Recently actress Michelle Pfeiffer was forced to issue a retraction on social media regarding a falsehood she shared in a post regarding a produce company.  In her retraction she stated: “Public conversations about food safety and sustainability matter deeply, but they’re only as helpful as they are accurate.”  Exactly.

But ironically, Pfeiffer is a long-time board member of the Environmental Working Group, an organization that has set the standard for perpetuating disinformation about food.  And EWG’s first and continual targets are the more affordable and accessible fruits and vegetables. These are the very foods health and nutrition experts universally want us to eat more of every day for better health and a longer life.

If you’re like me, you felt that misinformation simply couldn’t get any worse but the cacophony has gotten louder and the statements more extreme.  It’s like we have fallen down a rabbit hole where bad science is now accepted and even promoted. Case in point, EWG’s president recently hosted a podcast titled, “The dose makes the poison is outdated.” Now they want to re-write the laws of chemistry and the basic tenet of toxicology?

While the Alliance for Food and Farming (AFF) continues to rely on toxicology and university scientists and other experts (who don’t create new rules as they go along to fit a narrative), it is getting harder and harder to hold the line and keep scientific realities at the forefront.

Assaults on vaccines, nutrition, medications, food production as well as against health officials, scientists and physicians who have devoted their lives to promoting and protecting public health have become the norm. Activists and social media influencers’ opinions and statements often carry more weight in these spaces than regulators, scientists and academics.

While the produce company that forced Pfeiffer’s retraction enjoyed a win, she serves a group that is trying to re-write the rules of science, so what is “accurate” to her really isn’t helpful at all.  And that is the rabbit hole we are in brought to you by EWG – the decades-long leader in disinformation campaigns – and their colleagues.

Maybe it’s better to just hide in this rabbit hole.