MAHA Moms Are Wrong About Wellness

Red Dyes Are Bad, But Maybe Polio Is Worse?

The granola momfluencer to MAHA pipeline has been extensively written about. Many of these articles start with an inciting question: how do nice moms with chicken coops turn into unreasonable zealots who prioritize the regulation of red food dye over saving the US from fascism? And the answer to this question has everything to do with the cultural construction of the ideal mother and the cultural construction of wellness and health.

Last week, I wrote about the strangely powerful allure of Rudy Jude, and feeling a little let down by her apparent MAHA leanings. As I wrote the piece, however, I started to feel foolish for being remotely surprised by Hot (Lukewarm?) Tony’s participation in an RFK Jr. rally, and more surprised I had fallen for the aesthetic promise of goodness. I like Rudy Jude’s aesthetic, therefore my brain tells me I should like everything about Rudy Jude, including her politics.

This is the danger of communicating and making sense of the world through aesthetics. The reason so many think pieces grapple with the seemingly mysterious disconnection between an outwardly presenting “nice” mom and dangerous, regressive politics is the same reason disabled mothers’ parental rights are stripped away without due cause, Black mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth than their white counterparts, and a disproportionate number of Indigenous children are placed in foster homes. The implicit goodness and rightness of white motherhood isn’t just aesthetic, it’s foundational to how we translate maternal fitness in the US.

The fact that MAHA moms proliferate so much of the mamasphere intensifies their influence. The MAHA agenda is remarkably easy to make look good. When a toxic ideology is filtered through nostalgic, pastoral imagery, adorable children holding baby chicks, and beautiful mothers feeding their children beautiful food in beautiful settings, it’s hard not to assume that there’s something “right” about these mothers’ agenda.

So what is the MAHA mom’s agenda?

One of the central points undergirding the MAHA mom’s worldview is distrust of the artificial. This distrust typically asserts itself in MAHA fear mongering regarding both processed foods and medical treatments generally proven to be safe for the vast majority of children. Vaccines are made in labs! Doritos are made in factories! Neither flourishes amongst wildflowers!

The demonization of synthetics is compelling because throughout American history, food safety and the transparency of large corporations and institutions has been problematic. But most of the time, the failure to do what’s best for the American public’s health hasn’t been due to some nefarious deep state plan to “keep people sick.” It’s just plain old capitalism. It has been historically cheaper and better for business to just sort of not tell people if their drinking water was poisoned or sell them “aids” (not cures!) for various ailments through the unregulated supplement industry. Or, you know, to sell children beverages spiked with cocaine.

Holy shit or TOOTHACHE DROPS

MAHA moms are right to demand safe food and safe medical treatment for their children, but their focus on artificiality often misses the forest for the trees. Let’s take the alleged polarity between processed foods and whole foods. If you do almost anything to a raw ingredient (including cook it), a food can be classified as a “processed food.” Kimchi is a processed food. A head of cabbage is a whole food. Oatmeal is a processed food. Raw oats are a whole food. Organic raw honey is a processed food! A honeycomb dripping with honey in a literal beehive in the Hundred Acre Wood is a whole food.

In a Burnt Toast interview with

Virginia Sole-Smith

, Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr, defines both processed foods and “ultra-processed foods.”

An ultra processed food is something that contains ingredients derived from whole food products or contains additives that are intended to either imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of food. So, already it’s such a vague definition.

Thomas explains that in many cases, food processing makes food healthier and safer. Food processing can remove dangerous pathogens (pasteurized milk), keep foods shelf-stable for longer (canned tuna fish), preserve nutrients (frozen blueberries), and help busy caregivers save time in the kitchen (jarred tomato sauce). Processed foods are also an important lifeline for people for whom scratch cooking is difficult or functionally impossible.

Is there an argument to be made that companies like Frito Lay are using the mechanisms of capitalism to make their products more appealing to impressionable young eaters? Of course! But the same is true of literally every consumer category. We live in capitalism so capitalists are going to capitalize.

Laura Thomas argues that groups like MAHA’s laser focus on processed foods not only misunderstands the definition of processed food, but acts as a distraction from larger problems.

My argument is not that we don’t need to change the food system. My argument is that the headlines have leapfrogged science, allowing people in places of power and privilege to create fear and shame about the food we eat. This keeps us focused on food as the issue, rather than the social, political, and structural forces that shape our lives and our experiences of wellbeing.

Thomas rightly points out that an individual worker’s life doesn’t change when he’s picking corn meant for a bag of Fritos rather than corn that will ultimately be served on the cob at a MAHA mom’s backyard barbecue.

Alicia Kennedy

and others have written at length about how the industrialized food system is bad for workers’ rights, animal welfare, and the environment. And this is a valid and important criticism (more important, I would argue, than pearl clutching concerns about Cheetos destroying American youth). But I’m not sure MAHA moms are really invested in the lives of exploited migrant workers when they decry the use of corn syrup as a sweetener or argue for freedom of choice when it comes to globally beneficial and life saving vaccines.

