Crunchy to the extreme
December 10, 2022 7:02 AM Subscribe
On the internet, “crunchy” has become shorthand for a parent making a conscious choice to raise their kids with all-natural food, clothes, and products. Crunchy parents tend to avoid iPads, red dye 40, sugar, gluten, processed foods, and plastic toys...But the reliance on alternative medicines has created distrust of any western medicine, including, in some extreme cases, medical experts and life-saving childhood vaccines. Now, a social-media feud between @reallyverycruncy and another parenting creator has ignited a larger debate about whether parents can participate in the crunchy lifestyle without being sucked down a pipeline to extremism.
We try to do most of those things (there's no reason for most people to avoid gluten), but my kids are 100% up to date on all of their vaccines, and will stay that way. There's no inherent conflict unless you manufacture one.
posted by 1adam12 at 7:40 AM on December 10, 2022 [74 favorites]
posted by 1adam12 at 7:40 AM on December 10, 2022 [74 favorites]
I think--well, I think a couple things. This piece has the line of causation backwards, at least for some families. The distrust of medical experts doesn't come out of nowhere. If you have good experiences with doctors, and only have illnesses well within their wheelhouse, you can maintain a confidence with the medical system that isn't easy for everyone else. But if you have symptoms or illnesses that are ignored, disregarded, downplayed--especially if your kids are the ones with those illnesses--that distrust can crop up pretty easily. The doctor quoted in the piece says, "it speaks to just how important that is to find a pediatrician that makes you feel like you can share your concerns as a parent." Yeah, it is important, and sometimes it's not possible, because we don't get to just pick and choose our way through all the best pediatricians in the world. You go to whoever isn't too far away, isn't too expensive, who hopefully your insurance covers.
Anyway. I could go on all day about that. But what I really wanted to say was, the other thing the piece has wrong is to portray a crunchy-to-fascist (or whatever) pipeline as though it is a singular thing--rather than what's really happening, which is that fascism (or whatever) is viral, is contagious, and any interest you have can lead you in that direction, thanks to the wonders of social media. Care about your kids' health, but worry that your family faces a world of microplastics and weird food additives? Care about the fate of the environment? Curious about the economy? Interested in art? Like movies? Congratulations, you're in the pipeline to fascism, because it is everywhere, and saturates every bit of our algorithmic world.
But it's easy to point fingers at parents. Parents aren't scientists. We have to make choices ahead of science, because science is slow and the world is fast. We see connections between the things our kids eat, and their outlook or behavior, and make experimental changes even when the doctor scoffs that what we're seeing isn't related to allergy or whatever. I see you've been talking to Dr. Google again. Well, yes, doctor, yes I have, because you don't have any advice, and the grocery aisles are packed with food that isn't nutritious and may even be dangerous, and I can't sit around waiting until my kid is an adult, to find out that all the added sugar in cereals and juices and nuggets may have contributed to their ill-health. And when we're wrong, it is so easy to blame us. And lecture, too. And lump us all together. Did your kid have a bad reaction to a vaccine, and that has you worried about how they'll handle the next round? Don't tell anyone, or they'll act like you accused the doc of injecting your kid with 5G chips. Worried about your kid's liver with how commonly Tylenol is given out? What kind of hippie nut are you? (Or...wait...did we stop doing as much Tylenol because of the liver damage? Is that an okay one now?)
This natural tendency we have to judge parents has aligned with algorithmically-generated political polarization to produce an absolute nightmare. It's hard to say things like, "I love science, but what pharma and food companies are doing isn't science, and we ought to be skeptical of their claims," because that's anti-science and thus fascism, in this weird reductive discourse. Why does everything have to be so gross?
posted by mittens at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [137 favorites]
Anyway. I could go on all day about that. But what I really wanted to say was, the other thing the piece has wrong is to portray a crunchy-to-fascist (or whatever) pipeline as though it is a singular thing--rather than what's really happening, which is that fascism (or whatever) is viral, is contagious, and any interest you have can lead you in that direction, thanks to the wonders of social media. Care about your kids' health, but worry that your family faces a world of microplastics and weird food additives? Care about the fate of the environment? Curious about the economy? Interested in art? Like movies? Congratulations, you're in the pipeline to fascism, because it is everywhere, and saturates every bit of our algorithmic world.
But it's easy to point fingers at parents. Parents aren't scientists. We have to make choices ahead of science, because science is slow and the world is fast. We see connections between the things our kids eat, and their outlook or behavior, and make experimental changes even when the doctor scoffs that what we're seeing isn't related to allergy or whatever. I see you've been talking to Dr. Google again. Well, yes, doctor, yes I have, because you don't have any advice, and the grocery aisles are packed with food that isn't nutritious and may even be dangerous, and I can't sit around waiting until my kid is an adult, to find out that all the added sugar in cereals and juices and nuggets may have contributed to their ill-health. And when we're wrong, it is so easy to blame us. And lecture, too. And lump us all together. Did your kid have a bad reaction to a vaccine, and that has you worried about how they'll handle the next round? Don't tell anyone, or they'll act like you accused the doc of injecting your kid with 5G chips. Worried about your kid's liver with how commonly Tylenol is given out? What kind of hippie nut are you? (Or...wait...did we stop doing as much Tylenol because of the liver damage? Is that an okay one now?)
This natural tendency we have to judge parents has aligned with algorithmically-generated political polarization to produce an absolute nightmare. It's hard to say things like, "I love science, but what pharma and food companies are doing isn't science, and we ought to be skeptical of their claims," because that's anti-science and thus fascism, in this weird reductive discourse. Why does everything have to be so gross?
posted by mittens at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [137 favorites]
“Parent creator”? Having kids was enough creation for me, thanks.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by gottabefunky at 7:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Ahhhh Sarah Taber surprisingly has been a good source in sharing links and experiences that points to this dynamic.
posted by cendawanita at 7:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by cendawanita at 7:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
I love science, but what pharma and food companies are doing isn't science, and we ought to be skeptical of their claims,"
Pharma companies of course are doing science? Can you elaborate a bit, cause I think maybe you're talking more on a PR or advertising tip?
Also I would venture it matters WHICH pharma products we are talking about. I agree with much of what you're saying about how parents are in a sea of information.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:45 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Pharma companies of course are doing science? Can you elaborate a bit, cause I think maybe you're talking more on a PR or advertising tip?
Also I would venture it matters WHICH pharma products we are talking about. I agree with much of what you're saying about how parents are in a sea of information.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:45 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Can you elaborate a bit, cause I think maybe you're talking more on a PR or advertising tip?
Yeah, I could have been a little clearer there, but right, I think the point I'm making is pretty uncontroversial. Absolutely, somebody in the industry is doing some science, it's just, y'know, in that capitalist (and medical-authoritarian*) context, so we keep having these crises that erode trust, whether that be over-prescription crises with opioids, misunderstood side effect profiles with SSRIs, the under-recognized risks of drug-eluting stents versus bare-metal, or even the simple profiteering of insulin and epi-pens. And, you know how it is, it all takes place in that sea of information you mention, because we're never, like talking to a pharmaceutical researcher, we're hearing someone summarize a tweet they wrote about a press release about a study. Information--useful, established, actionable information--is just surprisingly hard to come by. (On the personal side, some of my reading this year was devoted to probiotics, and one of the things I found most shocking was, not just that they don't really live up to their promises--how could they--but the sheer volume of those promises. If you look around, we're putting bacteria in everything! It's going to improve our skin, it's going to make us lose weight, it'll prevent all our cancers! And like, the whole field is so interesting, but so disappointing when you look at what has actually been established, versus what's been advertised.)
(*I guess adding the 'authoritarian' there could be considered fighty but I'm not sure how else to put it. Hopefully everyone knows what I mean by that, the sort of...cultural...bossiness?)
posted by mittens at 8:10 AM on December 10, 2022 [27 favorites]
Yeah, I could have been a little clearer there, but right, I think the point I'm making is pretty uncontroversial. Absolutely, somebody in the industry is doing some science, it's just, y'know, in that capitalist (and medical-authoritarian*) context, so we keep having these crises that erode trust, whether that be over-prescription crises with opioids, misunderstood side effect profiles with SSRIs, the under-recognized risks of drug-eluting stents versus bare-metal, or even the simple profiteering of insulin and epi-pens. And, you know how it is, it all takes place in that sea of information you mention, because we're never, like talking to a pharmaceutical researcher, we're hearing someone summarize a tweet they wrote about a press release about a study. Information--useful, established, actionable information--is just surprisingly hard to come by. (On the personal side, some of my reading this year was devoted to probiotics, and one of the things I found most shocking was, not just that they don't really live up to their promises--how could they--but the sheer volume of those promises. If you look around, we're putting bacteria in everything! It's going to improve our skin, it's going to make us lose weight, it'll prevent all our cancers! And like, the whole field is so interesting, but so disappointing when you look at what has actually been established, versus what's been advertised.)
(*I guess adding the 'authoritarian' there could be considered fighty but I'm not sure how else to put it. Hopefully everyone knows what I mean by that, the sort of...cultural...bossiness?)
posted by mittens at 8:10 AM on December 10, 2022 [27 favorites]
It would be easier to convince crunchy hippies and such of the value of medicine if the healthcare system wasn't so horrifically broken, here in Canada anyway.
My specific example is of a friend of mine who is definitely a crunchy type, but only started recently to go down a big anti-medicine rabbit hole. The reason? Her ectopic pregnancy was repeatedly misdiagnosed as a miscarriage, and she was generally ignored and dismissed by the doctors she sought help from. She ended up in emergency surgery and almost died. Now she is relentlessly crusading against "mainstream medicine" online.
If we want these people to trust healthcare again, it needs to be properly staffed and funded so that the people making life and death analyses and decisions aren't overwhelmed and burnt out.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:16 AM on December 10, 2022 [46 favorites]
My specific example is of a friend of mine who is definitely a crunchy type, but only started recently to go down a big anti-medicine rabbit hole. The reason? Her ectopic pregnancy was repeatedly misdiagnosed as a miscarriage, and she was generally ignored and dismissed by the doctors she sought help from. She ended up in emergency surgery and almost died. Now she is relentlessly crusading against "mainstream medicine" online.
If we want these people to trust healthcare again, it needs to be properly staffed and funded so that the people making life and death analyses and decisions aren't overwhelmed and burnt out.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:16 AM on December 10, 2022 [46 favorites]
I assume the term "crunchy" comes from crunchy peanut butter, right? As compared to smooth PB with sugar mixed in.
So, this was kind of how I was raised -- crunchy peanut butter (that had to be stirred, no less), no sugar, concern about red dye #whatever, and so on. But my parents were also into vaccines and other basic health stuff, so it was mostly just the kind of stuff that gets your kid teased at school, not anything harmful. I don't know if I benefited much from it but I certainly wasn't hurt by it either (other than still having a chip on my shoulder about having my lunches made fun of).
The different ways that people get tracked into more extremist views -- politically, anti-vaccine, etc. -- is interesting since it all seems so much more open now. I think when I was young, people had to work harder to seek that stuff out. Like, I can remember seeing John Birch Society pamphlets here and there, but for the most part it was further away than it is now, where three clicks can take you from a mainstream viewpoint to an extremist influencer.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:18 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
So, this was kind of how I was raised -- crunchy peanut butter (that had to be stirred, no less), no sugar, concern about red dye #whatever, and so on. But my parents were also into vaccines and other basic health stuff, so it was mostly just the kind of stuff that gets your kid teased at school, not anything harmful. I don't know if I benefited much from it but I certainly wasn't hurt by it either (other than still having a chip on my shoulder about having my lunches made fun of).
The different ways that people get tracked into more extremist views -- politically, anti-vaccine, etc. -- is interesting since it all seems so much more open now. I think when I was young, people had to work harder to seek that stuff out. Like, I can remember seeing John Birch Society pamphlets here and there, but for the most part it was further away than it is now, where three clicks can take you from a mainstream viewpoint to an extremist influencer.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:18 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
I assume the term "crunchy" comes from crunchy peanut butter, right?
My understanding is that it's a riff on "granola", which has been traditionally used to describe a certain type.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:19 AM on December 10, 2022 [105 favorites]
My understanding is that it's a riff on "granola", which has been traditionally used to describe a certain type.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:19 AM on December 10, 2022 [105 favorites]
My understanding is that it's a riff on "granola", which has been traditionally used to describe a certain type.
That makes more sense than my interpretation, thanks!
posted by Dip Flash at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
That makes more sense than my interpretation, thanks!
posted by Dip Flash at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
My understanding is that it's a riff on "granola", which has been traditionally used to describe a certain type.
Yeah, when I was in college, this was the word used for what you might call the spiritual descendant of the hippies. Birkenstocks, etc.
posted by praemunire at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
Yeah, when I was in college, this was the word used for what you might call the spiritual descendant of the hippies. Birkenstocks, etc.
posted by praemunire at 8:32 AM on December 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
What do you call "alternative medicine that works?"
A: "Medicine."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog
Respectfully, I don't understand a comment/joke like this in this context. The article touches on positions like anti-vaxxers, which isn't "alternative" medicine, but rather, anti-medicine.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:33 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
A: "Medicine."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog
Respectfully, I don't understand a comment/joke like this in this context. The article touches on positions like anti-vaxxers, which isn't "alternative" medicine, but rather, anti-medicine.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:33 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
The problem isn't just that there's a flood of information, misinformation and lies all around us, nor that bad experiences give parents reason to distrust medical professionals.
We're witnessing the whatever-to-fascism pipeline because these protofascist user groups (which may be crunchies, may be "effective altruists", may be goldbugs or they may be the local Facegroup moms group), and the like don't turn into skeptics -- they embrace crystals and oils, and eugenics, and hydroxychloroquine.
People who fall prey to the whatever-to-fascism pipeline are people who have opted out of the effort of understanding how anything, fundamentally, works -- but they refuse to admit to themselves their ignorance, and now relish their secret knowledge.
They believe and are told and reinforced by their communities that they are smart - even brilliant - people, but they don't understand a specific problem about medicine or economics (how about the microeconomics to macroeconomics cognitive gap exploited by the fascist pipeline where people believe that governments must be run like households?).
They believe that others aren't actually more knowledgeable or accurate than their beliefs (just indoctrinated), and they don't understand a problem. Therefore the problem cannot be understood. Therefore anyone who claims to understand the problem and how to address it is lying to control you.
How horrible must life be when literally everything around you works on principles you cannot grasp, when demons lurk within magical palimpsests bearing the sigil of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil? When "toxins" pervade everything you eat (nevermind which ones, they're just there)?
Everything becomes magic, and when you abandon any attempt at reason and any attempt at believing there even is such a thing as factual expertise, what do you do? Many of these parents don't become fundamentalist skeptics, they switch their allegiance literally, as far as their concerned, simply from one school of magic to another. They attempt to cast spells. They carry totems and and purge demons. They exile heretics and mock the heterodox. They become cannon fodder for fascists. Willingly. Cheerfully.
