podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
Why Crunchy Conservatives Love RFK Jr.
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Feb 13, 2025
Raw milk, seed oil skepticism, and...coffee enemas? The rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the conservative “Make America Healthy Again” movement is reclaiming what it means to be ‘crunchy’ -- a term previously associated with health-conscious liberals. Audie talks with Kiera Butler, a Mother Jones senior editor and reporter deeply embedded in the world of the conservative right's wellness trends.
Episode Transcript
Audie Cornish
00:00:00
'This week, I became one of the 24 million cases of flu this season. I'm also among the just 45% of adults who actually got the flu vaccine. Now, the number of people getting the flu shot never really recovered after the pandemic era Covid vaccination fights. And over time, a funny thing happened. The 'food as medicine crowd,' the 'anti-big pharma crowd.' The 'actually fluoride is a toxin crowd,' reached across the aisle to the Anti-COVID mandate crowd. The anti- Anthony Fauci crowd. And in the middle of that political horseshoe was Robert F Kennedy Jr. and what would become the Make America Healthy Again movement.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:00:47
In my advocacy I've often disturbed the status quo. By asking uncomfortable questions. And I'm not going to apologize for that. We have massive health problems in our country that we must face honestly. And the first thing I've done every morning for the past 20 years is to pray to God that he would put me in a position where I can end the chronic disease epidemic and protect our children.
Audie Cornish
00:01:16
While he may be its public face, the backbone of the movement is a virtual army of women known as "Crunchy Moms.".
Crunchy Clip 1
00:01:25
I'm a crunchy mom. Of course, I'm going to keep telling you that your BRITA is not filtering out what they're saying it is.
Crunchy Clip 2
00:01:28
We were never allowed to get fluoride treatment. And trust me, this rubbed a lot of dentists the wrong way.
Crunchy Clip 3
00:01:34
Here's what I need for lunch. As a high fat five year carnivore, seven fried eggs cooked in beef fat. My usual stick of cold butter straight out of the fridge.
Crunchy Clip 4
00:01:42
Seed oils are horrible for humans. Get them out of your diet. Full stop.
Audie Cornish
00:01:47
And with RFK Jr. Poised to take over the Department of Health and Human Services, this is their time.
Diana Atieah
00:01:55
You know, people may be scared of RFK, but listen, RFK isn't going to take away something that you want to make the choice and have. It's very important to have your freedom to make the choices that you want to make. But it's also very important for me to make the choices that I want to make and to do so with informed consent.
Audie Cornish
00:02:17
Just a few decades ago, the word crunchy might have evoked visions of Birkenstocks and granola eating liberals. Now it's the Make America Healthy Again movement. What changed? And now that crunchy moms seem to have a direct line to those in power. How will that change the access you and your family will have to vetted health information? I'm Audie Cornish. And this is The Assignment.
Diana Atieah
00:02:44
When I was in college, I was very opposite of crunchy. If I met myself, you know, eight years ago, I would have definitely laughed at myself and thought I was weird. I was just very into, you know, believing the mainstream and just accepting every narrative that was fed to me through, you know, education and social settings and that kind of thing.
Audie Cornish
00:03:04
This is Diana Atieah. She reluctantly embraces the term influencer, but she wholeheartedly embraces the MAHA movement.
Diana Atieah
00:03:13
Coming out with, as a MAHA mom, I lost a lot of followers and I think definitely distanced myself even further from different friends from college and and things like that.
Audie Cornish
00:03:26
The turning point happened when she was 23. She got pregnant as she was finishing college at UC Berkeley, an event she said rocked her world. She dropped the various medications she had been using prior to the pregnancy, cold turkey.
Diana Atieah
00:03:40
I always refer to it as when I woke up. Right. I kind of look at it as, you know, I was just asleep. I was just another zombie doing all the things that I'm supposed to be doing, doing all the things that everyone else tells me are right. And then I woke up and I was like, "Hey, I actually need to listen to my body, do my own research, become educated on my own choices." Having this 180 on basically everything that you used to believe in and everything that you believe in now is a little bit weird. And it definitely alienated some people. And I think that's part of growing and, you know, making better choices.