More often than not, MAHA momfluencers are driven to activism that promises to reform what (they perceive) will positively impact them and their families.

They obsess over the best (ultra-processed) snacks to feed their children; they imply that doing any less is tantamount to “slowly killing” kids.

kristenlouelle

A post shared by @kristenlouelle

They peddle straightforward diet content in the name of health (or godliness).

thechristiannutritionist

A post shared by @thechristiannutritionist

And their plan for a “healthier” country rests on the gendered assumption that the best families require a mother devoting most of her brain power and time to childrearing and domestic labor.

gretchy

A post shared by @gretchy

While the passions and complaints of MAHA moms vary, they are united in their mostly individualistic approach to health. They want the best food for their children. The best educational outcomes for their children. They want the best nontoxic flannel bed sheets for their children. They argue in favor of RFK Jr. banning processed foods from school lunches, but will that have a more meaningful impact on the lives of children (particularly marginalized children) than, for example, a federal free lunch program? Even if that free lunch program includes “ultra-processed” French Toast bites once in a while?

Most social safety nets exist because of activists invested in reform that positively impacts all children (or people) with all sorts of identities living in all sorts of different communities. In the early 20th century, Jewish mothers organized a boycott in response to inequitable meat prices. In the 1970s, Black activists were largely responsible for the School Breakfast Program, and disability activists fought for the Education Of All Handicapped Children Act passed. Congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink supported Title XI because of her lived experience with sexism. Because most big systems negatively impact the most marginalized populations before they negatively impact the most privileged populations, effective activist movements are largely helmed by people marginalized in varied, intersecting ways. When it comes to children’s health and wellbeing, the stakes are high, which is why mothers and parents can be such effective agents of change.

It’s difficult to argue that MAHA moms are spurred on by a consideration of collective wellness. They are passionate about their right to say no to vaccines, which could have devastating effects on public health and the health of other mothers’ children. They are passionate about their right to unfluoridated water, which could have widespread consequences for children in underserved communities (poor dental health raises one’s risk of several chronic diseases, including cancers and Altzheimer’s). MAHA moms rail against the evils of public school, endorsing homeschooling as a better way to educate children, a choice only possible to families in which a parent (a mom?!?!?!!) is . . . home. What happens to the millions of children for whom public school is the only option? Not really their problem.

selfhealingmama

A post shared by @selfhealingmama

Again, many of the beacons of “good health” as imagined by MAHA moms require mothers’ extensive commitments and sacrifices. It’s hard to fathom a proper MAHA lifestyle helmed by a mother doing waged work outside the home. So if that’s the case, perhaps mothers working outside the home are actively bad for their children’s health? It’s a pretty clear line from supposed best “healthy” practices to a complete restructuring of society and gender roles. Which is, of course, why MAHA and MAGA go hand in hand. J.D. Vance might not give a shit if kids are eating a home-cooked meal sourced from home-grown ingredients. But if that home-cooked meal demands a mother’s attention be trained towards the kitchen instead of her bodily autonomy or civil rights? Win-win!

MAHA arguments can seem convincing because there’s often a starting point of truth in many of these mama bears’ complaints. School lunch should receive more funding and attention. Parents’ limited access to nourishing, affordable foods is a problem. The negative impacts of wide scale factory farming can’t be ignored. A more holistic approach to children’s health would be good! A more holistic approach to children’s education would be great.

But none these issues are going to be addressed in a way that serves the most people possible through a myopic obsession with seed oils, chemical sunscreens, or choosing the correct fucking granola bars. (That’s a trick statement - the only good granola bars are homemade OBVIOUSLY!!!!!! )

MAHA moms are passionate about their children’s wellbeing. This passion fuels their activism and adds credence to their claims simply because all mothers want the best for their children, right? We’re culturally conditioned to expect mothers to fight tooth and nail on behalf of their children. Demanding the best for our kids is part of being a good mom. Isn’t it?

Source - @selfhealingmama

In her soon-to-be-released beautiful must-read book, Unfit Parent, future In Pursuit guest Jessica Slice detected a key difference between nondisabled parents and disabled parents when it came to their approaches to parenthood. In a new moms’ group of mostly middle to upper class nondisabled moms, Slice noticed that certain things seemed to matter more to these new mothers than they did for her as a disabled mom.

I used a thirty-dollar umbrella stroller that I could lift and unfold from my car without injuring myself. They had very expensive strollers that all looked alike. They breastfed, and those that needed to use formula imported it from Germany because the ingredients were supposed to be healthier. It was four times the cost of the formula David and I used (which K’s doctors had recommended and the county paid for). It’s not the amount of money they were spending that struck me, but a general sense that they felt that these choices, which seemed small to me, were critical.

