This start-up tells us exactly why 'Our food is screwed' in its first-ever campaign

• The video is titled ‘Our food is screwed’ and is inspired by the iconic Dollar Shave Club ad.
• The Whole Truth is on a mission to rebuild the trust of consumers on food labels.

The Whole Truth, a HealthFood 9-month-old start-up, has launched its first ever advertisement. The campaign aims to act as a mirror to the malpractices that food giants have followed in our country for generations.

Titled ‘Our Food is Screwed,’ the film is inspired from The Dollar Shave Club ad and aims to bust food myths and inconvenient food labelings. It tells you a little bit about things that ‘Food Companies don’t want you to know.’


It is a common notion that healthy food isn’t tasty but The Whole Truth (TWT) aims to change that perception. It says that the food industry is ‘very clever, a little too clever,’ that is built on marketing tricks. It sells practically anything as ‘healthy’ and designs its packaging to ‘highlight what they want you to see.’ TWT also says that the Food giants label anything man-made as natural, which isn’t the truth.

To make it look more real and appealing to the consumers, the start-up decided not to on-board any celebrities to represent it. They have featured its founder, Shashank Mehta, who busts a few misconceptions. It is a clever marketing decision because people would associate with a common man and believe in the brand. He declares each and every ingredient that goes into their pack, upfront so that consumers don’t have to turn the label and squint to find out what chemicals are going inside their bodies.

Since the 1990s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required food companies to include Nutrition Facts labels on product packaging. The intent was to help consumers make informed choices - but look where it’s led the world. Global obesity has tripled in the last 40 years. 1 in 5 humans above 65, on the entire planet, now have diabetes. With this, consumers have lost trust in the food industry and TWT is aiming to change it.

It also highlights how women are often objectified in advertisements to sell completely unrelated products.

While walking the consumers through the process of how the bar is made, it subtly conveys that they follow all precautions sincerely by placing their employees in their background. This video is a way to introduce consumers to honest products with honest packaging and great taste.

In a statement released for the press, Shashank Mehta, Founder, The Whole Truth, explained the philosophy behind its start-up.

He said, “When The Whole Truth was launched nine months ago, the team started receiving positive responses early on. In fact, people started asking us, ‘are you sure this is healthy? Because it is this tasty’. Our food philosophy told us that when you use good ingredients, food automatically becomes tasty. Food and fitness is a $1 trillion to $4 trillion industry globally. This industry is growing at twice the rate of the global GDP, and yet, all markers — obesity, heart disease, diabetes — are at all-time highs.”

Karan Talwar, Founder, Harkat Studios, said, “The dollar shave club is a hero for us. Somehow, they managed to keep the honesty and truth of what they were saying together. They broke the traditional advertising format to present a brand new vision - and that resonated with all of us. The dollar shave club is so striking in its directness. For us, it’s really the evolution of advertising and reaching out to an audience which is done with lies - whether it be in the ingredient list or in the advertisement itself. After all, we all know that putting on deodorant does not get you that hot girl. The objective was to simply tell the whole truth in a way that doesn’t need a documentary."

On his experience of working with Shashank, Talwar added, "When Shashank approached us with the idea of this ad film we were clear that we will overturn everything that advertising is, reveal its fakery in some way - because we have too spent years pandering to the same system that we are now looking to dismantle. This is a condensed starting version of something much larger. Because even the truth in our world needs to be a short consumable film. We believe in Shashank and the way he is trying to excavate the truth and present an honest alternative, we also do the same with our work and our industry. Nothing could be a better fit than this."

The start-up also says that it might falter in the future and come up short but “it is, after all, an impossible ideal to aspire to.”