If you don't trust a public wifi hotspot with your cleartext traffic because of passive snooping, why would you trust a VPN provider with your cleartext traffic?
A lot of these torrent-anonymously consumer VPN services look pretty dodgy.
Use a non-dodgy VPN service, such as https://www.privatetunnel.com/ (run by the OpenVPN people) or https://privacy.cryptoseal.com/ (run by HN's rdl). You may be trusting them with your cleartext traffic, but that's really no different than trusting e.g. Comcast with your cleartext traffic when you're at home.
A lot of these torrent-anonymously consumer VPN services look pretty dodgy.