Audie Cornish
00:04:19
'Choices that even now, she admits, are weird to people on the outside of the movement, beyond the natural deodorant or ingredient checking, are so-called remedies like coffee enemas.
Diana Atieah
00:04:31
I think a lot of people would think that's weird. And I would say I thought it was weird, too. And then I decided to try it just because it's very good for parasite cleansing, digestion, getting all the organs fueled and functioning properly.
Audie Cornish
00:04:46
The National Institutes of Health, by the way, actually looked into this in 2020 and said they found no clinical evidence that it's effective. But these are the exact kind of institutions that have lost people like Diana. And you see a lot of the same themes surface if you spend enough time with these moms, which Kiera Butler has. She's a senior editor and a reporter at Mother Jones magazine. For a time, she thought of herself as a crunchy mom.
Kiera Butler
00:05:18
I was living in Berkeley, California, around 2007, 2008. This was right when Michael..
Audie Cornish
00:05:25
Right, check mark!
Kiera Butler
00:05:25
Right. This was right when Michael Pollan had written his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. Everybody was very into urban farming
Audie Cornish
00:05:35
Check and check. Yep.
Kiera Butler
00:05:37
Eating, mostly plants and all of that. No pesticides, all organic. I raised chickens in my backyard.
Audie Cornish
00:05:45
Check!
Kiera Butler
00:05:45
So, yeah, yeah, I would say I was. I was pretty crunchy.
Audie Cornish
00:05:48
But some of these things are pretty mainstream. Or maybe they're mainstream now. Like, how do we even define crunchy anymore?
Kiera Butler
00:05:56
So there's been this really interesting shift. It used to be like back when I considered myself to be pretty crunchy. It was a movement on the left. You know, when you thought about like Marin County, California, with kind of aging hippies who might eat granola, which I think is where the term crunchy came from, it was really a movement of the political left. That has shifted. It started a little bit before the pandemic, but it really accelerated during the pandemic. And now it really is more common on the right.
Audie Cornish
00:06:28
One of the things I found interesting is with social media, there's all of these different lifestyles that influencers can promote online, and this one in particular. Your moms, basically, who are almost greeting this like magazine, like look to their lives with the chickens. And it's part of a certain look. So for a while, I didn't really look at it as political.
Kiera Butler
00:06:55
Right. I mean, there's nothing inherently political about making your child individual little goldfish crackers one by one from scratch.
Audie Cornish
00:07:06
Right. Or buying wooden toys or like, if anything, I saw it as a class thing.
Kiera Butler
00:07:11
Sure. Yeah. And that, you know, I think the the economic piece of it is important as well. It's on that same continuum with the kind of Trad Wives movement.
Audie Cornish
00:07:22
Can you talk to me about when this shift happened? I'm assuming it was the pandemic because there already was a movement of people who, for instance, weren't vaccinating their kids at the same level as maybe the generation before. And I remember reporting on some of that movement. But I tend to look at the pandemic as this turning point for certain populations where they were radicalized, so to speak, around some ideas.
Kiera Butler
00:07:47
'It probably started a little bit before the pandemic. And to be clear, in the anti-vaccine movement and in this crunchy movement in general, there's always been this kind of horseshoe effect, I think is is what people are calling it these days. But it's the idea that the the kind of far ends of the left and right spectrum kind of meet around in the middle and the back. So you see some similarities. And during the pandemic, when you started to see, you know, people protesting against mask mandates and then against vaccine mandates, this kind of libertarian ethos of, you know, the government doesn't belong telling me what to do with my kids. That got more mainstream appeal.
Audie Cornish
00:08:31
How did it start to surface in its forums and I don't know, Reddit threads or even TikTok out of the pandemic.
