and so if these corporations can get away with it, they’re going to make it as cheaply as possible. Now we could say that Kellogg’s didn’t know. Well, okay, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for just a second. Let’s say they didn’t know that the chemicals were toxic and so, oh my goodness, we brought awareness to them that they know now. And so now they’re going to change the way they make their product. Well, that’s crap. Of course they know. They know that the food is poisonous. They know that the food is toxic.
Sharise Parviz: 3:36
The fact that they will sell it in one way in Europe and then not sell it the same way in the US means they’re just doing it for profit. They don’t care about your health. Our health is not in their best interest. They don’t care one way or another. If they make a buck, they make a buck, and that’s really all they care about. So because of that, how much difference does it make to protest, to stand out there, wave our fist in the air, hold up signs and demand something? It doesn’t make much of an effect because they’re already aware of the problem. They just don’t care. But what they do care about is their bottom line. So let’s take Bud Light, for instance. The boycott on Bud Light. Now, you didn’t see a bunch of burly men on their Harleys standing outside of, you know, anheuser-busch protesting with signs. They just made the simple decision to say, hey, you know what? We’re not going to buy your product. And they didn’t. They shared it on the internet. It went viral and people just refused to buy the product. Now, for whatever the reason, right, whether you agree with the reason that they boycotted or not, it doesn’t matter the boycott was successful, so successful that Anheuser-Busch started losing money and that woke them up. But at this point and that woke them up, but at this point it was so successful this boycott Bud Light may never, ever recover.
Sharise Parviz: 5:16
You know, there was a time in the early 2000s when we didn’t have social media. Let me tell you a story so you may be aware of this. You might not be. There was, I believe it was, a doctor I can’t remember if he was a doctor or a scientist, but he was taking Nabisco to court and over Oreo cookies. I believe that’s Nabisco, so Oreo cookies. At that time, hydrogenated fat was in most processed foods and it became aware that hydrogenate fat was obviously toxic. We know that now, but it was obviously toxic. And so in order to really build awareness for the hydrogenate fats and how unhealthy they are and how prevalent they were in our foods this is in the early 2000s this doctor threatened to sue Nabisco. Well, the court case never went through. But the important thing was not about going to court and suing Nabisco, it was about bringing to light hydrogenated fat and the dangers of hydrogenated fat, which it did.
Sharise Parviz: 6:22
Now, at that time again, there was no social media, things didn’t. There was no viral videos, none of that. You know. You had to make a big splash in the media, in the news, on the radio, and that’s what happened and that’s what brought on a lot of the public awareness. That was great, right. So that was a wonderful example of you know, doing something to bring the public aware.
Sharise Parviz: 6:45
Here’s the problem. We still have hydrogenated fats in our processed foods. Oh, they’re not necessarily labeled as hydrogenated fats, because if it’s under a certain amount that has been deemed safe, generally regarded as safe or grass by our government, then they don’t have to list it. So it’s still lurking in our products, it’s just not listed. Now that’s the same way with MSG.
Sharise Parviz: 7:16
Msg was considered, was determined to be a neurotoxin causing neurological disorders, very toxic to the brain and body. So there was a big pressure for companies to remove their MSG. And MSG is a flavoring enhancer to make the food taste good, right, so there was a big pressure to remove MSG from food that we were consuming. Well, so the companies complied, so we think. But no, they didn’t.
Sharise Parviz: 7:48
Msg actually just became was just hidden under the term natural flavorings. You see, companies food labels. They don’t necessarily have to label every ingredient that’s in your food If that ingredient is a smaller part of a larger ingredient. So again, natural flavorings. Right, you see the term natural flavorings. You think it’s natural? Well, you know, no, it’s not. But you look at it and go, oh, but we don’t know what is the natural flavorings? What are they? We don’t know. Well, one of those quote unquote natural flavorings is MSG. So we still have MSG in our foods, we still have hydrogenated fat in our foods. It’s just not labeled. You just don’t know.
Sharise Parviz: 8:39
So because of that, because the companies can, even if they nod their head in agreement, oh yes, oh yes, now we are aware of how toxic our foods are and of course we don’t want to poison anyone. Well, of course your health is important to us. Right, let’s say they did that, okay. But the truth is they may remove it off the label and you think that it’s off the label, it’s no longer in the food, but all they’ve done is either change the name or they’ve included it in part of another ingredient, so we don’t notice it. So again, another reason that protesting Kellogg’s or any big food company is a waste of time.
