Have you or someone you love been confused by the push to 'Make America Healthy Again'?Side effects may include: - Being inundated by uncredentialed wellness influencers and crunchy mommy bloggers selling supplements- Feeling perplexed by how RFK Jr. went from an 'environmental champion' to an anti-vax conspiracy theorist- Or maybe seeing the names Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz more and more in your feeds? Then you, my friend, are in dire need of our new series - The ROAD to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). For the next few of weeks, we're delving into some of the origins, conspiracy theories, and power grabs that have led us to this moment, and what it could mean for our health. This week, we take on the crunchy conservative - but not without some help! Brittany sits down with co-host of the Conspirituality podcast, Derek Beres, and biomedical scientist, Dr. Andrea Love, to uncover how crunchy went from more liberal hippie tree huggers to more conservative conspiracy theorists.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Have you or someone you love been confused by the push to make America healthy again? Side effects may include being inundated by uncredentialed wellness influencers and crunchy mommy bloggers selling supplements.
Feeling perplexed by how RFK Jr. went from an environmental champion to an anti-vax conspiracy theorist. Or maybe seeing the names Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz more and more in your feeds. If that's the case, then you, my friend, are in dire need of our new series. The Road to Make America Healthy Again.
Don't you want a president that's going to make America healthy again?
For the next few weeks, we're delving into some of the origins, conspiracy theories, and power grabs that have led us to this moment and what that could mean for our health. Today, you and I are going to go down the crunchy to conservative pipeline with some guidance, of course.
Now, when you hear the word crunchy, you may think about hippies in the 60s and 70s or people making their own kombucha, you know, practicing veganism, folks with left-leaning politics who are living off the land, stuff like that. But these days, that's not quite right.
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Chapter 2: Who are crunchy conservatives and how did they emerge?
That also is a misnomer if you think it's only always been hippies or leftists, because the very ideology of conservatism is this notion of protecting what has already existed. And we want to keep perpetuating that.
That is Derek Barris, writer and co-host of the Conspiratuality podcast. a show dedicated to dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis. And he says that the link between this return to nature ideology and conservatism is a pattern we've seen throughout history.
You referenced the 60s and hippies, well, you had the John Birch Society, which was a conservative organization in the 1960s that spread a lot of misinformation in order to drive people toward conservative values. That was agreeing with a lot of the hippies and actually influencing them at that time on things like fluoride in the water.
Now, you may be wondering, what does a crunchy conservative look like today? Well, there are the crunchy moms.
I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I'd rather go thirsty than drink tap water. I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I assume nobody uses fluoride anymore, right? I'm a crunchy mom. Of course I'm not using fluoride.
The wellness influencers who spread misinformation about the food we consume.
Did you know that this toxic chemical could be on your food?
Even right-wing commentators who suddenly have the cure for poisons and toxins.
We are being poisoned. Our fertility is being targeted and it's dropping across the Western world. Ladies and gentlemen, AnthroPlex is the newest addition.
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Chapter 3: How do wellness influencers and conspiracy theories influence health beliefs?
That is Dr. Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist who has been ringing the alarm on the harm of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and of course, crunchy conservatism.
If you look at people who believe in those medical conspiracies, like we're hiding the natural cures for cancer or fluoride in our water is poisoning us, those same people that believe those, they're the ones that participate in the wellness behaviors, like eating organic, going to the farm stand and taking supplements and herbs and vitamins.
And simultaneously, they're the ones that are not doing the proven things to improve health, like preventive well visits, vaccines, wearing sunscreen and going to the dentist.
And somehow these conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and wellness influencers have coalesced under the Make America Healthy Again banner and its leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The water is toxic. The food is toxic. The vaccines are toxic. Well, parents are going to resonate with that because they want to do what's best for their kids.
Listen, this is a lot, but don't worry. Derek and Andrea are going to walk us through this meeting of the minds between what we thought was the far left and the ethos of the right. Where do you think this intersection, this crossover between crunchy and conservative is rooted?