In just the US over a million people have died of COVID in large part because of this life-as-witchcraft mental framework, and to the people who willingly participate and proudly proclaim their allegiance to their preferred witchcraft faction (yes, even close relatives of mine), I know where my magnanimity and forgiveness are, but I have to climb over a mountain of bodies thirty feet high and a half mile long to get to them.
posted by tclark at 8:39 AM on December 10, 2022 [112 favorites]
We're witnessing the whatever-to-fascism pipeline because these protofascist user groups (which may be crunchies, may be "effective altruists", may be goldbugs or they may be the local Facegroup moms group), and the like don't turn into skeptics -- they embrace crystals and oils, and eugenics, and hydroxychloroquine.
People who fall prey to the whatever-to-fascism pipeline are people who have opted out of the effort of understanding how anything, fundamentally, works -- but they refuse to admit to themselves their ignorance, and now relish their secret knowledge.
They believe and are told and reinforced by their communities that they are smart - even brilliant - people, but they don't understand a specific problem about medicine or economics (how about the microeconomics to macroeconomics cognitive gap exploited by the fascist pipeline where people believe that governments must be run like households?).
They believe that others aren't actually more knowledgeable or accurate than their beliefs (just indoctrinated), and they don't understand a problem. Therefore the problem cannot be understood. Therefore anyone who claims to understand the problem and how to address it is lying to control you.
How horrible must life be when literally everything around you works on principles you cannot grasp, when demons lurk within magical palimpsests bearing the sigil of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil? When "toxins" pervade everything you eat (nevermind which ones, they're just there)?
Everything becomes magic, and when you abandon any attempt at reason and any attempt at believing there even is such a thing as factual expertise, what do you do? Many of these parents don't become fundamentalist skeptics, they switch their allegiance literally, as far as their concerned, simply from one school of magic to another. They attempt to cast spells. They carry totems and and purge demons. They exile heretics and mock the heterodox. They become cannon fodder for fascists. Willingly. Cheerfully.
In just the US over a million people have died of COVID in large part because of this life-as-witchcraft mental framework, and to the people who willingly participate and proudly proclaim their allegiance to their preferred witchcraft faction (yes, even close relatives of mine), I know where my magnanimity and forgiveness are, but I have to climb over a mountain of bodies thirty feet high and a half mile long to get to them.
posted by tclark at 8:39 AM on December 10, 2022 [112 favorites]
The "crunchy," like everyone else still experience medical issues and do still seek treatment, except via alternative medicine, typically. Some alternative medicine is basically placebo, and some actually works. (Some is harmful)
Skepticism against the general medical community is sometimes quite well justified. Doctors commonly promote palliative care rather than lifestyle intervention to treat common modern ailments like type II diabetes, obesity related heart diseases and sugar-related tooth decay, to name a few. (I once went to a doctor for a physical injury, and the kindly doctor, in general conversation, claimed that if you have certain family histories your basically guaranteed to get type II).
While there are plenty of doctors out there who genuinely have their heart in the right place, it's a lot to ask of individual doctors to fight systemic corruption of the medical system when they themselves face crushing medical school debt. That doesn't even mention how food policy (especially subsidies) contributes to the most common medical maladies.
The mysticism surrounding the medical field, perception of corruption of scientific medical knowledge by industrial political forces, as well as the controlled access to many common treatment regimes (antibiotics come to mind) also contribute to the schism between "the crunchy" and the "normies".
The article itself is some strange identity politics at work. Now people who make their own granola are anti-trans? Is this the case of being so open minded your brain falls out, or so skeptical that no intervention is good enough? I guess it's hard to do scientific skepticism without solid scientific training. Or maybe we're blaming the group (not convinced crunchy is a valid identity group) for the diverse opinions of few of it's "members." There are, after all, plenty of dumb ideas that make their way through any culture.
posted by grokus at 8:40 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
Skepticism against the general medical community is sometimes quite well justified. Doctors commonly promote palliative care rather than lifestyle intervention to treat common modern ailments like type II diabetes, obesity related heart diseases and sugar-related tooth decay, to name a few. (I once went to a doctor for a physical injury, and the kindly doctor, in general conversation, claimed that if you have certain family histories your basically guaranteed to get type II).
While there are plenty of doctors out there who genuinely have their heart in the right place, it's a lot to ask of individual doctors to fight systemic corruption of the medical system when they themselves face crushing medical school debt. That doesn't even mention how food policy (especially subsidies) contributes to the most common medical maladies.
The mysticism surrounding the medical field, perception of corruption of scientific medical knowledge by industrial political forces, as well as the controlled access to many common treatment regimes (antibiotics come to mind) also contribute to the schism between "the crunchy" and the "normies".
The article itself is some strange identity politics at work. Now people who make their own granola are anti-trans? Is this the case of being so open minded your brain falls out, or so skeptical that no intervention is good enough? I guess it's hard to do scientific skepticism without solid scientific training. Or maybe we're blaming the group (not convinced crunchy is a valid identity group) for the diverse opinions of few of it's "members." There are, after all, plenty of dumb ideas that make their way through any culture.
posted by grokus at 8:40 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
mittens: you're totally right. Crunchy parents aren't new! There are generations of adults who had them. Even CS Lewis makes fun of crunchy parents in one of his novels. The difference is that in the past, the ideas available through crunchiness were limited to conversation in the health food store, the little rack of locally published books they tend to have there, and maybe the local circles for raising red-diaper babies, if they were in a city. On the internet, algorithms make it so that there's rotten floorboards under every idea, just waiting to drop you down into the worst of it.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:42 AM on December 10, 2022 [36 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 8:42 AM on December 10, 2022 [36 favorites]
Q: What do you call the person who graduated bottom of their class in med school and took up maladaptive copings to deal with the shame of never wanting to be a doctor in the first place, which they then push on the people they have a duty of care to?
A: "Doctor"
posted by FeralIntellectual at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
A: "Doctor"
posted by FeralIntellectual at 8:43 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
People who fall prey to the whatever-to-fascism pipeline are people who have opted out of the effort of understanding how anything, fundamentally, works -- but they refuse to admit to themselves their ignorance, and now relish their secret knowledge.
Yes, although I think we should underline that not every modern-day crunchy (or whatever you want to call them) is in that pipeline. The uncertainty of the world, the sea of bullshit in which we float, doesn't induce epistemological humility in them...they just go looking for a faith that flatters them more, or tells them all their fears, which often include some very nasty beliefs about the Other, are really true. (You can, after all, combine epistemological humility with action, if you can learn to accept that you're deciding with limited information and will sometimes get it wrong. Which is fucking hard. But not impossible.)
posted by praemunire at 8:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Yes, although I think we should underline that not every modern-day crunchy (or whatever you want to call them) is in that pipeline. The uncertainty of the world, the sea of bullshit in which we float, doesn't induce epistemological humility in them...they just go looking for a faith that flatters them more, or tells them all their fears, which often include some very nasty beliefs about the Other, are really true. (You can, after all, combine epistemological humility with action, if you can learn to accept that you're deciding with limited information and will sometimes get it wrong. Which is fucking hard. But not impossible.)
posted by praemunire at 8:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
On the internet, algorithms make it so that there's rotten floorboards under every idea, just waiting to drop you down into the worst of it.
Brilliantly put.
posted by praemunire at 8:45 AM on December 10, 2022 [22 favorites]
Brilliantly put.
posted by praemunire at 8:45 AM on December 10, 2022 [22 favorites]
Q: What do you call a covert narcissist who went into a caring profession to make money off the innate skills of dealing with nasty power struggles of growing up in a broken home acquired by growing up in a broken home?
A: I don't know, there's a lot of allied health professionals with letters after their names these days.
posted by FeralIntellectual at 8:46 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
A: I don't know, there's a lot of allied health professionals with letters after their names these days.
posted by FeralIntellectual at 8:46 AM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
So I hear parent's frustrations but let me give the perspective of a kid who was raised this lifestyle.
It fucked me up for over a decade. My mother was crunchy before I started having any health problems and she loved our pediatrician. It wasn't bad experiences with doctors that drove her there. It was a growing community of crunchy moms in our church and neighborhood who shared sketchy alternative medicine websites with each others and said "well I heard that..." and bemoaned evolution being taught in public schools and shared scary anectdotes about how their kid reacted soooo badly to the vaccine (read: had developmentally normal tantrums two months later).
When I started having health problems years later, she tried all sorts of things to "experiment" with my body. I had no choice in this because I was a child. One of the things she made me do was drink peppermint oil in water, which I learned later can cause indigestion, nausea, abdominal pain, etc. Guess what I had for years? Guess who was underweight for years because I could hardly ever eat from the pain? My mother was not a scientist. She didn't know how to run a controlled trial or how to determine if what she was doing was harmful. I had no one monitoring my reaction to the treatment to see if I was experiencing side effects.
And because salt is bad for you she put the whole family on a low-salt diet. Despite the fact that my doctor said that I needed more salt, because I have a deficiency in how my body retains sodium. But all of her crunchy friends were constantly pressuring each other to go low-salt, low-sugar, low whatever. None of it helped and the more she got into alternative medicine the less attention she paid to what the doctor's were actually saying, and it got so bad that I was in a wheelchair by the time I got to college.
It took me years to recover. And because it took me so long to recover, I now eat like absolute shit as an adult, because I had to put so much effort into dealing with all the aftereffects of the crunchy lifestyle that I never had time to try and develop healthy eating habits. And yet I'm still leagues healthier and happier than I was back then.
Is every kid of a crunchy parent going to turn out like this? Of course not. But many crunchy communities are absolutely cult-like and I saw it push my mother further and further away from science and fuck me up more and more as a kid. I'm just lucky that by the time she got pushed to "inject yourself with bee venom to flush out the toxins" I was out of the house.
And that's the part that this article is talking about; the ways the pressure to do all of these things for your kid's "health" pushes parents to more and more extremes because you're a bad parent if you're not doing all of these things and especially when these things don't work you turn to more and more desperate measures. Things you would never have dreamed of if you hadn't been involved in a social group whose foundation is "we can't trust the science." I understand "the doctors have failed me" but I don't think most people would go to "so now I should inject my child with bee venom" from there if they weren't participating in one of these social groups. The problem is if your foundation is "there's no science, so I'm just going to try these things and see what happens," the only thing stopping you from engaging in the extremist things is how you feel about them. Whether they make some kind of sense to you, whether it's based in facts at all or not. Which is how my MIL started believing essential oils could cure cancer because they "permeate the cell membranes" (????).
I've seen a lot of people radicalized by these communities. The people who participate in a "crunchy" lifestyle and don't end up off the rails are the ones that don't take it on as an identity or spend a lot of time in social spaces dedicated to that identity. My aunt is a hippy dippy vegan and uses some alternative medicine and is, like, completely normal about it and also agrees almost everything my mom did was off the wall. She does not consider herself crunchy and doesn't socialize in groups dedicated to that idea. So you can do these things and not end up extremist, but participating in it as a... culture? I guess? Is a very different thing.
I think there's also an entirely different conversation to be had about experimenting on your kid's bodies without it being backed up by science but I think it will immediately get shut down as "judging parents" or turn into "where is the line!!" straw men so I'm not going to open that box. But I'll just say that I hope you let your child say "no."
posted by brook horse at 8:50 AM on December 10, 2022 [199 favorites]
It fucked me up for over a decade. My mother was crunchy before I started having any health problems and she loved our pediatrician. It wasn't bad experiences with doctors that drove her there. It was a growing community of crunchy moms in our church and neighborhood who shared sketchy alternative medicine websites with each others and said "well I heard that..." and bemoaned evolution being taught in public schools and shared scary anectdotes about how their kid reacted soooo badly to the vaccine (read: had developmentally normal tantrums two months later).
When I started having health problems years later, she tried all sorts of things to "experiment" with my body. I had no choice in this because I was a child. One of the things she made me do was drink peppermint oil in water, which I learned later can cause indigestion, nausea, abdominal pain, etc. Guess what I had for years? Guess who was underweight for years because I could hardly ever eat from the pain? My mother was not a scientist. She didn't know how to run a controlled trial or how to determine if what she was doing was harmful. I had no one monitoring my reaction to the treatment to see if I was experiencing side effects.
And because salt is bad for you she put the whole family on a low-salt diet. Despite the fact that my doctor said that I needed more salt, because I have a deficiency in how my body retains sodium. But all of her crunchy friends were constantly pressuring each other to go low-salt, low-sugar, low whatever. None of it helped and the more she got into alternative medicine the less attention she paid to what the doctor's were actually saying, and it got so bad that I was in a wheelchair by the time I got to college.
It took me years to recover. And because it took me so long to recover, I now eat like absolute shit as an adult, because I had to put so much effort into dealing with all the aftereffects of the crunchy lifestyle that I never had time to try and develop healthy eating habits. And yet I'm still leagues healthier and happier than I was back then.
Is every kid of a crunchy parent going to turn out like this? Of course not. But many crunchy communities are absolutely cult-like and I saw it push my mother further and further away from science and fuck me up more and more as a kid. I'm just lucky that by the time she got pushed to "inject yourself with bee venom to flush out the toxins" I was out of the house.
And that's the part that this article is talking about; the ways the pressure to do all of these things for your kid's "health" pushes parents to more and more extremes because you're a bad parent if you're not doing all of these things and especially when these things don't work you turn to more and more desperate measures. Things you would never have dreamed of if you hadn't been involved in a social group whose foundation is "we can't trust the science." I understand "the doctors have failed me" but I don't think most people would go to "so now I should inject my child with bee venom" from there if they weren't participating in one of these social groups. The problem is if your foundation is "there's no science, so I'm just going to try these things and see what happens," the only thing stopping you from engaging in the extremist things is how you feel about them. Whether they make some kind of sense to you, whether it's based in facts at all or not. Which is how my MIL started believing essential oils could cure cancer because they "permeate the cell membranes" (????).
I've seen a lot of people radicalized by these communities. The people who participate in a "crunchy" lifestyle and don't end up off the rails are the ones that don't take it on as an identity or spend a lot of time in social spaces dedicated to that identity. My aunt is a hippy dippy vegan and uses some alternative medicine and is, like, completely normal about it and also agrees almost everything my mom did was off the wall. She does not consider herself crunchy and doesn't socialize in groups dedicated to that idea. So you can do these things and not end up extremist, but participating in it as a... culture? I guess? Is a very different thing.
I think there's also an entirely different conversation to be had about experimenting on your kid's bodies without it being backed up by science but I think it will immediately get shut down as "judging parents" or turn into "where is the line!!" straw men so I'm not going to open that box. But I'll just say that I hope you let your child say "no."
posted by brook horse at 8:50 AM on December 10, 2022 [199 favorites]
I'm sorry that happened to you, brook horse.