Sharise Parviz: 9:27
Do I think protesting is a waste of time altogether? No, absolutely not. I do not. When it comes to our absolute survival, say, our water, the air that we breathe, those things are absolutely necessary and we need to raise as much hell as we possibly can. But cereal, the truth is, no matter how many red dyes they remove from Froot Loops, froot Loops is never going to become a health food. It’s just not. It’s filled with sugar, it’s. The grains have been have glyphosate. You know it’s. There’s nothing healthy about Froot Loops. You know the box nothing. The plastics, nothing. There’s nothing healthy. There’s no one case that Froot Loops will ever be a nourishing meal for your family.
Sharise Parviz: 10:19
So why, again, is it a waste of time to protest Kellogg’s? Because you’re protesting a food that’s never going to be good for us anyway. And the thing about that is that when we are saying make better food, make better food, all we’re really doing is continuing to demand to suck on the teat of big food to feed us, suck on the teat of big food to feed us. We are continuing to demand that these big companies control us, because that’s what we’re doing. We’re giving up our power when we bow down and we say, hey, do this, do this, do we really need cereal? Cereal is not a survival food. Cereal Cereal is not a survival food. But we are turning our nutrition and we’re turning over our food system to these food companies and we may be demanding them to change it, but we’re still enslaved to the food company and it’ll never be healthy food. So what a waste of time. That is, to me, a better use of time is to boycott. If you really really, based on what happened with Bud Light, don’t buy the food. Don’t buy the food. Share it on social media what’s going on? And don’t buy the food. Make their stocks come down, make their profits come down. That’s going to get them to do something. I don’t know if it’ll be actually anything legitimate or they could just be again, hide the ingredients stealthily, put it in there without you knowing, but it might do something. But what really is a better use of time is to learn how to feed yourself Instead of relying on big food to produce our foods for us. We get back to the farmer, we get back to creating and making foods ourselves.
Sharise Parviz: 12:24
I know that breakfast can be a crazy time, right, but the thing about breakfast is it doesn’t have to be if you prepare. For instance, one of the things that I do is I will make a whole batch of hard-boiled eggs on the weekend for the week One, two dozen, and I have them for the week. I will cook up a batch of bacon and I love cold bacon as a snack or even for breakfast, and I will keep that in the refrigerator. I also make a properly prepared porridge, which is where the grains are prepared to be digested, which your commercial cereals are never going to be that way and then I make enough for the week and then every morning you can take some out, you throw it in the stovetop, on the, in a saucepan, and you warm it up in a little pot and you have a fast, nutritious breakfast. Serve it with some butter, serve it with some raw milk and you have a beautiful. It’s fast and it’s not expensive. My goodness, cereal is so expensive. I haven’t bought cereal in a long time, but I remember how expensive it was decades ago. I can’t imagine what the price of it is right now.
Sharise Parviz: 13:32
I think a better effort might be A boycott. Yes, stop spending your money where they go, stop spending your money in these companies. But B start taking better control over our own health and our own choices. Start, you know, supporting our farmers who are creating these beautiful eggs. And beware that, even if you’re buying organic, even if you think you’re doing all the right things, a lot of these smaller companies are actually bought and owned by these larger food corporations, owned by these larger food corporations, which is, you know, disheartening. But even companies like, I remember, one of my favorite vitamin companies back in the day was Garden of Life and Nestle bought them out. And then you have pharmaceutical companies who own vitamin companies. You know, it’s even your, you know, your seventh generation. All these different companies that we used to be able to trust has now been sold and purchased by these larger corporations and so even those smaller.
