WATCH: What You Can Do To Shed Light On Bizarre Ingredients In Your Food

“Many of the products that you end up seeing on your grocery store shelves are hardly food at all,” says Ken Cook, founder and president of the Environmental Working Group.

“They’re made up of these bizarre chemical ingredients . . . when you start seeing a label, you realize that it takes a while to actually see a food ingredient.” The idea that Americans are essentially force-fed unwholesome ingredients that are harmful to our health is exactly why Cook started EWG.

His non-profit, non-partisan organization works tirelessly to conduct research and educate consumers about the toxic ingredients in food, cleaning supplies, and personal care products—just about everything we put in and on our bodies. EWG offers the largest database of information available on such chemicals.

While they’re doing so much of the hard work, he credits consumers for inciting a lot of the change that’s actually happening at this historic time in food justice. “It’s been a long time coming, but I think Americans are finally waking up to the idea that we have to pay more attention to what we’re putting into our bodies when it comes to what we bring home from the grocery store,” Cook tells Thrive Market Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Gunnar Lovelace.

With consciousness now must come action—there are a few things we can do as individuals to ensure there is increased transparency in our food system. Cook shares with us what those things are. In this video, he sits down with Lovelace to share his perspectives on food policy, the DARK Act, and how consumers can have an impact on all of it. Watch and learn.

Go to EWG.org or JustLabelIt.org for more information about GMOs and what you can do to shed more light on the DARK Act. For wholesome, non-GMO foods and products at 25 to 50 percent less than retail prices, join Thrive Market.

Video credits
Produced & Directed by: Liza Glucoft
Director of Photography: Naeem Munaf
Editor: Stephanie Provence