Your comment near the end about it being a culture, the sick end of one, that people choose to participate in, is more what I see here. And of course the commen algorithm problem of shoving any interested parties towards the extremists. I really don't see this as solely a problem with bad doctors or the medical field in general, but indeed with people who think their "common sense" is a smarter way to go then medical science.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Your comment near the end about it being a culture, the sick end of one, that people choose to participate in, is more what I see here. And of course the commen algorithm problem of shoving any interested parties towards the extremists. I really don't see this as solely a problem with bad doctors or the medical field in general, but indeed with people who think their "common sense" is a smarter way to go then medical science.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
I assume the term "crunchy" comes from crunchy peanut butter, right? As compared to smooth PB with sugar mixed in.
I take "crunchy" as a reference to granola, as the term used to refer to people who preferred a more "natural" diet...granolas, whole grains, veggies, etc. It was more a term of more-or-less endearment, rather than derision or political boundary-making.
FWIW, crunchy peanut butter has just as much sugar added as smooth peanut butter. Perhaps you're thinking of "natural" peanut butter, which is simply ground peanuts and can be either smooth or crunchy?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:57 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
I take "crunchy" as a reference to granola, as the term used to refer to people who preferred a more "natural" diet...granolas, whole grains, veggies, etc. It was more a term of more-or-less endearment, rather than derision or political boundary-making.
FWIW, crunchy peanut butter has just as much sugar added as smooth peanut butter. Perhaps you're thinking of "natural" peanut butter, which is simply ground peanuts and can be either smooth or crunchy?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:57 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
Oh god I didn't even mention, my mom was radicalized back when the most popular social media site for parents was one for recipe sharing. Like I'm talking pre-Facebook. I'm sure it's so much worse now with algorithms that benefit from pushing "scary" and "shocking" content that spirals further and further to the extremes.
posted by brook horse at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 9:00 AM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yeah early eras Bush era proto social media absolutely made my parents' preexisting tendencies towards the worst excesses of this line of thought more pronounced, so I'm with you on that one brook horse.
posted by FeralIntellectual at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by FeralIntellectual at 9:02 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Definitely an interesting thread. In my own life, my partner became convinced they could heal cavities and abscessed teeth through 'natural' processes. That was definitely an expensive fail that is now fixed through a lot of unnecessary dentistry if standard prevention and upkeep had been followed.
During the pandemic I saw 'crunchy' people who spend a lot of time railing against the 'man' becoming anti-vax nut jobs.
It's amazing in a way how algorithmic information sources tie into people's natural tendency to want easy solutions from trusted authority. A lot of cognitive shortcuts and associative processes at work.
Many people have not really made the connection between science, rationality and the convenience and utility of their daily lives or that the scientific method is not some 'science geek speak' but a real way to define the actuality of reality from the verbiage of our projections and biases.
I think many who go down the conspiracy rant-hole are kind of addicted to the dopamine rush of knowing the 'truth' and joining a crowd of like-minded people. Definitely some evolutionary selection going on there amplified by our unthinking habitual consumption of algorithmic generated content lists.
posted by diode at 9:03 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
During the pandemic I saw 'crunchy' people who spend a lot of time railing against the 'man' becoming anti-vax nut jobs.
It's amazing in a way how algorithmic information sources tie into people's natural tendency to want easy solutions from trusted authority. A lot of cognitive shortcuts and associative processes at work.
Many people have not really made the connection between science, rationality and the convenience and utility of their daily lives or that the scientific method is not some 'science geek speak' but a real way to define the actuality of reality from the verbiage of our projections and biases.
I think many who go down the conspiracy rant-hole are kind of addicted to the dopamine rush of knowing the 'truth' and joining a crowd of like-minded people. Definitely some evolutionary selection going on there amplified by our unthinking habitual consumption of algorithmic generated content lists.
posted by diode at 9:03 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
Thank you for your testimony, brook horse. That was heartbreaking.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
I assume the term "crunchy" comes from crunchy peanut butter, right? As compared to smooth PB with sugar mixed in.
It's refers to Granola. 'Granola" was another term for the same type of person. It was a square person's term for "hippie" and used by people who didn't understand that lifestyle.
This goes back to at least the 1980s, I heard it a lot in high school.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:28 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's refers to Granola. 'Granola" was another term for the same type of person. It was a square person's term for "hippie" and used by people who didn't understand that lifestyle.
This goes back to at least the 1980s, I heard it a lot in high school.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:28 AM on December 10, 2022 [4 favorites]
In my experience, the “crunchy” label is now so broad as to be useless. I’d say our family does a lot of standard crunchy stuff - pretty strict on screens, vegetarians, using Dr Bronner’s for too many things- but we’re pretty horrified at the anti-vax, conspiracy heavy behavior other people in our community subscribe to. Around here an equally likely vector to that place is the “Food Babe” Goop-adjacent, luxury lifestyle morning routine crowd which in my opinion is far too uptight to be considered hippie adjacent. We constantly find ourselves in situations where we are both left of the crowd politically and more defensive of established norms. It’s hard to figure out.
posted by q*ben at 9:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 9:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
The people who participate in a "crunchy" lifestyle and don't end up off the rails are the ones that don't take it on as an identity or spend a lot of time in social spaces dedicated to that identity.
This has also been my experience! I have actually noted it as much or more coming out of dog nerd people than parents, just because of where I spend my time. It's really common to see people pick up these sorts of things in Dog World (usually starting with raw diets or vaccine schedules), but it's generally not a big deal unless they start to take on that stuff as a central identity or devote considerable time to it such that it becomes a thing they frequently socialize and think about.
The crunchiness/woo/alt-health to fash pipeline is also a real thing that is a little bit broader than just focusing on parents. Consider Conspirituality (previously, [1], [2]) which covers that pipeline as part of its daily beat.
I think I've mentioned that my partner has been involved in vaccine advocacy and antivax monitoring groups for some time. One of the things they emphasize to me when they talk about these groups is that people fall into these communities because they love their children and they are terrified of a world full of things they can't control or protect children from. Alt health generally and antivax conspiracy theories more specifically offer a very comforting narrative full of places to control a scary, unpredictable world and protect your kids: just do XYZ and you can keep your kids safe, cure their ailments, etc. By contrast, evidence-based medicine just doesn't offer that level of perceived control and comfort in ways that are really frightening to experience. A lot of the antivax groups will deliberately target and mob people with children in NICU or very new parents, who are much more susceptible to this kind of thing because they are usually (understandably) a lot more anxious for their kids.
posted by sciatrix at 9:43 AM on December 10, 2022 [25 favorites]
This has also been my experience! I have actually noted it as much or more coming out of dog nerd people than parents, just because of where I spend my time. It's really common to see people pick up these sorts of things in Dog World (usually starting with raw diets or vaccine schedules), but it's generally not a big deal unless they start to take on that stuff as a central identity or devote considerable time to it such that it becomes a thing they frequently socialize and think about.
The crunchiness/woo/alt-health to fash pipeline is also a real thing that is a little bit broader than just focusing on parents. Consider Conspirituality (previously, [1], [2]) which covers that pipeline as part of its daily beat.
I think I've mentioned that my partner has been involved in vaccine advocacy and antivax monitoring groups for some time. One of the things they emphasize to me when they talk about these groups is that people fall into these communities because they love their children and they are terrified of a world full of things they can't control or protect children from. Alt health generally and antivax conspiracy theories more specifically offer a very comforting narrative full of places to control a scary, unpredictable world and protect your kids: just do XYZ and you can keep your kids safe, cure their ailments, etc. By contrast, evidence-based medicine just doesn't offer that level of perceived control and comfort in ways that are really frightening to experience. A lot of the antivax groups will deliberately target and mob people with children in NICU or very new parents, who are much more susceptible to this kind of thing because they are usually (understandably) a lot more anxious for their kids.
posted by sciatrix at 9:43 AM on December 10, 2022 [25 favorites]
Would you like Crunchy or Extra Crunchy?
posted by freakazoid at 9:51 AM on December 10, 2022
posted by freakazoid at 9:51 AM on December 10, 2022
If your distrust of medical experts goes hand in hand with avoiding iPads, red dye 40, sugar, gluten, processed foods, and plastic toys, or a whole litany of alternative wisdom, your baseline consists of pretty questionable ideas, being weird inconsistencies and non sequiturs. You're probably well primed for more questionable ends of the spectrum.
Emily Morrow/@reallyverycrunchy probably doesn't quite deserve the ire of her detractor. By her account, she hasn't fallen into the anti-vax sinkhole, let alone fascist cesspool. However, I do give the side eye to her "crunchy comedy" act. As we've all witnessed in the last few years, indulging the alt-medicine/crunchy lifestyle requires more vigilance, reflection, and yes, actual evidence-based expertise. Things that are not part of the crunchy/alt medicine worlds, mostly for pretty good reasons.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:51 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Emily Morrow/@reallyverycrunchy probably doesn't quite deserve the ire of her detractor. By her account, she hasn't fallen into the anti-vax sinkhole, let alone fascist cesspool. However, I do give the side eye to her "crunchy comedy" act. As we've all witnessed in the last few years, indulging the alt-medicine/crunchy lifestyle requires more vigilance, reflection, and yes, actual evidence-based expertise. Things that are not part of the crunchy/alt medicine worlds, mostly for pretty good reasons.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:51 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
raw diets
The raw food brands were pretty much the only food in the pet store that was advertising humanely-raised organic pet food.
Bonus, it cleared up my dog's overactive bladder.
posted by aniola at 10:04 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The raw food brands were pretty much the only food in the pet store that was advertising humanely-raised organic pet food.
Bonus, it cleared up my dog's overactive bladder.
posted by aniola at 10:04 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
She ended up in emergency surgery and almost died. Now she is relentlessly crusading against "mainstream medicine" online.
She was saved by modern mainstream medecine but she’s crusading against it? I don’t fully get it.
Modern medicine science is good, not perfect but it gets results, so much results we seem to get mad when it fails.
Modern practice of medicine, not always so good, I wish some doctors were better at listening and advocating for their patients, especially when you get referred to specialists. But the reality is that the system is under provided for the amount of care it has to give.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:07 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
She was saved by modern mainstream medecine but she’s crusading against it? I don’t fully get it.
Modern medicine science is good, not perfect but it gets results, so much results we seem to get mad when it fails.
Modern practice of medicine, not always so good, I wish some doctors were better at listening and advocating for their patients, especially when you get referred to specialists. But the reality is that the system is under provided for the amount of care it has to give.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:07 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
FWIW, were using the term "crunchy" as a synonym for "granola" back in the 90s -- but it was more of an affectionate term for a patchouli-scented baja hoodie aesthetic.
posted by credulous at 10:31 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by credulous at 10:31 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
If your distrust of medical experts goes hand in hand with avoiding iPads, red dye 40, sugar, gluten, processed foods, and plastic toys, or a whole litany of alternative wisdom, your baseline consists of pretty questionable ideas, being weird inconsistencies and non sequiturs. You're probably well primed for more questionable ends of the spectrum.
ipads - I have an iphone because I can lock myself out of its smartphone features and use it as a telephone. Great for my wrists.
red dye 40 - I don't buy... twizzlers? What does red dye 40 even come in?
sugar - The human body needs sugar to survive. However, living off candy and icecream is inadvisable in this day and age. The problem with refined sugar isn't that it's sugar. It's that there's no fiber in it any more.
gluten - wikipedia is as anti-woo as the internet gets when it comes to medical stuff. Here is wikipedia on gluten-related disorders. In short, it's a thing.
processed foods - This looks like a simple and balanced overview.
plastic toys - well, there's the great pacific garbage patch. Parents are probably concerned about plastics in the human body. I could see a parent recognizing that they can't protect their child from all plastics but if your kid is going to be literally chewing on something I could see wanting that thing to not be plastic.
So this list you rattled off in a way that felt dismissive to me, it seems reasonable to me. I am absolutely a person with weird inconsistencies, I think most people are.
posted by aniola at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
ipads - I have an iphone because I can lock myself out of its smartphone features and use it as a telephone. Great for my wrists.
red dye 40 - I don't buy... twizzlers? What does red dye 40 even come in?
sugar - The human body needs sugar to survive. However, living off candy and icecream is inadvisable in this day and age. The problem with refined sugar isn't that it's sugar. It's that there's no fiber in it any more.
gluten - wikipedia is as anti-woo as the internet gets when it comes to medical stuff. Here is wikipedia on gluten-related disorders. In short, it's a thing.
processed foods - This looks like a simple and balanced overview.
plastic toys - well, there's the great pacific garbage patch. Parents are probably concerned about plastics in the human body. I could see a parent recognizing that they can't protect their child from all plastics but if your kid is going to be literally chewing on something I could see wanting that thing to not be plastic.
So this list you rattled off in a way that felt dismissive to me, it seems reasonable to me. I am absolutely a person with weird inconsistencies, I think most people are.
posted by aniola at 10:38 AM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
I love that where I live is full of organic famers and tons of great sources of well made food, but the same crowd that produces that stuff has a wildly high proportion of the types of people who choose to treat whooping cough in toddlers with elderberry syrup and zinc vs getting a vaccine that's proven safe. At least in my experience there's a pipeline between health food and that that preys upon the logic of "I've thought my way around industrial food production to a way that's healthier and more sustainable" to "ergo I can think my way around industrial medicine to a way that's better!" It operates on appealing to people that they are more enlightened and aware than the general populace and there's such a massive industry of wellness products/alternative medicine that will tell people susceptible to that exactly what they want to hear.
A lot of wellness/alternative health movements are essentially conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theory mindset is absolutely cancerous. I have people in my extended family who are conspiracy types and they've all followed a path that's gotten increasingly more absurd and baroque in their beliefs. Yet they always have this joy/smugness in figuring out the newest thing that they've seen past that the sedated masses haven't. It's a positive feedback loop of feeling like you're the only smart person in the room and it's like a drug to them; always looking for the next big coverup to get that hit. That's why I'm extremely leery of even low level alternative medicine stuff, it can very easily lead somewhere dark.
posted by Ferreous at 10:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [16 favorites]
A lot of wellness/alternative health movements are essentially conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theory mindset is absolutely cancerous. I have people in my extended family who are conspiracy types and they've all followed a path that's gotten increasingly more absurd and baroque in their beliefs. Yet they always have this joy/smugness in figuring out the newest thing that they've seen past that the sedated masses haven't. It's a positive feedback loop of feeling like you're the only smart person in the room and it's like a drug to them; always looking for the next big coverup to get that hit. That's why I'm extremely leery of even low level alternative medicine stuff, it can very easily lead somewhere dark.
posted by Ferreous at 10:41 AM on December 10, 2022 [16 favorites]
Oh, right. That comment I quoted started out with If your distrust of medical experts goes hand in hand with
To alter some accurate thing someone else said here: Some western medicine is basically placebo, and some actually works. Some is harmful. And everyone, doctors included, is fallible.
posted by aniola at 10:42 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
To alter some accurate thing someone else said here: Some western medicine is basically placebo, and some actually works. Some is harmful. And everyone, doctors included, is fallible.
posted by aniola at 10:42 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The alternative medicine people do love the “doctors are fallible” line as a justification for why they won’t vaccinate their kids and why everything can be cured with essential oils.
posted by brook horse at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 10:44 AM on December 10, 2022 [17 favorites]
If it works for you, it works! I sometimes feed raw to my animals as a form of enrichment and literally just ordered a bunch of freeze dried raw dog food clusters because they seemed like potentially useful training treats, and certainly the ethics of choosing to feed humanely raised food animals are totally valid.