Sharise Parviz: 14:44
You know natural looking labels that are in our Whole Foods, labels that are in our Whole Foods. You know you can’t trust anymore Even Whole Foods. I mean, I loved Whole Foods, going to Whole Foods when I was young, my kids were young, we used to love it and then they got bought out by Amazon and they are not the same. I haven’t been there for a long time, but it was brought to my attention that if you buy their package baked goods, if you turn over the package it’ll say genetically modified foods in it or genetically modified products. Whatever the label is, this is at Whole Foods. What happens with these natural products, unfortunately, is that even they, they are trusting that. You have faith in them. So you go into Whole Foods and you may be buying the same. You know items that you’ve been buying for years and you don’t look at the packages. You know you trust Whole Foods. It’s called Whole Foods for a reason it costs a lot of money for a reason right, whole paycheck. So you’re trusting that they’re doing the right thing, and as we should be able to trust that they’re doing the right thing right and so they rely on that trust and then they change the labels on you and we’re no longer looking at the labels because we trust them. Until we do look at the labels and we go oh my gosh, what are they doing?
Sharise Parviz: 16:04
So again protesting? Is it absolutely a waste of time? No, but who should we be protesting? You know it’s not Kellogg’s fault. Hear me out. Kellogg’s is doing what a company does. It’s make it buck. That’s what Kellogg’s wants to do. That’s what every company wants to do. Now you hope that they would do it with integrity and honesty, but most of these big food companies don’t care, as I already said. So where do our protests belong? Well, because Europe doesn’t allow those kinds of foods, those dyes, those chemicals into their country. It’s because the government has banned them.
Sharise Parviz: 16:46
Our government, our FDA, plays loosey-goosey again with the generally recognized, or sometimes it’s called regarded as safe. This is a term that some chemicals that are used in our food products and our beauty care products. We think everything’s been tested, it’s all been FDA approved and been tested. Oh, that’s nonsense. It really hasn’t. We think it, and it’s not true, unfortunately. Generally regarded as safe is a term that is used for a food that really has never been proven to be safe. In fact, a company does its own testing. It’s not third company tested or third body tested. A company tests their own product and then turns the studies into the FDA and the FDA goes oh okay, it looks pretty good to me. Well, I’ll tell you what to do. If anything changes, submit a new study, let us know, and that’s it. There’s no proof that it’s healthy, there’s no proof that it’s safe, and this is what companies get away with Because our government well, let’s be honest, they’re all in cahoots together Big Pharma, big Food, fda, cdc name a government agency that isn’t in cahoots NIH all of these companies or, excuse me, agencies, are in cahoots with these big corporations.
Sharise Parviz: 18:13
They’re all drinking from the same trough. I mean, they’re all getting their kickbacks. They’re all serving one another. So if we want to protest, we need to start with our politicians. We need to start with our local politicians and our state politicians and our federal politicians, who are supposed to be serving the people, and we nail them to the cross, in the sense of we email and we send viral what these politicians are doing or not doing to protect us and we continue and continue to push that out and we get out and we vote.
Sharise Parviz: 18:50
I’m very excited about RFK Jr getting into the picture with Trump, very excited. I hope we can make America healthy again. If anyone can do it, I believe he can. He has the clout and he certainly has the knowledge and experience and the backing. So I’m very excited about that. So what I’m saying is put your protest, put the energy of protesting, where it counts. If the government wouldn’t allow and I’m not about big government, right, but I am about honest government and if the government is getting kickbacks and again in cahoots with these corporations, right. These agencies making money off allowing these corporations to poison us, they need to be regulated. These agencies right, which is why RFK is going to be a great addition to the team.
Sharise Parviz: 19:42
But our protests need to go to the people who are supposed to be representing us. Kellogg’s it’s a food, it’s a cereal. Don’t buy it. But if our government would refuse for us to be poisoned, refuse for us to have toxins in our foods, just like they do in Europe, then Kellogg’s would remove them. But just us saying, hey, remove them, remove them, we want your food. No, they know that you’re not going to stop buying their food. I mean that’s what they believe.
Sharise Parviz: 20:19
Just because you protest, stop buying their food. No, they know that you’re not going to stop buying their food. I mean that’s what they believe. Just because you protest, stop buying their food, start relying on your own self to create and make a healthy breakfast for your family. And if you want something done, you got to get out and vote. And you got to get out and you got to to nail your politicians. Nail them to the wall, call them on the carpet, spread that out like wildfire, because then something will be done Again, rfk Jr coming in, hopefully making some changes with these agencies, hopefully bringing some awareness of everything that’s going on.