Kiera Butler
00:08:40
'So I think the first time I covered this very early on in the pandemic, I want to say it was April or May of 2020. I had noticed that some of the folks that I followed on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, who were in just general moms groups, you know, these were groups that were like where people go to ask a question about car seats. We're beginning to talk more politically about vaccines. And this was interesting to me. So I began to follow these groups more closely. I began to do real reporting on it. And I really did see this shift. And at the same time, I saw a shift in the anti-vaccine movement. You know, some of the influential groups like the group that RFK Jr used to head, were noticing that these parents, these scared pandemic moms, were kind of a great audience for the misinformation that they were peddling. Basically.
Audie Cornish
00:09:46
You're saying misinformation, but was it also a collection of other I'll call them question marks. So, like, are seed oils healthy or unhealthy for you? Right. Like, is raw milk healthy or unhealthy for you? There's like a lot of health and wellness trends that are probably a lot more complex to explain if you really dig into it. But they also fall under this umbrella of things in this community that people believe and are very much sharing information about.
Kiera Butler
00:10:20
Yeah, that's right. There's a whole kind of host of things. So, you know, I think that a lot of them have to do with this idea of naturalness and just like the...
Audie Cornish
00:10:29
Toxins, right? Like that there's are so many toxins in the world, which is not wrong. Right. Like, I feel like I also see news stories every day about microplastics or your black utensils or like I guess I'm getting at the idea that they're not crazy.
Kiera Butler
00:10:47
No, not crazy by any means. When you think of the time that this really started to accelerate this April, May 2020, it was a scary time. And even beyond the things that really had to do with the pandemic, anything that gave parents a sense of control, you know, maybe if I avoid seed oils, my kid will be healthy. Maybe if I'm careful about exposure to 5G cell phone radiation, my kid will be healthy. You know, it's a narrative that was very, very appealing to a lot of people.
Audie Cornish
00:11:20
It's also when it finally surfaced in the mainstream election cycle with RFK out of context, it always sounded a little bit nuts. Right? Like, why was he talking about beef tallow? Why was he really like there were these sort of parts of patois from that community that he would surface in his. Public dialog. And if you didn't know, you really didn't know. But if you did, he was speaking your language.
Kiera Butler
00:11:47
And I think that's, you know, a lot of the folks that had become in involved in this community during the pandemic, when he really became part of the political conversation, they felt recognized. You know, this was a guy who was a leader in their movement.
Audie Cornish
00:12:03
How much of a leader was he? Is he someone who kind of moved into it? I mean, if you listen to his relatives, they make it sound like maybe he doesn't quite believe in everything he's saying, but where where was he in this world before we came to know him on the political stage?
Kiera Butler
00:12:21
'So his history is as an environmental lawyer. He for a long time worked for the environmental group Riverkeeper, which fights for clean water, basically. And through that, he sort of became very interested in the toxins, pollution and how that can affect human health. And after that, in kind of the late twenty teens, he became involved with Children's Health Defense, and he became the head of that group. And that group is is the largest anti-vaccine advocacy group in the world. So he we saw kind of a trajectory for him where he went from being concerned about, you know, toxins such as mercury in the water to maybe mercury in vaccines, to vaccines in general, to a whole lot of other things.
Audie Cornish
00:13:13
How does this audience, this Venn diagram between RFK and his ideology and this world of so called crunchy moms, how did they come together? Meaning when you look at Make America Healthy Again and maybe what's on that platform, so to speak, do you recognize the language of these women?
Kiera Butler
00:13:34
'Yes. And I think, you know, it's important to realize that these alliances were not formed instantaneously and that there are many different communities coming together. You know, one example of a community that has long been involved in the anti-vaccine movement is people who believe that autism is caused by childhood vaccinations. This is a hypothesis that has been disproven over and over and over again. But you have a very small subset of the autism community and the autism caregivers community that believes this very strongly. And in RFK, Jr, these folks saw a champion and they really came to support him when he announced that he was running for president. And then they continued to support him as he became Trump's pick to lead the Health and Human Services Department.