My point is actually more that dog people will sometimes insist that no dog/most dogs will not do well on kibble/grain inclusive/cooked/mass produced/etc diets. The recent discovery that the high levels of pulses in many grain free kibbles can contribute to cardiac problems has put a bit of a dent in that in the last couple of years, but there is a lot of prescriptivism about what dogs can or should do well on that has me rolling my eyes--especially about grains, which we have documented evidence of dogs evolving to digest more effectively dating back as far as lactose tolerance in humans.
I don't want to derail too much, but there's a definite vein of suspicion that large pet food companies have captured entire bodies of professions (vets, food regulatory agencies, etc) in many corners that can metastasize into reflexive suspicion of entire fields of science and medicine. I have zero interest in carrying water for pet food companies, but I have often noted that the actual evidence for claims about nutrition angling for particular kinds of dog diets as the best for everyone is, ah, thinner than the body of evidence than I personally would like. The profit motive for every company selling food in the space suddenly gets forgotten about when people start marketing food based along certain buzz words. Ethically raised isn't necessarily one of those, but organic sure is.
I have been lurking on backyard chicken forums too for a couple of years, and I see extremely similar patterns there from people trying to devise home - produced feed mixes for their birds that are cheaper than commercial feeds.
posted by sciatrix at 10:46 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
My point is actually more that dog people will sometimes insist that no dog/most dogs will not do well on kibble/grain inclusive/cooked/mass produced/etc diets. The recent discovery that the high levels of pulses in many grain free kibbles can contribute to cardiac problems has put a bit of a dent in that in the last couple of years, but there is a lot of prescriptivism about what dogs can or should do well on that has me rolling my eyes--especially about grains, which we have documented evidence of dogs evolving to digest more effectively dating back as far as lactose tolerance in humans.
I don't want to derail too much, but there's a definite vein of suspicion that large pet food companies have captured entire bodies of professions (vets, food regulatory agencies, etc) in many corners that can metastasize into reflexive suspicion of entire fields of science and medicine. I have zero interest in carrying water for pet food companies, but I have often noted that the actual evidence for claims about nutrition angling for particular kinds of dog diets as the best for everyone is, ah, thinner than the body of evidence than I personally would like. The profit motive for every company selling food in the space suddenly gets forgotten about when people start marketing food based along certain buzz words. Ethically raised isn't necessarily one of those, but organic sure is.
I have been lurking on backyard chicken forums too for a couple of years, and I see extremely similar patterns there from people trying to devise home - produced feed mixes for their birds that are cheaper than commercial feeds.
posted by sciatrix at 10:46 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
As I said in my previous comment I think the laudatory community around alternative medicine is really what drives it forward. There's no where near the level of celebratory discourse around trying to find an anti-depressant that works as there are groups that are sharing tips and anecdotes congratulating each other for using various woo techniques for treating depression/disease/etc. It feels nice to be told you're good and doing the right thing, I can see why it's appealing for a lot of people.
That said if you tell anyone with a crunchy lifestyle you have any health issue they're going to list off a pile of things that will treat it that corporate medicine doesn't want you to use. It's an extremely evangelical mindset in my experience.
posted by Ferreous at 10:52 AM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
That said if you tell anyone with a crunchy lifestyle you have any health issue they're going to list off a pile of things that will treat it that corporate medicine doesn't want you to use. It's an extremely evangelical mindset in my experience.
posted by Ferreous at 10:52 AM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
The alternative medicine people do love the “doctors are fallible” line as a justification for why they won’t vaccinate their kids and why everything can be cured with essential oils.
Nobody should have been trying to force-feed you peppermint oil for years. That's obviously wrong. Likewise, my doctor should not have immediately jumped to painkillers when I asked about my headaches and migraines. Also obviously wrong. I had to reinvent the wheel and painstakingly identify and eliminate my triggers, one by one. That's what the doctor was supposed to be there for. Fortunately, my doctor didn't kill me. But for every story of someone not vaccinating their child (which is wrong) there is another story of someone being consistently mistreated by their doctors (which is also wrong). Success stories work the same way.
posted by aniola at 10:55 AM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Is crunchy the new hipster?
An amorphously defined group/lifestyle that everyone can agree to hate because the definition is fluid enough that each person can mean what they want by it?
posted by eviemath at 11:02 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
An amorphously defined group/lifestyle that everyone can agree to hate because the definition is fluid enough that each person can mean what they want by it?
posted by eviemath at 11:02 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
She was saved by modern mainstream medecine but she’s crusading against it? I don’t fully get it.
From her perspective, she was endangered by mainstream medicine, not saved by it. I'm not saying she's right, but that's how she feels. Her self-reported symptoms weren't taken seriously, she wasn't given proper diagnostic testing, and she was misdiagnosed and sent home without help, even though she was in agony. That, compounded with the grief of losing her pregnancy, was enough to make her reject the institution outright.
Would her doctors have behaved and performed better if they hadn't been overwhelmed by a botched COVID response, or a lack of staffing, or any number of other systemic issues that are currently plaguing Canadian healthcare? I can only assume they would.
This anecdote isn't meant to be typical of the problem, but it's just an illustration of the human element at play here. One of the reasons there is such distrust with our healthcare system is because fundamentally, the system isn't working anymore.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:05 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
From her perspective, she was endangered by mainstream medicine, not saved by it. I'm not saying she's right, but that's how she feels. Her self-reported symptoms weren't taken seriously, she wasn't given proper diagnostic testing, and she was misdiagnosed and sent home without help, even though she was in agony. That, compounded with the grief of losing her pregnancy, was enough to make her reject the institution outright.
Would her doctors have behaved and performed better if they hadn't been overwhelmed by a botched COVID response, or a lack of staffing, or any number of other systemic issues that are currently plaguing Canadian healthcare? I can only assume they would.
This anecdote isn't meant to be typical of the problem, but it's just an illustration of the human element at play here. One of the reasons there is such distrust with our healthcare system is because fundamentally, the system isn't working anymore.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 11:05 AM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
Oh brook horse, so sorry.
We had, by our front doorstep, what we- as kids - called the "vomit tree".
Our crunchy mother had a fad for yeast drinks: these were terrible, stinking, dirty bubble
drinks set out for the four of us every single morning. Our mother watched us drink (no pouring down the sink),
then we would immediately sneak away and go hurl.
Then she discovered wheatgerm and carrot.
Same result.
Childhood memories are notoriously unstable. But that carrot-flecked vomit tree was real.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 11:12 AM on December 10, 2022 [18 favorites]
We had, by our front doorstep, what we- as kids - called the "vomit tree".
Our crunchy mother had a fad for yeast drinks: these were terrible, stinking, dirty bubble
drinks set out for the four of us every single morning. Our mother watched us drink (no pouring down the sink),
then we would immediately sneak away and go hurl.
Then she discovered wheatgerm and carrot.
Same result.
Childhood memories are notoriously unstable. But that carrot-flecked vomit tree was real.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 11:12 AM on December 10, 2022 [18 favorites]
I absolutely get you, Aniola. I’ve had my bad share of doctors. Actually, one of the worst and most dismissive ones was the one who later left the hospital to charge thousands of dollars for “crystal light therapy.” She told me that my migraines were tension headaches and that there was nothing that could be done for them.
But I didn’t turn to alternative medicine because my doctor was bad at her job. Identifying and avoiding migraine triggers is well established science-based medicine that can be found on any reputable site about migraine. Eating raw rosemary for migraines (another thing my mother luckily discovered after I was out of the house) is not. No one here defending science-based medicine thinks doctors are infallible. And everyone should have better care and better access to good scientific medical information. But using “doctors are infallible” as a defense of alternative medicine makes no sense when the sources of these are also infallible and infinitely less reliable.
Jody Tresidder, omg. I don’t think ours was quite that bad but we had a “fire drink” that I have similar memories of. My sympathies right back at you.
posted by brook horse at 11:16 AM on December 10, 2022 [14 favorites]
But I didn’t turn to alternative medicine because my doctor was bad at her job. Identifying and avoiding migraine triggers is well established science-based medicine that can be found on any reputable site about migraine. Eating raw rosemary for migraines (another thing my mother luckily discovered after I was out of the house) is not. No one here defending science-based medicine thinks doctors are infallible. And everyone should have better care and better access to good scientific medical information. But using “doctors are infallible” as a defense of alternative medicine makes no sense when the sources of these are also infallible and infinitely less reliable.
Jody Tresidder, omg. I don’t think ours was quite that bad but we had a “fire drink” that I have similar memories of. My sympathies right back at you.
posted by brook horse at 11:16 AM on December 10, 2022 [14 favorites]
I have been doing some work in the anti-conspiracy theory space in my country.
One thing to add here is that the far right is definitely working hard to recruit wherever they see common ground. It is not merely a question of what the factors are that make people vulnerable, or what draws them towards these ideas. People with far right beliefs deliberately befriending their peers in groups and propagandising them.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:24 AM on December 10, 2022 [18 favorites]
One thing to add here is that the far right is definitely working hard to recruit wherever they see common ground. It is not merely a question of what the factors are that make people vulnerable, or what draws them towards these ideas. People with far right beliefs deliberately befriending their peers in groups and propagandising them.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:24 AM on December 10, 2022 [18 favorites]
The thing is people have every right to demand better.
Demand better from pet food companies. From people food companies. From their doctors. From their government.
The problem isn't that these institutions are fallible and often arrogantly so. The problem is the very idea that the ways these institutions go wrong is sufficient cause to abandon evidence-based reality altogether. That only lasts so long before your wallet is empty, or your kid is in a wheelchair because you've unintentionally malnourished them, or you live in a potemkin democracy.
It seems abundantly clear to me that the mindset that will result in someone crusading against medicine because one (or many!) doctors have failed them is the exact same mindset as someone who will abandon democracy and embrace authoritarianism because they believe it has failed them, or because it has actually failed them. It's happening all around the world, in some places worse than others.
Demand better, not some impossible just-world fantasy.
posted by tclark at 11:29 AM on December 10, 2022 [26 favorites]
Demand better from pet food companies. From people food companies. From their doctors. From their government.
The problem isn't that these institutions are fallible and often arrogantly so. The problem is the very idea that the ways these institutions go wrong is sufficient cause to abandon evidence-based reality altogether. That only lasts so long before your wallet is empty, or your kid is in a wheelchair because you've unintentionally malnourished them, or you live in a potemkin democracy.
It seems abundantly clear to me that the mindset that will result in someone crusading against medicine because one (or many!) doctors have failed them is the exact same mindset as someone who will abandon democracy and embrace authoritarianism because they believe it has failed them, or because it has actually failed them. It's happening all around the world, in some places worse than others.
Demand better, not some impossible just-world fantasy.
posted by tclark at 11:29 AM on December 10, 2022 [26 favorites]
As a datum point, I was raised crunchy (no TV, low sugar, whole grains, coops, folk festivals) but with full vaccines and other medical treatments. In their late 40s, my parents (who were pretty staunchly liberal) started veering right wing and conspiratorial and at this point are QAnon adjacent (if not full bore).
My sister has described it as our mother having a desire to be different/rebellious from the mainstream and that what online media has done is created a funnel for those people to shift into right-wing conspiratorial thinking.
posted by Candleman at 11:47 AM on December 10, 2022 [21 favorites]
My sister has described it as our mother having a desire to be different/rebellious from the mainstream and that what online media has done is created a funnel for those people to shift into right-wing conspiratorial thinking.
posted by Candleman at 11:47 AM on December 10, 2022 [21 favorites]
My MIL was just pushing some micro-mushroom treatment for depression (which I don't have) at lunchtime, and actually said "it's in fashion right now", as if that was a good, solid reason to try it.
posted by signal at 12:03 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by signal at 12:03 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
There is some research on microdosing mushrooms as a treatment for depression that’s in its infancy but uhhhhh yeah that reasoning (and the pushing) is alarming.
posted by brook horse at 12:05 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by brook horse at 12:05 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
> On the personal side, some of my reading this year was devoted to probiotics, and one of the things I found most shocking was, not just that they don't really live up to their promises--how could they--but the sheer volume of those promises. If you look around, we're putting bacteria in everything! It's going to improve our skin, it's going to make us lose weight, it'll prevent all our cancers! And like, the whole field is so interesting, but so disappointing when you look at what has actually been established, versus what's been advertised.
I mean, "advertised" really is the key word there. Some of that is the difference between the science and mediocre science journalism that overhypes preliminary results. And a bunch of it is very much the difference between the science and what supplement companies can sell you/the claims they can make to sell you things, since they and their products aren't regulated in the same way that actual medications and pharma companies are. As I've alluded to before, the science is pretty clear that connecting microbial communities to human health is a complicated business, and the research is really challenging to do well.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 12:23 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
I mean, "advertised" really is the key word there. Some of that is the difference between the science and mediocre science journalism that overhypes preliminary results. And a bunch of it is very much the difference between the science and what supplement companies can sell you/the claims they can make to sell you things, since they and their products aren't regulated in the same way that actual medications and pharma companies are. As I've alluded to before, the science is pretty clear that connecting microbial communities to human health is a complicated business, and the research is really challenging to do well.
posted by ASF Tod und Schwerkraft at 12:23 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
on microbiotics as disappointing -
Most of what I personally know about the human microbiome is that diversity is good, that dogs diversify your microbiome, that the microbiomes of institutions are healthier in some way when there's open windows, there's lactobacillus cultures in yogurt but they mostly don't make it past your stomach acid, and a handful of other factoids like that.
No particular strongly-held opinions here is what I'm saying. I don't think. Also this isn't trying to make any sort of point, I don't know what point it would even be making in this conversation. But it's an interesting tangent.