Sharise Parviz: 21:01
I mean, I don’t know how really we can still trust our government after the past four years and still what they’re continuing to do, but many people still do and still aren’t aware of the dangers of our food system and our drug system and all of these systems that have really just taken advantage of our ignorance and our compliance. So protesting itself isn’t necessarily a waste of time, but protest where it counts, because as long as the government lets these corporations get away with it, these corporations are going to continue to play sneaky. They’re going to continue to do what they can do to make food cheaply and make as much money off you, off me, off us as possible. So protest where it matters, at our government, at our officials, and take your money and put it where it matters. You’re small farmers, you’re truly companies with true integrity.
Sharise Parviz: 22:07
So three things I want to share with you, and it’ll be in the show notes. One is my properly prepared porridge that I talked about, that I make once a week and this is great when you have kids. Right, when my grandbaby came, I made this and I kept it in the refrigerator and we had it. I also make pancakes. That’s another thing I did is I would prepare and make a batch of pancakes. You know, healthy pancakes made with wonderful organic flours that were that the flour was soaked and it was fermented, so it was wonderfully digestible and nutritious, and I would make them a big batch and then I’d freeze them, and so what I would do is make each pancake and then I would layer a parchment paper and then stack another pancake, and I would do that, and then I’d wrap the whole thing in these stacks of pancakes in parchment paper and then stick them in a plastic bag and then put it in the freezer and then, when we wanted pancakes, I would pull out however many pancakes we wanted, and I didn’t use the microwave, but I did have a convection oven and I would put it in there and it would warm up within minutes.
Sharise Parviz: 23:13
You know, is it a little more time consuming than just throwing open a box of cereal and some milk? Yeah, I mean by minutes, though. By minutes. But the health you know, the health benefit you receive by feeding your family real food, which Fruit Loops, is never going to become, no matter what we do. It’s so worth it, it’s so worth it. Just a little preparation on the weekends, prepare for the week’s so worth it, it’s so worth it. Just a little preparation on the weekends, prepare for the week, so worth it.
Sharise Parviz: 23:43
So I want to share three things with you and it’ll be in the show notes. One is my recipe for the properly prepared porridge Make on a Sunday and have it for the rest of the week. The other is two resources to help you find companies with integrity. One is from the Western Price, western A Price Foundation. It’s westernapricefoundationorg. They have an app that you can actually put on your phone and take shopping. I think it’s called Real Foods app. They also put out a journal yearly of the companies that they trust, and so I’ll put a link to that so you can become a member of Weston A Price Foundation Excellent, I think it’s $40 for the year and you get journals I think it’s quarterly journals and then access to all their papers and research and blog posts, as well as these food journals as well that come out yearly. And then I’m also going to give you another resource. It’s called the Environmental Working Group and this is online.
Sharise Parviz: 24:44
They also have an app where you can check for products that you have and these are basically like household beauty products that you use, cleaning products, that type of thing and they give it a rating based on how green it is, meaning how healthy it is, and how toxic it is, and so you can look at both of those places to one to find real food. They even have Western A Price I’m talking about right now has even what’s called a 12 spoons, where they list restaurants that follow the Western A Price foundations uh, foundations, um, food right, uh, food theory beliefs. You know the, the foundation of food, their ancestral ways of eating, um, the organic, healthy way of eating. So they have 12, uh spoons, which tells you the different restaurants and you can find one, possibly, hopefully, in your area that uh abide by Western, by Western Price’s food philosophies. Then, and then the environmental working group. So I will put both of those links so you can look at them and find their apps and get in with them and check the products you’re using and see if they’re really as non-toxic as the label claims them to be, see if the company is one that has integrity and your health in mind, and then I’ll send you my recipe.
Sharise Parviz: 26:04
All right, so again, protest, put your protesting energy where it counts the most. Hit our government, hit those politicians that are supposed to be representing us, not their back pocket, and put your money right where your mouth is, or don’t put your money and don’t, and boycott and don’t buy these products. Those two ways are going to, I think, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen, are going to be the best ways to stick it to big food and big government. We can do it, we can take back our health, but let’s do it efficiently, let’s do it in a way that really really makes a difference in the long run, because there’s too many loopholes for these corporations that they have to still continue to poison us while we believe they’re taking care of us, and let’s not rely on big food to feed us. Let’s get off the teeth of big food. All right, have a wonderful day. Look for those links in the show notes on Spotify and also on my website. All right, talk soon.