Audie Cornish
00:14:33
Is it an uneasy fit? I mean, when I think about how the Trump folks or how Republicans reacted to like Michelle Obama's healthy lunch initiative, you know, it was like outcry. So it's hard to picture RFK saying basically the same exact thing. And are people going to embrace it because these voters come along with it?
Kiera Butler
00:14:55
'You know, it is it's very interesting that that kind of contradiction between, you know, just a few years ago where people were saying, you know, how dare you say that school lunches should be healthier to go all the way to like, we have to get all of the so-called toxins out of the food. You know, the pushback against genetically modified ingredients and lunches, which, you know, genetically modified ingredients, there's been, you know, study after study has shown that they're safe to eat. It is a real turnaround for conservative folks, but they seem to be all in you know, this is now seen as a way in which the government has kind of hoodwinked the American people by putting these toxins in food. And this has been become a rallying cry for conservatives against the government.
Audie Cornish
00:15:50
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, I'll ask Kiera about some of the more unconventional, crunchy mom beliefs.
Audie Cornish
00:16:04
Can you talk about some of the more unusual trends within the Crunchy Mom community?
Kiera Butler
00:16:11
You mentioned seed oils. This is the idea that oils that come from seeds. So that would be like, you know, your canola oil, that these oils are dangerous, that they can cause cancer. This has been disproven and in fact, seed oils have been proven to be healthier for people's cardiovascular health, for cholesterol than some of the favored oils in that crowd, such as coconut oil or butter.
Audie Cornish
00:16:43
We also had one of the moms talk about a coffee grounds enema. Which I was not prepared to hear about.
Kiera Butler
00:16:49
Yeah. I don't really know what there is to say about that. Besides the fact that doctors don't recommend that you put coffee anywhere besides your mouth.
Audie Cornish
00:17:04
'One of the things I've been wrestling with is that I know when as a new parent, I was very read in on anti-institution materials, meaning I got really read in on having a natural birth. I didn't end up doing it, but like I went down the rabbit hole, right, of reading all the books and learning about how medicine and institutional medicine and men had like taken over the whole thing of birthing. And then later, when my child was born, like, what should I feed the child? And, you know, was like, the corporate food mega pharma wants them to eat, blah, blah, blah. And I shouldn't do that. And like, I was susceptible to that as anyone, you know. And I guess I can't figure out when our suspicion crosses over into just raw distrust.
Kiera Butler
00:17:56
I think it's completely understandable, you know, when you're told that something that you're doing might be harmful to your kids, that is an incredibly powerful message. And when you combine that with the fact that parents and mothers in particular do not have an easy time in the United States, you know, we don't have a lot of parental leave. Child care is really expensive.
Audie Cornish
00:18:22
'And like all of our diseases are under-researched.
Kiera Butler
00:18:24
'All of our diseases are under-researched. And also, you know, mom's health is under-researched. Like, you know, a lot of moms like you get sent home from the hospital with this baby and then, you know, you might be experiencing pain and that pain might be ignored. And, you know, your doctor says like, it's fine, you're fine. The idea that you can make these choices, that you can choose how you have your kid, you know how whether you have a natural childbirth ...
Audie Cornish
00:18:51
In a sea of information, right?
Kiera Butler
00:18:53
In a sea of information, yes.
Audie Cornish
00:18:54
You can go, quote unquote, do your research. Now, as a reporter, I'm very skeptical of the research online. I'm like, I don't know if this is I tend to go to these institutions that lots of people don't trust now like the CDC website or the Mayo Clinic or something. But this like do your own research thing and that really just meaning going down the Internet rabbit hole is like it's spread to many different corners. We're talking about crunchy moms, but it's all over.
Kiera Butler
00:19:25
'It is all over. And I think, you know, again, to go back to the pandemic, you also had this strain of anti-science of, you know, that the experts know nothing, don't trust the experts. And when...