I know someone with gut issues that nearly killed him. Finally a specialist doctor sat down and did a long interview with him about his health history and figured it out and prescribed him a pill. It is his wonder drug. I asked him what it was. He went and looked it up. I forget exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was lactobacillus. He HAS to take this pill, or else. He's better now.
posted by aniola at 12:53 PM on December 10, 2022
Most of what I personally know about the human microbiome is that diversity is good, that dogs diversify your microbiome, that the microbiomes of institutions are healthier in some way when there's open windows, there's lactobacillus cultures in yogurt but they mostly don't make it past your stomach acid, and a handful of other factoids like that.
No particular strongly-held opinions here is what I'm saying. I don't think. Also this isn't trying to make any sort of point, I don't know what point it would even be making in this conversation. But it's an interesting tangent.
I know someone with gut issues that nearly killed him. Finally a specialist doctor sat down and did a long interview with him about his health history and figured it out and prescribed him a pill. It is his wonder drug. I asked him what it was. He went and looked it up. I forget exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was lactobacillus. He HAS to take this pill, or else. He's better now.
posted by aniola at 12:53 PM on December 10, 2022
I don't want to derail too much, but there's a definite vein of suspicion that large pet food companies have captured entire bodies of professions (vets, food regulatory agencies, etc) in many corners that can metastasize into reflexive suspicion of entire fields of science and medicine.
Pet food is also very lightly regulated. Much too lightly.
Right now I use a kibble allegedly made of "human grade ingredients." I don't put too much stock in the claim, but the price premium isn't huge, my little guy likes it, and the resulting poop is good quality. I'm just hoping for a slightly higher degree of safety. But then I pay a real premium for treats made in the US of ingredients from the US, because if I gave my dog a treat and it killed him (as in the hundreds of pets who died of melamine-tainted treats from China a decade or so), it would kill me. It's a stupid and unsatisfying heuristic to have to use, especially when it comes to animals that will gladly eat their own crap.
posted by praemunire at 1:53 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Pet food is also very lightly regulated. Much too lightly.
Right now I use a kibble allegedly made of "human grade ingredients." I don't put too much stock in the claim, but the price premium isn't huge, my little guy likes it, and the resulting poop is good quality. I'm just hoping for a slightly higher degree of safety. But then I pay a real premium for treats made in the US of ingredients from the US, because if I gave my dog a treat and it killed him (as in the hundreds of pets who died of melamine-tainted treats from China a decade or so), it would kill me. It's a stupid and unsatisfying heuristic to have to use, especially when it comes to animals that will gladly eat their own crap.
posted by praemunire at 1:53 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
I wish we taught how to read science articles and understand scientific studies in K-12 schools so that fewer people would be stupid about science.
posted by ITravelMontana at 2:07 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by ITravelMontana at 2:07 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
I wish we taught how to read science articles and understand scientific studies in K-12 schools so that fewer people would be stupid about science.
I wish that research organizations would fund more dedicated science communicators who could correctly summarize findings, put them in context, and write reviews that drew from many different studies. Asking everyone to correctly interpret random publications is not realistic, when it’s often difficult for a scientist to correctly parse a paper from a different sub-field.
(I don’t think we should be asking researchers themselves to “just write more accessibly”, to be clear. Scientific papers are primarily in-group communications between practicing researchers, and that’s a real and valid use case. But there’s still a need to communicate to the broader world, which isn’t really filled by anything now.)
posted by learning from frequent failure at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2022 [15 favorites]
I wish that research organizations would fund more dedicated science communicators who could correctly summarize findings, put them in context, and write reviews that drew from many different studies. Asking everyone to correctly interpret random publications is not realistic, when it’s often difficult for a scientist to correctly parse a paper from a different sub-field.
(I don’t think we should be asking researchers themselves to “just write more accessibly”, to be clear. Scientific papers are primarily in-group communications between practicing researchers, and that’s a real and valid use case. But there’s still a need to communicate to the broader world, which isn’t really filled by anything now.)
posted by learning from frequent failure at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2022 [15 favorites]
I'll be a healthcare provider in 2023. I want to thank everyone for their comments, here, especially hearing about misdiagnosis or suffering unduly from crunchy influences.
I guess (not that I'm the champion of all healthcare providers) I'm writing to let you know that there are people up and coming in medicine who absolutely want only to be a partner with patients-- to listen and reflect-- to recommend for them the best treatment possible, which might not always be the big pharm pill, but it might sometimes be! If that is best treatment. It is not, at least, going to be something which is not based on good evidence-based practice. And I'm always going to recommend vaccines when appropriate.
posted by BlunderingArtist at 2:23 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
I guess (not that I'm the champion of all healthcare providers) I'm writing to let you know that there are people up and coming in medicine who absolutely want only to be a partner with patients-- to listen and reflect-- to recommend for them the best treatment possible, which might not always be the big pharm pill, but it might sometimes be! If that is best treatment. It is not, at least, going to be something which is not based on good evidence-based practice. And I'm always going to recommend vaccines when appropriate.
posted by BlunderingArtist at 2:23 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
I’ve always thought a big reason people get swayed by alternative medicine is that doctors just have no damn time to listen to you. Living in Canada things have gotten much worse recently but they’ve always sort of been this way. It’s very hard to get a family doctor in some cities, so a lot of us are relying on walk-ins where you see a doctor who doesn’t know you and has maybe 10 minutes to talk to you, so the answer is usually writing a prescription and getting you out the door. I’m grateful for public healthcare and have had great experiences with specialists when I’ve needed to see them, but not so much GPs unless it’s an easily fixable problem like you just need antibiotics or something.
While when I tried acupuncture, which I don’t really believe in — very not woo-woo over here — they will sit and talk to you about everything that’s going on with every area of your health, your lifestyle, etc. I really wish I could get this experience from an evidence-based doctor! I think a lot of people aren’t getting good medical care because nobody has the time to take a deeper dive.
posted by vanitas at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2022 [23 favorites]
While when I tried acupuncture, which I don’t really believe in — very not woo-woo over here — they will sit and talk to you about everything that’s going on with every area of your health, your lifestyle, etc. I really wish I could get this experience from an evidence-based doctor! I think a lot of people aren’t getting good medical care because nobody has the time to take a deeper dive.
posted by vanitas at 2:52 PM on December 10, 2022 [23 favorites]
doctors just have no damn time to listen to you.
There's also not a lot of emphasis on *figuring things out*. It's a leap to a diagnosis, and then if the treatment doesn't work, it can be hard to get them to shift gears on it. My mother languished in the hospital for weeks, while no one was trying to even determine what was wrong with her, because their first couple guesses hadn't panned out.
Also it's profoundly irritating that for anything less obvious than a broken arm, I'm supposed to take time off work, pay for a first appointment, try whatever they recommend, make more appointments when that doesn't work, and then they give me the number for a specialist who I have to call, and they're booking appointments ten weeks out, and then it's the same rigmarole again where the specialist pats you on the head and sends you home, and you have to make a followup with them, and...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:06 PM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
There's also not a lot of emphasis on *figuring things out*. It's a leap to a diagnosis, and then if the treatment doesn't work, it can be hard to get them to shift gears on it. My mother languished in the hospital for weeks, while no one was trying to even determine what was wrong with her, because their first couple guesses hadn't panned out.
Also it's profoundly irritating that for anything less obvious than a broken arm, I'm supposed to take time off work, pay for a first appointment, try whatever they recommend, make more appointments when that doesn't work, and then they give me the number for a specialist who I have to call, and they're booking appointments ten weeks out, and then it's the same rigmarole again where the specialist pats you on the head and sends you home, and you have to make a followup with them, and...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 3:06 PM on December 10, 2022 [11 favorites]
Also it's profoundly irritating that for anything less obvious than a broken arm, I'm supposed to take time off work, pay for a first appointment, try whatever they recommend, make more appointments when that doesn't work, and then they give me the number for a specialist who I have to call, and they're booking appointments ten weeks out, and then it's the same rigmarole again where the specialist pats you on the head and sends you home, and you have to make a followup with them, and...
This is me in a nutshell right now. I’m dealing with some odd sporadic nerve pain that doesn’t line-up with either my PCP’s or the various specialists’ go-to diagnoses. It’s become a circle-jerk of medical professionals handing me off to one another, each running their own battery of tests, and each getting frustrated at me because all the results come back perfectly normal instead of something leaping-out as an obvious “ah ha!” solution. Meanwhile, I’m getting minimal sleep because of the pain and no one actually seems to give a shit.
I respect and value medical science, but sometimes it’s extremely easy to understand why so many people abandon faith in it, especially here in the US where it’s so ruinously expensive to begin with. It’s not uncommon for people to meet their high deductibles and still not have any solution to whatever malady afflicts them. You also end up with people simply not gong to see a doctor when they have an issue because their past experience has been so negative and expensive.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:26 PM on December 10, 2022 [16 favorites]
This is me in a nutshell right now. I’m dealing with some odd sporadic nerve pain that doesn’t line-up with either my PCP’s or the various specialists’ go-to diagnoses. It’s become a circle-jerk of medical professionals handing me off to one another, each running their own battery of tests, and each getting frustrated at me because all the results come back perfectly normal instead of something leaping-out as an obvious “ah ha!” solution. Meanwhile, I’m getting minimal sleep because of the pain and no one actually seems to give a shit.
I respect and value medical science, but sometimes it’s extremely easy to understand why so many people abandon faith in it, especially here in the US where it’s so ruinously expensive to begin with. It’s not uncommon for people to meet their high deductibles and still not have any solution to whatever malady afflicts them. You also end up with people simply not gong to see a doctor when they have an issue because their past experience has been so negative and expensive.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:26 PM on December 10, 2022 [16 favorites]
what pharma and food companies are doing isn't science
What these companies are doing isn't science, but making money. They may use science to make money, as well as other tools, like lobbying to buy laws, or buying off local law enforcement to get what they want, which is to make money.
Pharma and food companies don't do science to advance science, they use it as one tool in the toolbox to advance their margins. That's it.
I know this may weird out Metafilter but there are many instances where science gets in the way of making money, and then these companies don't "do science".
Cites? Sure: Here and more recently here, as a couple for-instances. Carcinogenic food additives and by-products of processed food preparation are still a thing in 2022. I mean, I get there are antivaxxers and so on who dismiss science out of hand, and their views should be ridiculed, but there are publicly-traded companies whose management will do pretty much the same where it interferes with the bottom line, and they can get away with it.
That this should be a controversial thing to state out loud still boggles my mind. It's why regulatory bodies like the FDA exist, in the first place.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:52 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
What these companies are doing isn't science, but making money. They may use science to make money, as well as other tools, like lobbying to buy laws, or buying off local law enforcement to get what they want, which is to make money.
Pharma and food companies don't do science to advance science, they use it as one tool in the toolbox to advance their margins. That's it.
I know this may weird out Metafilter but there are many instances where science gets in the way of making money, and then these companies don't "do science".
Cites? Sure: Here and more recently here, as a couple for-instances. Carcinogenic food additives and by-products of processed food preparation are still a thing in 2022. I mean, I get there are antivaxxers and so on who dismiss science out of hand, and their views should be ridiculed, but there are publicly-traded companies whose management will do pretty much the same where it interferes with the bottom line, and they can get away with it.
That this should be a controversial thing to state out loud still boggles my mind. It's why regulatory bodies like the FDA exist, in the first place.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:52 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
there are many instances where science gets in the way of making money, and then these companies don't "do science".
see: the environment, water quality, air quality, wetlands issues, climate issues, etc etc etc
if we are told, over and over again by corporations, that the only political choices we can make are consumer choices, are those choices are going to become politicized, or are those choices already politicized?
posted by eustatic at 5:00 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
see: the environment, water quality, air quality, wetlands issues, climate issues, etc etc etc
if we are told, over and over again by corporations, that the only political choices we can make are consumer choices, are those choices are going to become politicized, or are those choices already politicized?
posted by eustatic at 5:00 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
The reason we are in a climate crisis, specifically, is that the same companies who keep pushing that they were "science-based" or "rational" actually bought off the media and politicians to do the exact opposite and deny empirical science done in the 1970s.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:12 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
A rational actor should be skeptical of parties who repeatedly demonstrate their motives are not pursuit of truth via science (or whatever one wants to call empirical investigation), but simple profits. Those parties may know how to use the veneer of respectability that scientific research provides, but that's just branding or marketing.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:15 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:15 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
Which is also the exact same thing woo does but with the veneer of "science they don't want you to know about" it's not like the people selling ear candles and homeopathic water don't have a profit motive. Obviously there's a difference of scale but making money is still the determining factor.
posted by Ferreous at 5:19 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 5:19 PM on December 10, 2022 [19 favorites]
This goes back to at least the 1980s, I heard it a lot in high school
Google the Sesame Street Newsflash with Kermit the Frog segment where instead of “Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey” they change it to “Little Miss Muffet sat on her water bed eating her crunchy granola.” That’s where I first heard it; mid 1970s at the latest.
posted by Melismata at 5:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
Google the Sesame Street Newsflash with Kermit the Frog segment where instead of “Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and whey” they change it to “Little Miss Muffet sat on her water bed eating her crunchy granola.” That’s where I first heard it; mid 1970s at the latest.
posted by Melismata at 5:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
Remember when ‘crunchies' were all upset about aspartame and everyone else rolled their eyes and told them to get over themselves because Science said it was OK?
Well, all these years later, and 5000 metric tons per year distributed over ~5000 products later, not so fast:
posted by jamjam at 6:42 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Well, all these years later, and 5000 metric tons per year distributed over ~5000 products later, not so fast:
Florida State University College of Medicine researchers have linked aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in nearly 5,000 diet foods and drinks, to anxiety-like behavior in mice.Good thing anxiety isn’t really a problem for us and our kids.
Along with producing anxiety in the mice who consumed aspartame, the effects extended up to two generations from the males exposed to the sweetener. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what's happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer," said co-author Pradeep Bhide, the Jim and Betty Ann Rodgers Eminent Scholar Chair of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Biomedical Sciences.
The study came about, in part, because of previous research from the Bhide Lab on the transgenerational effects of nicotine on mice. The research showed temporary, or epigenetic, changes in mice sperm cells. Unlike genetic changes (mutations), epigenetic changes are reversible and don't change the DNA sequence; however, they can change how the body reads a DNA sequence.
"We were working on the effects of nicotine on the same type of model," Bhide said. "The father smokes. What happened to the children?"
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aspartame as a sweetener in 1981. Today, nearly 5,000 metric tons are produced each year. When consumed, aspartame becomes aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, all of which can have potent effects on the central nervous system.
Led by doctoral candidate Sara Jones, the study involved providing mice with drinking water containing aspartame at approximately 15% of the FDA-approved maximum daily human intake. The dosage, equivalent to six to eight 8-ounce cans of diet soda a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years.
Pronounced anxiety-like behavior was observed in the mice through a variety of maze tests across multiple generations descending from the aspartame-exposed males.