My personal feeling is that the crossover is rooted in individualism. So a lot of the times when you see wellness influencers talking about the universal application of their products and supplements, they really mean a specific audience that has the time for it and that can afford it. Because to partake in that industry, you have to have a certain level of privilege.
And that is rooted in the sense of individual responsibility when it comes to health. Yeah.
I think we have this more obvious convergence of political ideologies. The ultimate passage of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which was bipartisan. It was led by Orrin Hatch and Tom Harkin. And that basically removed all of the oversight and regulatory ability of the FDA to make sure that supplements were safe and produced with quality. They're still not really effective.
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Chapter 4: What role does individualism play in the crossover between crunchy and conservative ideologies?
And the irony as a biomedical scientist is that the way in which we create a cell therapy for cancer and the way in which we create a genetically engineered plant for farming, it's the exact same scientific principle. It's just what species you're working on.
Hmm. You all have pulled up so many different historical examples of how this kind of crunchy granola or crunchy conservative thinking has crested at different points in time throughout American history. But I wonder, like, why are crunchy conservatives so prominent right now?
I think a lot of it really is you have this kind of ecosystem where now it's the wellness industry and all these podcasters who are telling you the truth that the scientists and the doctors and the government are hiding from you. And that has led to the explosion of kind of this alt-right wellness industry.
Chapter 5: How did legislation like the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act affect wellness culture?
And this has kind of converged with the growth of increasing health anxiety as a result of the COVID pandemic, where people were You know, they're looking for voices who are going to tell them the quick fixes to take control of their health.
There has been a longstanding conservative anti-intellectual movement in America, but that's become a real anti-expert movement. And that is partly driven by the fact that wellness influencers, you're looking at Gwyneth Paltrow selling supplements and people on the right, Alex Jones selling supplements. They have a vested interest in saying that doctors don't know what they're talking about.
You should do this for your health. Coming up. He was going to crypto conferences. He is known as an environmental champion. Although if you look back at that track record, there's a lot we can pick apart from that as well. But he built up his brand, his name through the vaccine lawsuits.
How crunchy conservatives found RFK Jr.
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I hear what both of you are saying, but for a lot of groups, this skepticism of experts, doctors, the medical system, science, that skepticism has some historical grounding. I mean, I'm thinking about the inadequate research around diseases that primarily affect women, about the unethical medical experiments done to Black and Latino people in the United States.
Now, I imagine that that also factors into some of the skepticism that people feel.
That's exactly right. And I think this is actually something that is deliberately exploited by these people who are pushing the contrarian anti-science rhetoric, right? Whereas instead where we could be having a legitimate conversation about something like Tuskegee.
And I just want to step in here because there's a lot of misinformation about this incident in particular. So for those of you who don't know, Tuskegee refers to the Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male. which ran from 1932 to 1972.
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Chapter 6: Why are crunchy conservatives more prominent now?
Chapter 7: What historical patterns connect conservative movements with wellness and conspiracy theories?
Did you know that this toxic chemical could be on your food?
Even right-wing commentators who suddenly have the cure for poisons and toxins.
We are being poisoned. Our fertility is being targeted and it's dropping across the Western world. Ladies and gentlemen, AnthroPlex is the newest addition.
And more. You have this kind of ecosystem where now it's the wellness industry and all these podcasters who are telling you the truth that the scientists and the doctors and the government are hiding from you. And that has led to the explosion of kind of this alt-right wellness industry.
That is Dr. Andrea Love, a biomedical scientist who has been ringing the alarm on the harm of pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and of course, crunchy conservatism.
If you look at people who believe in those medical conspiracies, like we're hiding the natural cures for cancer or fluoride in our water is poisoning us, those same people that believe those, they're the ones that participate in the wellness behaviors, like eating organic, going to the farm stand and taking supplements and herbs and vitamins.
And simultaneously, they're the ones that are not doing the proven things to improve health, like preventive well visits, vaccines, wearing sunscreen and going to the dentist.
And somehow these conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and wellness influencers have coalesced under the Make America Healthy Again banner and its leader, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The water is toxic. The food is toxic. The vaccines are toxic. Well, parents are going to resonate with that because they want to do what's best for their kids.
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