Audie Cornish
00:19:38
And they won't say they're wrong, if they are wrong.
Kiera Butler
00:19:41
And they won't say they're wrong if they are wrong, you know, you had genuine, you know, poor choices by people in the government about how they message around science. So you had this kind of ascendant movement of not trusting science combined with, you know, all of the usual stuff about getting your information on social media. And it really was kind of like a powder keg.
Audie Cornish
00:20:03
'Now that they have a seat at the table or likely will in RFK Jr. What do they want? Like, what does this particular kind of voter, not just the women, but the voter who. Yeah, falls in this anti-toxin, anti-everything kind of umbrella along with RFK. What is it that they're hoping to get out of having this seat at the table?
Kiera Butler
00:20:27
I think it's really hard to generalize because I think many of them genuinely want, you know, lunch, school lunches that are healthier for kids. You know, they genuinely want water that's healthier to drink, air that's healthier to breathe.
Audie Cornish
00:20:42
But do they want water that's not fluoridated? Do they want no vaccine mandates? Do they want it...like, do they see it as a moment to roll back things?
Kiera Butler
00:20:51
'There is a group that sees this as a politically convenient moment to push for these changes that they believe in that are not backed by science. So I think you have a real continuum. You have folks who maybe don't know that much about RFK Junior and say, yeah, healthier kids, that sounds great. And then you have folks that really are part of this anti-vaccine movement or anti fluoride or anti, you know, 5G cell phone towers and you know, you have that group that is hoping that they will be able to push through those changes with this this guy who sees things as they do.
Audie Cornish
00:21:34
Are we underestimating them and him?
Kiera Butler
00:21:37
It's definitely possible, you know. There have been folks that have speculated that it was RFK Jr that really helped to move the needle for Trump. And one piece of data, and this is not perfect by any means. If you look at the rate of childhood vaccinations nationwide and in some states, it's more pronounced than others over the last few years since the pandemic, there has been a decline, a kind of steady decline in vaccination rates. And this is not a perfect proxy. You know, probably, some of them has to do with people not catching up with routine childhood vaccinations after the pandemic, etc.. But there is a subset of that group that are folks that changed their mind on vaccines during the pandemic that decided, you know, that that vaccines were, you know, a tool of the Deep state or whatever and chose not to vaccinate their kids. And if you can see those numbers reflected in our national vaccination rates, I don't think it's too outlandish to speculate that that is a mighty group of people. That is really a politically powerful bloc.
Audie Cornish
00:22:52
I think one of the things that many other people are nervous about is that in a scenario where they get many things that they want and you saw this in the hearings with RFK Jr when he was asked about children in Samoa who had died, who had not been vaccinated, and he didn't really have an answer. You know, he was kind of like, I don't know about that seems probably bad. And I just thought, well, like this, this is the thing, You know what I mean? Like when you talk to these women, when you're doing this reporting, what do they say about evidence of outbreaks or evidence of like, danger as a result of some of these ideas?
Kiera Butler
00:23:34
'Well, they say a lot of different things. And I mean, what RFK Jr said was, oh no, I wasn't in Samoa for any anti-vaccine advocacy purposes. I was there like helping them install like a medical informatics system or something. But it turned out that he was there meeting with prominent anti-vaccine activists. So, you know, this is a guy who is not entirely honest about his beliefs and about the work that he's been doing with children's health defense for the last several years. You know, in terms of what, you know, your average crunchy mom voter might say about potential negative effects of not vaccinating. I've heard folks say, measles isn't that bad. Everybody used to get measles. And, you know, most people were fine. Well, yeah, I mean, most people were fine, but a lot of people weren't. And a lot of children have died of measles. So, you know, I think it's a matter of who do you believe, right? Do you believe RFK Jr, who says I wasn't in Samoa to talk about anti-vaccine advocacy and, you know, measles isn't that bad anyway. Or do you believe the, you know, reams of studies backed by government agencies that show that, you know, there can be devastating consequences from declining vaccination rates?