"It was such a robust anxiety-like trait that I don't think any of us were anticipating we would see," Jones said. "It was completely unexpected. Usually you see subtle changes."
When given diazepam, a drug used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, mice in all generations ceased to show anxiety-like behavior.
Researchers are planning an additional publication from this study focused on how aspartame affected memory. Future research will identify the molecular mechanisms that influence the transmission of aspartame's effect across generations.
posted by jamjam at 6:42 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
When I was a new mom in 2001 and later, I was on a Yahoo Group called crunchyparents (or similar, it's been 20 years, and I've slept since then). I think around 2004 or so they had to put in a note to not discuss vaccines as it lead to a Lot of fighting. I thought about delaying my daughter's vaccines, but then again, we were on WIC until she was around 4-5, and they wanted to see that vaccine card every visit. And a lot of them wanted to do homeschool bc of the No Child Left Behind act, and it was so easy to rabbit hole from there. It's super easy to get pulled in, when you're 21 and tired, and you have a baby you want to do the best by and there's a lot of bullshit going around from family and the world.
posted by tlwright at 6:43 PM on December 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by tlwright at 6:43 PM on December 10, 2022 [10 favorites]
eating her crunchy granola.”
I suspect Neil Diamond started it all
posted by philip-random at 6:58 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
I suspect Neil Diamond started it all
posted by philip-random at 6:58 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
How much is it driven by desperation for connection, for security, for trust that you are part of a group, in a world where that seems ever-more elusive and fragile?
The desire for meaningful identity as part of something larger when we are more aware than at any time previous in history of how varied the human experience is, and watch what is currently meaningful seem to change by the day - to me it seems unsurprising that people retreat from confronting this psychological overload.
But if one doesn't literally tune out by disconnecting from the internet, how do you construct your more-stable, slower-changing safe place? It seems plausible that the secret knowledge of any sort of basically unfalsifiable (because usually it is defined in such a way) sort is an escape. It therefore aligns with any sort of esoteric belief, like religions, cults, secret societies whose belief corpus provides reguge at a cost.
If the reality of experience exceeds individual capacity for tolerance and continued functioning to understood cultural expectations, retreat to a simplified irrational framing of experience becomes a coping mechanism. The main change in the last few decades is in how much easier it is to share these and therefore how much faster and more widely specific framings spread, with consequently larger and more visible societal effects.
posted by allium cepa at 7:29 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The desire for meaningful identity as part of something larger when we are more aware than at any time previous in history of how varied the human experience is, and watch what is currently meaningful seem to change by the day - to me it seems unsurprising that people retreat from confronting this psychological overload.
But if one doesn't literally tune out by disconnecting from the internet, how do you construct your more-stable, slower-changing safe place? It seems plausible that the secret knowledge of any sort of basically unfalsifiable (because usually it is defined in such a way) sort is an escape. It therefore aligns with any sort of esoteric belief, like religions, cults, secret societies whose belief corpus provides reguge at a cost.
If the reality of experience exceeds individual capacity for tolerance and continued functioning to understood cultural expectations, retreat to a simplified irrational framing of experience becomes a coping mechanism. The main change in the last few decades is in how much easier it is to share these and therefore how much faster and more widely specific framings spread, with consequently larger and more visible societal effects.
posted by allium cepa at 7:29 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
My mother died of ovarian cancer because her doctor did not believe her self reported symptoms.
I'm suffering from severe anxiety and depression, and (like the majority of AFAB autistic people) years of extreme PMDD because our medical and mental health system didn't believe that AFAB people could be autistic for most of my life (I'm 50). And a sizable number of professionals still don't.
That's not a result of the medical system being overwhelmed, or doctors not having enough time. It's a systemic problem.
Notice how the crunchy people being ctitisized for (hey!) being irrational and anti science are almost all female?
Are there fewer crunchy men, or maybe when men are crunchy, it's not judged in the same way? Genuine question.
posted by Zumbador at 7:32 PM on December 10, 2022 [14 favorites]
I'm suffering from severe anxiety and depression, and (like the majority of AFAB autistic people) years of extreme PMDD because our medical and mental health system didn't believe that AFAB people could be autistic for most of my life (I'm 50). And a sizable number of professionals still don't.
That's not a result of the medical system being overwhelmed, or doctors not having enough time. It's a systemic problem.
Notice how the crunchy people being ctitisized for (hey!) being irrational and anti science are almost all female?
Are there fewer crunchy men, or maybe when men are crunchy, it's not judged in the same way? Genuine question.
posted by Zumbador at 7:32 PM on December 10, 2022 [14 favorites]
Isn't this just a different expression of conspirituality?
posted by meehawl at 7:38 PM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 7:38 PM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
Still, while most coverage identifies the prevalence of these dangerous, unfounded beliefs accurately, there is often little context on the wellness space’s relationship with Orientalism (or the West’s tendency to romanticize, stereotype, and flatten Asian cultures) and libertarian individualism.
From the article meehawl linked to. Such an excellent point.
posted by Zumbador at 7:43 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
From the article meehawl linked to. Such an excellent point.
posted by Zumbador at 7:43 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
“The dosage, equivalent to six to eight 8-ounce cans of diet soda a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years.”
That’s a very high level of consumption. Also the earlier aspartame scare was about cancer in mice.
posted by Selena777 at 8:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
That’s a very high level of consumption. Also the earlier aspartame scare was about cancer in mice.
posted by Selena777 at 8:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [5 favorites]
Are there fewer crunchy men, or maybe when men are crunchy, it's not judged in the same way? Genuine question.
There absolutely are crunchy men, but they wouldn’t call themselves crunchy. They’d say they’re “primal” or “paleo” or something along those lines. The diet/lifestyle changes they make, supplements they consume, etc aren’t for the purposes of “clearing out toxins,” they’re for “optimizing performance.” All the energy that gets poured into child-rearing among crunchy moms gets I poured into optimizing the self among men.
And it often leads to conspiratorial thinking and fascism there too! See Alex Jones and Joe Rogan, two batshit conspiracists who make much of their money on “wellness” products.
posted by ActionPopulated at 8:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [36 favorites]
There absolutely are crunchy men, but they wouldn’t call themselves crunchy. They’d say they’re “primal” or “paleo” or something along those lines. The diet/lifestyle changes they make, supplements they consume, etc aren’t for the purposes of “clearing out toxins,” they’re for “optimizing performance.” All the energy that gets poured into child-rearing among crunchy moms gets I poured into optimizing the self among men.
And it often leads to conspiratorial thinking and fascism there too! See Alex Jones and Joe Rogan, two batshit conspiracists who make much of their money on “wellness” products.
posted by ActionPopulated at 8:51 PM on December 10, 2022 [36 favorites]
Did your kid have a bad reaction to a vaccine, and that has you worried about how they'll handle the next round? Don't tell anyone, or they'll act like you accused the doc of injecting your kid with 5G chips.
That flashes me back. I can't remember if it was on MeFi or some other forum, but I mentioned my grade-school classmate who had a rare but serious reaction to a childhood vaccine and how I understood why that made his mother nervous about the possibility of the same thing happening to her younger kids, and I got dogpiled on like I'd said I was a staunch supporter of strangling puppies. I was even accused of being prejudiced against autistic people, when I had never said a single word about autism. Some people can get really whipped up online, no matter what side of an issue they're on.
We dabbled in crunchiness when I was a kid and food sensitivities were making all my medical issues worse. (My parents had always been a bit old-fashioned in the homemade clothes and heating with woodstoves kind of way.) I vividly remember some people, including teachers and school administration, getting upset about it in a way that seemed out of all proportion to me, like it was somehow hurting somebody for me to have a different snack brought from home or not drink whole milk at lunchtime (it still makes me vomit).
Most communities have their extremists, and today's communication does amplify their messages. And I'd be a fool to deny that bad actors take advantage of that to spread misinformation that suits their agendas. But this Laura person who's saying that it's impossible to embrace some aspects of a crunchy lifestyle without automatically being sucked all the way down into cultdom comes off a pretty ridiculous herself.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
That flashes me back. I can't remember if it was on MeFi or some other forum, but I mentioned my grade-school classmate who had a rare but serious reaction to a childhood vaccine and how I understood why that made his mother nervous about the possibility of the same thing happening to her younger kids, and I got dogpiled on like I'd said I was a staunch supporter of strangling puppies. I was even accused of being prejudiced against autistic people, when I had never said a single word about autism. Some people can get really whipped up online, no matter what side of an issue they're on.
We dabbled in crunchiness when I was a kid and food sensitivities were making all my medical issues worse. (My parents had always been a bit old-fashioned in the homemade clothes and heating with woodstoves kind of way.) I vividly remember some people, including teachers and school administration, getting upset about it in a way that seemed out of all proportion to me, like it was somehow hurting somebody for me to have a different snack brought from home or not drink whole milk at lunchtime (it still makes me vomit).
Most communities have their extremists, and today's communication does amplify their messages. And I'd be a fool to deny that bad actors take advantage of that to spread misinformation that suits their agendas. But this Laura person who's saying that it's impossible to embrace some aspects of a crunchy lifestyle without automatically being sucked all the way down into cultdom comes off a pretty ridiculous herself.
But Laura says she’s not speaking against crunchy parenting because she doesn’t get it — she’s taking a stand because she used to be one.Mom always said, there's no zealot quite like a convert.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
When men talk like this (Mike Adams, Joseph Mercola) the language used to describe them is often less benign than crunchy.
posted by Selena777 at 9:00 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 9:00 PM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The dosage, equivalent to six to eight 8-ounce cans of diet soda a day for humans, continued for 12 weeks in a study spanning four years.”
That’s a very high level of consumption. Also the earlier aspartame scare was about cancer in mice.
It's a little bit less than a single 2 liter bottle, and I've known a lot of kids who consumed more pop than that during a day. I was one myself.
It’s also only 15% of the FDA's maximum safe daily level of aspartame.
posted by jamjam at 9:55 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
That’s a very high level of consumption. Also the earlier aspartame scare was about cancer in mice.
It's a little bit less than a single 2 liter bottle, and I've known a lot of kids who consumed more pop than that during a day. I was one myself.
It’s also only 15% of the FDA's maximum safe daily level of aspartame.
posted by jamjam at 9:55 PM on December 10, 2022 [7 favorites]
Good thing anxiety isn’t really a problem for us and our kids.
just says in mice
posted by praemunire at 10:03 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
just says in mice
posted by praemunire at 10:03 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Now people who make their own granola are anti-trans?
Checks out in my experience - if someone tells me they make their own granola, or are super into raw-food diets, or whatever culturally adjacent thing here in the UK, I certainly become less unguarded around them. The consistency with which people espousing these positions in my offline life have turned out to be transphobes is kind of staggering.
posted by Dysk at 11:04 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
Checks out in my experience - if someone tells me they make their own granola, or are super into raw-food diets, or whatever culturally adjacent thing here in the UK, I certainly become less unguarded around them. The consistency with which people espousing these positions in my offline life have turned out to be transphobes is kind of staggering.
posted by Dysk at 11:04 PM on December 10, 2022 [6 favorites]
People who fall prey to the whatever-to-fascism pipeline are people who have opted out of the effort of understanding how anything, fundamentally, works -- but they refuse to admit to themselves their ignorance
I would argue very much its the opposite - people trying desperately to try and understand a world that is complex, indifferent and without pattern or order. We're educated across our whole lives with neat, linear versions of how the world works - even the sciences teach principles via very tidy models, with progress being a neat set of steps of discovery, ah, Marconi discovers radio waves, which builds on the work done by Hertz, who in turn builds on James Clerk Maxwell, tidy little steps of progression. Things evolve neatly, we're getting better and better every day, the march of history from the cave to space and beyond.
And then they get out of schooling, and it's suddenly a bewildering mess of nothing really working the way it's supposed to - the doctors ignore you, food makes you sick, are we meant to eat more carbs or more fats?, cigarettes are good for asthmatics until they aren't, the climate is fine, burn more coal, but we shouldn't, plastics save lives through preventing food spoilage but are full of endocrine disruptors, buyer beware, do your own research, but no-one really knows how, so instead they just. Opt the fuck out. Go back to the 1880s before thalidomide or BPAs or whatever.
A lot of crunchy people are very, very smart. They know how to read a paper and can tell you how much microplastic is showing up in placentas and how sythnetic hormones from birth control in waterways are feminizing fish to the point of population damage and the cancer rates from personal care items and the lead in kids' clothes and toys. And a lot of them are of the opinion that we'll get fifty years down the track and plastic use everywhere now will be like regarded the same as asbestos use in the 50s or radium in the 20s. Because it's not hard at all to find examples of 'this thing is safe' turning out to be wrong even in the best of cases.
You can't just handwave that crunchy people and alternative people are stupid and deluded. It's a good way to push them further into the lifestyle. Some are, but many of them are alarmingly smart, and inform their fears with a lot of very hard science. Even @reallyverycrunchy speaks the language of science quite convincingly in her videos, many of which I've seen (my vote is satire, tbh, not a legitimate crunchy account) and it reflects that intelligence present in a lot of people in those communities.
If you want to break that pipeline, you need to acknowledge that they are smart, they want to learn, and they are often very motivated to seek out information. It's just hard to parse reliable information, and there's a lot of very, very bad info out there masquerading quite convincingly as the good stuff. And good science communicators often use the same rhetorical tools as the bad ones. The minute you start by calling people ignorant or deluded or whatever you lose them before you even start.
posted by Jilder at 11:13 PM on December 10, 2022 [20 favorites]
This is the part where I preemptively include so many caveats. I am not attached to anything I just wrote below so if I got something wrong, ok.
Yes, absolutely. I read an article that basically said people who think dewormer works on covid were actually out there reading science articles about how it helped with covid in parts of the world where people are more likely to harbor parasites because deworming medication meant their immune system was more likely to no longer also trying to fight off worms and could focus more easily on covid. Or something like that. And then I encountered someone who espoused the dewormer theory and I explained what I had read, and that deflated that conversation entirely because I was able to address where that person was coming from, acknowledge it, and debunk.
posted by aniola at 11:42 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
Yes, absolutely. I read an article that basically said people who think dewormer works on covid were actually out there reading science articles about how it helped with covid in parts of the world where people are more likely to harbor parasites because deworming medication meant their immune system was more likely to no longer also trying to fight off worms and could focus more easily on covid. Or something like that. And then I encountered someone who espoused the dewormer theory and I explained what I had read, and that deflated that conversation entirely because I was able to address where that person was coming from, acknowledge it, and debunk.
posted by aniola at 11:42 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
My grandfather was into odd health stuff-- we're probably talking about the 1940s. I'll see if I can get more details, but my mother was bitter decades later about having to eat rotten bananas, and I think there was a lot about not letting toxins accumulate, so defecation was a big deal. I believe his politics were moderate conservative.