Slice reflects that prior to becoming disabled in her late twenties, and being forced to adjust to a level of comfort with the fact that we are never fully in control–of our bodies, of our health, of our children–she too had obsessed about “small” things: “In my twenties, I thought I could experience perfection, and that goodness was a matter of the right choices and hard work.”

In her book, Slice shows that this tireless drive towards perfection and self-optimization is often societally engrained in mothers, especially mothers who might not have experienced large degrees of marginalization prior to parenthood. But Slice also shows that perfection is very neatly tied to capitalism, the corrosive nature of individualism, and ableism. If an ideal is put forth by the market and reinforced by social norms and expectations, consumers can be forgiven for imagining that they can buy their way to wellness. Or, in the case of MAHA, eat their way there.

It is only the most privileged among us who have the luxury to not fight for social reforms on behalf of our children. But it’s also sometimes the most privileged among us who expend energy fighting on behalf of their own children when other mothers’ children’s lives are far more vulnerable and precarious.

In her seminal book about the political impact of Black motherhood, We Live For The We, Dani McClain points out that Black mothers are activists out of necessity:

Black mothers advocate for our children everywhere, from the playground to the schoolhouse to the doctor’s office. There is always a campaign to wage. There is always a need to make our children’s humanity more visible and to convince, cajole, or pressure someone who’s making our lives more difficult because of their own blind spots or racist impulses.

This type of life-or-death activism is not the same as MAHA mothers rallying against raw milk restrictions. It’s the type of activism that leads to a widespread positive impact on all children’s wellbeing. Not just the apocryphal positive impact on one child’s microbiome. Or whatever raw milk is supposed to do. I’m a raw milk expert who loves to know nothing whatsoever about raw milk except that it might make me sick 🐮

Many MAHA mothers want to raise their families untouched by politics or the greater culture. They want to raise their own food and make their own meaning of the world, unburdened by the failures of the people in charge. They want to opt out. And I get it! In terrifying times (like these!!!!!), it’s natural to want to escape mainstream life simply because fighting for better is so hard. Such an uphill battle. I can empathize with MAHA mothers’ desire to live lives away from large institutions, and to focus on the small things within their control. The love of their children. The food on their plates. But everyone has something different at stake when they opt out (if opting out is even a viable option).

In We Live For The We, Dani McClain interviews a woman whose career and life have been largely bound up in social justice efforts. The nature of Zahra Alabanza’s waged work and unpaid labor ultimately led to her burning out. So Alabanza ended up rethinking her focus. “We can create the world we want to live in in a micro way,” she told McClain, who posited that, “we can take on the powers that be by simply making ourselves less vulnerable to their whims.” There is no single right way to dissent, and mothers have many good reasons to work towards a better world within the home. But a false belief in the primacy of one’s own health–or the health of one’s own family–is not one of them.

Katie Gatti Tassin

of

Diabolical Lies

recently shared this CNN interview with a MAMA mom, and it encapsulates so much of what is fundamentally broken in the MAHA worldview. When Zane Hunnicutt allegedly cured her child’s health issues through diet changes, Hunnicutt became a fervent supporter of RFK Jr. and a leader in the MAHA movement. Throughout the segment, the interviewer repeatedly counters Hunnicutt’s beliefs in MAHA with cold, hard, medical data, and Hunnicutt repeatedly scoffs. When your belief system is built on a fundamental distrust of large scale institutions, it’s remarkably easy to question the veracity of even the most factual of facts.

I watched this clip when I was in the middle of reading Unfit Parent, and the ableism not even hiding in plain sight intrinsic to MAHA is communicated so clearly by Hunnicutt’s passion for “good” health. On a Zoom with some supporters, Hunnicutt says this: “If Bobby is able to do what he needs to do as the head of the HSS, we won’t even need healthcare. I’m saying we won’t be going to the doctors, because we won’t be sick.”

In response to this statement, which is supposed to be aspirational, her fellow activists argue that vaccine mandates should have no place in public schools.

MAHA moms do not get to define health or sickness. Every single one of us is in need of care every single day. Every single one of our bodies is vulnerable. Every single one needs healthcare. An imagined future in which every body looks and functions the same way is not possible. But more to the point, an imagined future in which human beings are free from the need to care or be cared for, is not a utopia. It’s a dystopia.

MAHA mothers are right to criticize the widespread denigration of maternal authority. They’re right to complain about condescending, belittling treatment from medical providers. And of course, they’re right to care about their children’s health and wellbeing. But we won’t get a “healthier” country one self-sustaining family at a time. A single family’s “freedom” to say no to the polio vaccine and no to funding public education and no to an accessible healthcare system should not be more important than a country’s collective family of children.