Audie Cornish
00:24:54
How easy is it to accomplish or difficult is it to accomplish some of the things that these voters might want? Meaning, can he actually do very much about the vaccine schedule for children?
Kiera Butler
00:25:06
He certainly could. And, you know, I do think it's a distinct possibility that RFK Jr would be able to accomplish changes to the vaccine schedule and that then doctors would find themselves having to tell patients, to tell parents basically, you know, don't trust what the federal government says.
Audie Cornish
00:25:23
Are there any aspects to what they want that would be positive for public health? Meaning are they going to force their reimagining or the rethinking of long held assumptions?
Kiera Butler
00:25:35
I think that's the hope that some of this advocacy around toxins and pollution will push the needle in that direction. You know, I think like like you mentioned earlier, there genuinely is a lot of pollution that's affecting the water supply, that's affecting the food supply. And to the extent that RFK Jr can, you know, push for more transparency on that can push for government research about what effects those chemicals, those pollutants might have in our bodies. I think that's a good thing. Yeah.
Audie Cornish
00:26:12
I'm also fascinated by the power of this group versus what they call big pharma. It feels like there's a clash coming ahead.
Kiera Butler
00:26:21
Right. And that's it's the same kind of thing, right? It's like, you know, big pharma. I don't think there would be very many people who would argue that big pharma is perfect. You know, this is a massive industry that basically created the opioid epidemic. It's pretty clear that this is an industry that's in need of reform. On the other. And, you know, our vaccine manufacturers like, you know, raking in money and not testing their products at the expense of human health. No.
Audie Cornish
00:26:51
Like they'll be seeking deregulation.
Kiera Butler
00:26:53
Right. So it's you know, it's it's hard to hold both pieces in your mind at once about Big pharma. You know that this is an industry in need of reform. And also, you know, vaccines aren't dangerous in the way that many of these activists claim.
Audie Cornish
00:27:09
What does this mean for people like you? You talked about the horseshoe politics, the idea that on some topics, the quote unquote, extreme left and extreme right kind of find common ground and you found yourself in that place right in this reporting. What does it mean? Are there still kind of left leaning, crunchy moms out there? And if so, are they like homeless now, politically homeless?
Kiera Butler
00:27:36
'Yeah. You know, I talked to this woman named Zen Honeycutt, who runs this anti-GMO group called Moms Across America. She was out in California for a long time. She recently moved away. She had always voted Democrat for years and years. And then in the last election, she voted for Trump. She shared that she had left the Democratic Party and she had become a become a Trump supporter. And I do think that that's happening. I think that there are folks that were, you know, on the far left and so devoted to these ideas of, you know, that the harms of toxins in the food supply, that.
Audie Cornish
00:28:21
Because it's an identity like it's a way of life.
Kiera Butler
00:28:24
It absolutely is. And these folks have found a lot of community in that identity. You know, this network, moms across America, there are a bunch of other groups, you know, for parents who who oppose, you know, pesticides or parents who oppose vaccines or whatever other cause, crunchy cause they rally around. These are powerful community groups. And you have people who are are talking about politics and are talking about, you know, whether or not the Democratic Party is really a good place for them anymore.
Audie Cornish
00:28:54
And are you going to be a crunchy mom anymore?
Kiera Butler
00:28:58
I mean, I still I actually don't have time to, like, have chickens or like, grow my own food. Like, and I you know, the more that I read these days about even just buying organic, I'm, like, not convinced that that's as important as I used to think it was. So maybe my answer is no, I'm not that crunchy anymore.
Audie Cornish
00:29:18
Kiera Butler, senior editor and reporter at Mother Jones. The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Grace Walker. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN Audio. We had support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Deanora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow.
Audie Cornish
00:29:52
What else do I usually say? Thank you all for listening. I'm Audie Cornish. Don't laugh at me. It's like you all stay safe out here.