Here's the article about ivermectin.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:51 AM on December 11, 2022
Here's the article about ivermectin.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:51 AM on December 11, 2022
I've recently been working on lectures touching on fascism. One element, as per Umberto Eco, that features in fascism is the insistence of plots against them. And for me that is where I see relatively individual choices go from preference to pipeline.
Because this isn't insisting a single sector of industry actively paying out and engaging in other conspiracy behaviour - there was evidence about cigarettes and climate change afterall - but that multiple industries and multiple individual professionals are engaged in an active conspiracy to harm large portions of the population. That your local GP is paid to vaccinate and push ritalin and obscure rosemary as a cure.
And I'll admit a bias - my mother is crunchy. Vaccines were great when I was a kid but she is definitely on the antivax side now. Homeopath for everything. Fortunately my dad did go with medicine and surgery for his cancer, and heart disease, but otherwise? The red dye causes hyperactivity, have I cut out dairy/gluten/nightshades, what about tumeric, did I try aloe vera yet.
It took three years of repeated laryngitis before I finally wised up to it being my allergy to my cat not actually going away more being treated by the tea and tisanes and honey and garlic etc. A repeat of my last two years of highschool I now realise (except back then it was lung infections, and dogs).
I also was surrounded by crunchy birth people when I had my kid. From the frankly excessive fear mongering about c-sections, insistence I'd have been fine birthing alone it was the hospital that caused issues, that I should just eat 160g of protein a day instead of treating the high blood pressure, or breastfeed in the sun instead of treating the baby's jaundice, that I tore because it wasn't a homebirth, that I ruined their gut because they got formula for low blood sugar, and a million other small comments. To the point that I don't talk to any of those folk unless they're family now.
The prevalence of 'research' from them, including family, absolutely forced some of the conflict. I'm an academic - not a scientist but I know communications - and none of them liked hearing that the research they referred to was thirty years old, a different country, and had no relevance to any decision made about milk drinking in our country right now. Or that pilot studies aren't government policy more broadly and in fact it's less about you, Ms Middle Class White Lady, and more about poor indigenous folk in regional areas being further coerced and controlled. That stats from the US on birth are almost irrelevant in any other country particularly ours. That further studies showed something different. That their claims about big pharma aren't wrong, but since when is that essential oil company not also a company?
The time I pointed out to the anti-stroller crowd that their rhetoric about terrible parents buying expensive strollers because they're sheep and just want a status symbol was applicable to their insistence that specific handwoven cloth carriers priced well above a regular stroller or carrier were the best choice got me booted from that community.
I don't doubt Laura - who brings up the crunchy to fascist pipeline - has something of that zeal of the converted. Because there's a whole big element of the emperor having no clothes, and dissent being treason to say anything. Not to mention the sheer miserable fucking grind of it too, the constant watchfulness and blame and paranoia that comes with deciding whole swathes of our support systems are actually evil.
And it's not too many steps from that kind of assumption of malevolence, alongside a promotion of an imaginary 'pure' and 'natural' state of humanity to political stances that enact it.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:05 AM on December 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
Because this isn't insisting a single sector of industry actively paying out and engaging in other conspiracy behaviour - there was evidence about cigarettes and climate change afterall - but that multiple industries and multiple individual professionals are engaged in an active conspiracy to harm large portions of the population. That your local GP is paid to vaccinate and push ritalin and obscure rosemary as a cure.
And I'll admit a bias - my mother is crunchy. Vaccines were great when I was a kid but she is definitely on the antivax side now. Homeopath for everything. Fortunately my dad did go with medicine and surgery for his cancer, and heart disease, but otherwise? The red dye causes hyperactivity, have I cut out dairy/gluten/nightshades, what about tumeric, did I try aloe vera yet.
It took three years of repeated laryngitis before I finally wised up to it being my allergy to my cat not actually going away more being treated by the tea and tisanes and honey and garlic etc. A repeat of my last two years of highschool I now realise (except back then it was lung infections, and dogs).
I also was surrounded by crunchy birth people when I had my kid. From the frankly excessive fear mongering about c-sections, insistence I'd have been fine birthing alone it was the hospital that caused issues, that I should just eat 160g of protein a day instead of treating the high blood pressure, or breastfeed in the sun instead of treating the baby's jaundice, that I tore because it wasn't a homebirth, that I ruined their gut because they got formula for low blood sugar, and a million other small comments. To the point that I don't talk to any of those folk unless they're family now.
The prevalence of 'research' from them, including family, absolutely forced some of the conflict. I'm an academic - not a scientist but I know communications - and none of them liked hearing that the research they referred to was thirty years old, a different country, and had no relevance to any decision made about milk drinking in our country right now. Or that pilot studies aren't government policy more broadly and in fact it's less about you, Ms Middle Class White Lady, and more about poor indigenous folk in regional areas being further coerced and controlled. That stats from the US on birth are almost irrelevant in any other country particularly ours. That further studies showed something different. That their claims about big pharma aren't wrong, but since when is that essential oil company not also a company?
The time I pointed out to the anti-stroller crowd that their rhetoric about terrible parents buying expensive strollers because they're sheep and just want a status symbol was applicable to their insistence that specific handwoven cloth carriers priced well above a regular stroller or carrier were the best choice got me booted from that community.
I don't doubt Laura - who brings up the crunchy to fascist pipeline - has something of that zeal of the converted. Because there's a whole big element of the emperor having no clothes, and dissent being treason to say anything. Not to mention the sheer miserable fucking grind of it too, the constant watchfulness and blame and paranoia that comes with deciding whole swathes of our support systems are actually evil.
And it's not too many steps from that kind of assumption of malevolence, alongside a promotion of an imaginary 'pure' and 'natural' state of humanity to political stances that enact it.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:05 AM on December 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
One other angle (I'll track down the essay if anyone is interested) is that even the nice democratic governments can behave like dictatorships. What they're doing is less destructive than the worst governments, but I've got one friend stuck with driving a long distance because another friend's ID was outdated so they have to be driven to the Canadian border because they're not allowed to use mass transit.
Neither of these friends are tempted by fascism, but the impulse to tear it all down is coming from somewhere that isn't totally irrational.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:33 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
Neither of these friends are tempted by fascism, but the impulse to tear it all down is coming from somewhere that isn't totally irrational.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:33 AM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I know a guy, nice guy, dripping with privilege—handsome, confident, assertive, son of an internist—who had his hip replaced in his early fifties, because of some mild discomfort. He went to a clinic where they specialize in hip replacements, they took some x-rays that showed a bit of wear, they scheduled him for surgery, and within a couple of months they replaced his hip. Completely uneventful routine operation, I think he went home the next day or something like that.
Several months later, he begins to complain about excruciating, stabbing pain in his leg. Goes back to the clinic, they couldn't find anything, went back a couple of times more, until they threw up their hands, and said, welp, we have no idea, the joint seems fine & it healed perfectly, maybe go talk to a physiotherapist?
So he went to a physiotherapist, who sent him to a specialist, who told him to go see a neurologist, at which point we're about a year out from the original surgery. All this time he's in excruciating pain, so bad that a lot of days he can't actually walk, and it's come to dominate his life. All we talk about is his leg, the drugs he's taking to manage the pain, and the medical appointments he's got coming up.
It's now been about four years since the surgery. Last year he saw a pain specialist, who gave him a little device that sends electric pulses to the nerves in his legs. It provides some relief, but he still can't stand for long, or carry any weight. To wit, he can't carry his three-year old to bed.
The surgery was sold to him as a routine operation that would improve his quality of life, by a commercial clinic (this is in the EU) that specializes in these sorts of operations. They have the very best surgeons with tons of practice and excellent success rates. He is an assertive white male, with a dad who's a doctor himself, not the sort of patient to brush off easily. He exercised his rights and explored his options to the fullest, yet here he is: a cripple who winces in pain whenever his son grabs his leg, and there's nothing anyone can do for him.
Now hip replacement surgery is a very well understood, routine operation. Imagine what the situation is like in other domains of medicine, that are much less well understood, and where there isn't much of an established routine. It's really not hard to understand why people start looking for alternatives. As long as the medical establishment gets to market medicine as miraculous, it's no wonder people are going to be tempted to go and find miracles of their own.
posted by dmh at 6:18 AM on December 11, 2022 [16 favorites]
Several months later, he begins to complain about excruciating, stabbing pain in his leg. Goes back to the clinic, they couldn't find anything, went back a couple of times more, until they threw up their hands, and said, welp, we have no idea, the joint seems fine & it healed perfectly, maybe go talk to a physiotherapist?
So he went to a physiotherapist, who sent him to a specialist, who told him to go see a neurologist, at which point we're about a year out from the original surgery. All this time he's in excruciating pain, so bad that a lot of days he can't actually walk, and it's come to dominate his life. All we talk about is his leg, the drugs he's taking to manage the pain, and the medical appointments he's got coming up.
It's now been about four years since the surgery. Last year he saw a pain specialist, who gave him a little device that sends electric pulses to the nerves in his legs. It provides some relief, but he still can't stand for long, or carry any weight. To wit, he can't carry his three-year old to bed.
The surgery was sold to him as a routine operation that would improve his quality of life, by a commercial clinic (this is in the EU) that specializes in these sorts of operations. They have the very best surgeons with tons of practice and excellent success rates. He is an assertive white male, with a dad who's a doctor himself, not the sort of patient to brush off easily. He exercised his rights and explored his options to the fullest, yet here he is: a cripple who winces in pain whenever his son grabs his leg, and there's nothing anyone can do for him.
Now hip replacement surgery is a very well understood, routine operation. Imagine what the situation is like in other domains of medicine, that are much less well understood, and where there isn't much of an established routine. It's really not hard to understand why people start looking for alternatives. As long as the medical establishment gets to market medicine as miraculous, it's no wonder people are going to be tempted to go and find miracles of their own.
posted by dmh at 6:18 AM on December 11, 2022 [16 favorites]
But this Laura person who's saying that it's impossible to embrace some aspects of a crunchy lifestyle without automatically being sucked all the way down into cultdom comes off a pretty ridiculous herself
I do not recall reading that anywhere in this article.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:25 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
I do not recall reading that anywhere in this article.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:25 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
That flashes me back. I can't remember if it was on MeFi or some other forum, but I mentioned my grade-school classmate who had a rare but serious reaction to a childhood vaccine and how I understood why that made his mother nervous about the possibility of the same thing happening to her younger kids, and I got dogpiled on like I'd said I was a staunch supporter of strangling puppies. I was even accused of being prejudiced against autistic people, when I had never said a single word about autism. Some people can get really whipped up online, no matter what side of an issue they're on.
Our daughter had a rare severe reaction (Thrombocytopenia) to the MMR vaccine, it all resolved as well as we could expect so that’s good, but if an ER doctor ever tell you your baby has extremely low platelets don’t google that, sacred the bejesus out of me, I don’t think I read about the actual condition she had, but all things listed were super scary.
I wouldn’t say it made us hesitant on vaccines, but it has definitely made us ask a ton of questions because we trying to know if a 1st reaction can lead to another one or if these things are independent, and as much as we’d like to have answers these are rare events and not well understood, the doctors say a 2nd occurrence is very rare and it’s up to us in the end. They did an antibody test, and a 2nd dose would be advisable, so we’ll do it when the pediatric ER situation seems under control here (just in case).
If we had another kid we vaccinate, but we’d be in the lookout.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:25 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
Our daughter had a rare severe reaction (Thrombocytopenia) to the MMR vaccine, it all resolved as well as we could expect so that’s good, but if an ER doctor ever tell you your baby has extremely low platelets don’t google that, sacred the bejesus out of me, I don’t think I read about the actual condition she had, but all things listed were super scary.
I wouldn’t say it made us hesitant on vaccines, but it has definitely made us ask a ton of questions because we trying to know if a 1st reaction can lead to another one or if these things are independent, and as much as we’d like to have answers these are rare events and not well understood, the doctors say a 2nd occurrence is very rare and it’s up to us in the end. They did an antibody test, and a 2nd dose would be advisable, so we’ll do it when the pediatric ER situation seems under control here (just in case).
If we had another kid we vaccinate, but we’d be in the lookout.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:25 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
And what I was trying to illustrate is that it’s entirely possible to be nervous about vaccines while not being anti vaccine.
I’m sorry you got treated like this.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:36 AM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
I’m sorry you got treated like this.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:36 AM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
If you want to break that pipeline, you need to acknowledge that they are smart, they want to learn, and they are often very motivated to seek out information. It's just hard to parse reliable information, and there's a lot of very, very bad info out there masquerading quite convincingly as the good stuff. And good science communicators often use the same rhetorical tools as the bad ones. The minute you start by calling people ignorant or deluded or whatever you lose them before you even start.
Flagging this entire comment as fantastic, but I think this hits the nail on the head. I think it's incredibly important to also acknowledge the role of emotion in decision-making: no matter what your beliefs about the trustworthiness of various institutions, you're sometimes going to have to figure out whether a deeply flawed institution is essentially right about particular things.
For example, take the dog food thing. I don't actually trust food corporations to have my best interests at heart or to not cut corners or whatever--but I actually do know how AAFCO feeding trials work, I've read the grain digestion amylase copy number variation study, and I've observed that dogs often do well on a really wide variety of foods. I switch brands around a lot. I mention this example, again, because I think it really goes against the grain for many of us.
Sometimes you really do have to take a leap of faith. My one pica cat is on clomipramine because he's a pretty serious case and I found exactly one study suggesting it might help when I checked the (depressingly sparse) literature and brought it to my vet. We do other stuff, too, with no real literature-based suggestion that they're useful: puzzle toys with kibble, copious access to spider plants, rawhide sticks. He improved significantly on his urge to eat fabric, and we visited a veterinary behaviorist when we could access one who seemed pleasantly surprised by the interventions we were using. But there isn't a clear answer on what to do, and she acknowledged that: sometimes you legitimately have a complicated case, and all you can do is your best.
I think it's incredibly important to underscore how much harder it is to be skeptical of groups, trends, and ideals that share our values, because we are primed to feel safer with them and trust them more. I am not worried about MeFites on the crunchier end of the spectrum rushing out to double fist ivermectin as a COVID preventative because bluntly those are not people most of us are predisposed to trust and respect. They're the Enemy and so when they do stupid shit or get stupid ideas stuck in their heads, it ain't tempting. The trick is that not everyone peddling unreliable or even harmful ideas is someone who conveniently announces that they hate you, specifically, right off the bat: they might look instead like someone who feels safe and trustworthy.
You gotta hold a dialectic: yes, Big Pet Food is run by profit obsessed bureaucrats who primarily care about making as much yield as possible, and also it is possible for the incentives of a corporation to align with producing a product that is both cost efficient to produce and backed by solid research. It is possible for people to be wrong about things without deliberately lying about them on published data. It is very possible for people whose values I agree with, and whose skepticism regarding hegemonic or normative approaches to the world I approve of in one category of the world, to be absolutely and absurdly wrong about other things.
The devil is, as always, in the details.
posted by sciatrix at 7:44 AM on December 11, 2022 [14 favorites]
Flagging this entire comment as fantastic, but I think this hits the nail on the head. I think it's incredibly important to also acknowledge the role of emotion in decision-making: no matter what your beliefs about the trustworthiness of various institutions, you're sometimes going to have to figure out whether a deeply flawed institution is essentially right about particular things.
For example, take the dog food thing. I don't actually trust food corporations to have my best interests at heart or to not cut corners or whatever--but I actually do know how AAFCO feeding trials work, I've read the grain digestion amylase copy number variation study, and I've observed that dogs often do well on a really wide variety of foods. I switch brands around a lot. I mention this example, again, because I think it really goes against the grain for many of us.
Sometimes you really do have to take a leap of faith. My one pica cat is on clomipramine because he's a pretty serious case and I found exactly one study suggesting it might help when I checked the (depressingly sparse) literature and brought it to my vet. We do other stuff, too, with no real literature-based suggestion that they're useful: puzzle toys with kibble, copious access to spider plants, rawhide sticks. He improved significantly on his urge to eat fabric, and we visited a veterinary behaviorist when we could access one who seemed pleasantly surprised by the interventions we were using. But there isn't a clear answer on what to do, and she acknowledged that: sometimes you legitimately have a complicated case, and all you can do is your best.
I think it's incredibly important to underscore how much harder it is to be skeptical of groups, trends, and ideals that share our values, because we are primed to feel safer with them and trust them more. I am not worried about MeFites on the crunchier end of the spectrum rushing out to double fist ivermectin as a COVID preventative because bluntly those are not people most of us are predisposed to trust and respect. They're the Enemy and so when they do stupid shit or get stupid ideas stuck in their heads, it ain't tempting. The trick is that not everyone peddling unreliable or even harmful ideas is someone who conveniently announces that they hate you, specifically, right off the bat: they might look instead like someone who feels safe and trustworthy.
You gotta hold a dialectic: yes, Big Pet Food is run by profit obsessed bureaucrats who primarily care about making as much yield as possible, and also it is possible for the incentives of a corporation to align with producing a product that is both cost efficient to produce and backed by solid research. It is possible for people to be wrong about things without deliberately lying about them on published data. It is very possible for people whose values I agree with, and whose skepticism regarding hegemonic or normative approaches to the world I approve of in one category of the world, to be absolutely and absurdly wrong about other things.
The devil is, as always, in the details.
posted by sciatrix at 7:44 AM on December 11, 2022 [14 favorites]
A lot of crunchy people are very, very smart. They know how to read a paper and can tell you how much microplastic is showing up in placentas and how sythnetic hormones from birth control in waterways are feminizing fish to the point of population damage and the cancer rates from personal care items and the lead in kids' clothes and toys.
I'm not saying that these people aren't smart. Many of them are, but they fall prey to the idea that if they don't understand something therefore other people can't either.
If you learn about microplastics in waterways and then proceed to use essential oils to address that issue, or consume colloidal silver or attempt to self-administer chelation therapy in pursuit of ridding yourself of heavy metals that you haven't even verified are present in your body, you are profoundly misunderstanding the basic principles of the world we live in.
Injecting bee venom to remove "toxins" is, at a deep level, functionally identical to attempting to exorcize a demon with a ritual.
It's not stupidity, and I never said it was. It's willful, dedicated abandonment of one set of principles you do not understand and adherence to new principles which you do not understand because you have fallen prey to the power of anecdata.
Anyone who threatens doctors over not giving a loved one hydroxychloroquine after it was well established that its effectiveness was virtually nil when the patient is already on ventilation is someone who only understands scientific principles in a cargo cult fashion.
"Do your own research" is a nice thing to say but it presumes you understand the principles at work. Memorization does you no good if you cannot draw sound inferences from what you read.
posted by tclark at 8:18 AM on December 11, 2022 [26 favorites]
I'm not saying that these people aren't smart. Many of them are, but they fall prey to the idea that if they don't understand something therefore other people can't either.
If you learn about microplastics in waterways and then proceed to use essential oils to address that issue, or consume colloidal silver or attempt to self-administer chelation therapy in pursuit of ridding yourself of heavy metals that you haven't even verified are present in your body, you are profoundly misunderstanding the basic principles of the world we live in.
Injecting bee venom to remove "toxins" is, at a deep level, functionally identical to attempting to exorcize a demon with a ritual.
It's not stupidity, and I never said it was. It's willful, dedicated abandonment of one set of principles you do not understand and adherence to new principles which you do not understand because you have fallen prey to the power of anecdata.
Anyone who threatens doctors over not giving a loved one hydroxychloroquine after it was well established that its effectiveness was virtually nil when the patient is already on ventilation is someone who only understands scientific principles in a cargo cult fashion.
"Do your own research" is a nice thing to say but it presumes you understand the principles at work. Memorization does you no good if you cannot draw sound inferences from what you read.
posted by tclark at 8:18 AM on December 11, 2022 [26 favorites]
To follow up on tclark and Jilder, I'm not sure how many conversations people have directly had with crunchy folks, but I've had a lot. Whenever I empathize with their concerns and then provide a calm explanation of the science, the conversation shuts down. Immediately. They do not want to know more, they are not curious, they do not want to hear anything that contradicts their own "research."
I'm sure there are crunchy people who are motivated, who would love to have more information, who just want to learn. I haven't met them yet, but it's nice to know that some of them may be open to this and I'm not totally wasting my time by providing information for people.
posted by brook horse at 8:59 AM on December 11, 2022 [19 favorites]
I'm sure there are crunchy people who are motivated, who would love to have more information, who just want to learn. I haven't met them yet, but it's nice to know that some of them may be open to this and I'm not totally wasting my time by providing information for people.
posted by brook horse at 8:59 AM on December 11, 2022 [19 favorites]
It's willful, dedicated abandonment of one set of principles you do not understand and adherence to new principles which you do not understand because you have fallen prey to the power of anecdata.
Just remembered a convo I had with a person trying to get me to try bee venom therapy (I agreed to the conversation to appease my mother). She told me that she had a low core body temperature and bee venom therapy raised it 2 degrees. I told her, oh, well, my problem is I overheat too easily, so that's not for me.
She told me not to worry, it would work the opposite way for me because "the bee venom seems to know where to go and chase down what's not supposed to be there!"
This is one of the conversations that I politely exited without trying to provide information, because, um, I wasn't really sure where to even start with that.
posted by brook horse at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Just remembered a convo I had with a person trying to get me to try bee venom therapy (I agreed to the conversation to appease my mother). She told me that she had a low core body temperature and bee venom therapy raised it 2 degrees. I told her, oh, well, my problem is I overheat too easily, so that's not for me.
She told me not to worry, it would work the opposite way for me because "the bee venom seems to know where to go and chase down what's not supposed to be there!"
This is one of the conversations that I politely exited without trying to provide information, because, um, I wasn't really sure where to even start with that.
posted by brook horse at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Now hip replacement surgery is a very well understood, routine operation.
I have autoimmune/joint problems and some long-term damage to one hip joint from a car wreck about 25 years ago. I have been repeatedly told that hip replacement surgery advances significantly every five years and that I should wait as long as possible when my hip tries to give out for that reason, and specifically because the downside of a hip replacement can be so bad. I'm very sorry about your friend, but as a person in line for that surgery down the road, I think of it as well-understood and routine from the surgeon's side but still somewhat risky from the side of the patient.
I am not generally crunchy at all, in part for disability reasons (prepared food is Not Crunchy and I eat a lot of it), but I get the suspicion of Big Pharma and the medical establishment. I just explain it to myself not by malice but by the financial incentives of our (in my case US) medical system, and think a lot of alternative medicine operates the same way with respect to money.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
I have autoimmune/joint problems and some long-term damage to one hip joint from a car wreck about 25 years ago. I have been repeatedly told that hip replacement surgery advances significantly every five years and that I should wait as long as possible when my hip tries to give out for that reason, and specifically because the downside of a hip replacement can be so bad. I'm very sorry about your friend, but as a person in line for that surgery down the road, I think of it as well-understood and routine from the surgeon's side but still somewhat risky from the side of the patient.
I am not generally crunchy at all, in part for disability reasons (prepared food is Not Crunchy and I eat a lot of it), but I get the suspicion of Big Pharma and the medical establishment. I just explain it to myself not by malice but by the financial incentives of our (in my case US) medical system, and think a lot of alternative medicine operates the same way with respect to money.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:09 AM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Just wanted to call attention to. this comment from a previous thread about how making one, not especially wild decision on the crunchy spectrum (in this case opting for a home birth with midwives), can inadvertently lead folks into much more dangerous rabbit holes.
posted by ActionPopulated at 9:19 AM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by ActionPopulated at 9:19 AM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
Whenever I empathize with their concerns and then provide a calm explanation of the science, the conversation shuts down. Immediately. They do not want to know more, they are not curious, they do not want to hear anything that contradicts their own "research."
I do think doing this can make you safer as an off-ramp if they get disillusioned with the crunch for their own emotional reasons, so it's not of no value, but in the short term, yeah, it doesn't accomplish much.
posted by praemunire at 10:40 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
I do think doing this can make you safer as an off-ramp if they get disillusioned with the crunch for their own emotional reasons, so it's not of no value, but in the short term, yeah, it doesn't accomplish much.
posted by praemunire at 10:40 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
iPads (expensive, no), red dye 40(possible cause of urinary incontinence, no), sugar(avoid), gluten(not an issue for most), processed foods(avoid), and plastic toys(unavoidable but often junky and hyper-marketed, no war toys, few marketing tie-ins), alternative medicines(use common sense), distrust of any western medicine(use common sense), life-saving childhood vaccines(embrace, vaccines are a blessing and save lives and health). When alternative medicines are proven, they become part of western medicine.
A friend recently posted some nonsense indicating she uses homeopathic remedies, I moved on but made a face. Lots of friends believe in astrology (eyeroll), and other things I find tedious. Humans are social and my distaste for woo has caused friction. I hate the profit side of American medicine as well as the profit side of supplements and woo, and most pf my crunchy friends take lots of supplements and follow nutritional fads. Lots of friends will loudly eschew sugar until there's good ice cream, no gluten until there's fancy pastry, etc. I don't eat dairy, because I'm lactose-intolerant, and it seems to cause inflammation. I'm aware that it's anecdata.
Pollution/ toxins seem to be causing infertility. So cheesy entrepreneurs make cleanses a thing. (Drink water and tea, eat dried fruit, vegetables, bran, you'll be cleansed.) There are certainly pollutants and additives that cause cancer, like nitrates, including the natural ones in many cured meats. My friends often choose organic foods without recognizing their privilege to do so. I keep being driven towards socialism because so many can't access or afford adequate nutrition, health care, etc.
posted by theora55 at 1:28 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
A friend recently posted some nonsense indicating she uses homeopathic remedies, I moved on but made a face. Lots of friends believe in astrology (eyeroll), and other things I find tedious. Humans are social and my distaste for woo has caused friction. I hate the profit side of American medicine as well as the profit side of supplements and woo, and most pf my crunchy friends take lots of supplements and follow nutritional fads. Lots of friends will loudly eschew sugar until there's good ice cream, no gluten until there's fancy pastry, etc. I don't eat dairy, because I'm lactose-intolerant, and it seems to cause inflammation. I'm aware that it's anecdata.
Pollution/ toxins seem to be causing infertility. So cheesy entrepreneurs make cleanses a thing. (Drink water and tea, eat dried fruit, vegetables, bran, you'll be cleansed.) There are certainly pollutants and additives that cause cancer, like nitrates, including the natural ones in many cured meats. My friends often choose organic foods without recognizing their privilege to do so. I keep being driven towards socialism because so many can't access or afford adequate nutrition, health care, etc.
posted by theora55 at 1:28 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
The classic example of Crunchy Woo -> Facism is Christiane Northrup, M.D., who has been prominent on PBS, written a bunch of books, has gone QAnon.
posted by theora55 at 1:39 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 1:39 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
processed foods(avoid)
See, this is the kind of thing which is silly. What is a processed food? Almost anything you eat, barring raw fruits and vegetables, has been processed in some form. Steel-cut oats are processed (they're cut!). Clearly there are some forms of processing that, at the very least, reduce nutritional quality (e.g., removing the bran from grains) and/or increase harmful content (e.g., use of nitrites in curing meats). But a blanket "no processed foods" just indicates buzzword thinking.
posted by praemunire at 2:26 PM on December 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
See, this is the kind of thing which is silly. What is a processed food? Almost anything you eat, barring raw fruits and vegetables, has been processed in some form. Steel-cut oats are processed (they're cut!). Clearly there are some forms of processing that, at the very least, reduce nutritional quality (e.g., removing the bran from grains) and/or increase harmful content (e.g., use of nitrites in curing meats). But a blanket "no processed foods" just indicates buzzword thinking.
posted by praemunire at 2:26 PM on December 11, 2022 [11 favorites]
just indicates buzzword thinking.
To some people it probably is buzzword thinking. To others, there is a difference between ultraprocessed products and, say, a vegetable that was fermented by shredding and adding salt.
posted by aniola at 2:55 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
To some people it probably is buzzword thinking. To others, there is a difference between ultraprocessed products and, say, a vegetable that was fermented by shredding and adding salt.
posted by aniola at 2:55 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]
And I think some people use "processed food" when they mean "ultraprocessed food" and they know the difference.
posted by aniola at 2:59 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by aniola at 2:59 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
My horizon point for processing and sugar was the fad for agave over other sugars. Look up how agave is made. Yet somehow it was better on some rubric of processing?
Part of the crunchy pipeline is absolutely about parenting and birth. I cannot tell you the amount of folk who insisted every single bad thing about my pregnancy and birth experience was about the medical system. My body knows what to do was so paramount, so integral, that if something bad happens outside the system then it was 'meant to be'.
It is not all that many steps from 'the body knows' to rejecting things you feel are safe, or safer. Never mind how bad humans are at long term planning, population level numbers, or any of that. No, the prime mode of interpretation of anything is how one feels and interprets body signals.
Which has been an enlightening experience when attempting to reconnect with my body under general therapy models designed to acknowledge trauma and anxiety. Because yeah my body is telling me something is unsafe. It's a fucking brick wall. My body is confused.
The pursuit of purity and cleanliness of self from outside invaders is directly a mimicry of bigotry and xenophobia. Does it always pan out like that? No, of course not. I breastfed past 2, that doesn't mean I crusade about purity and so on. But I was around enough other folk doing it that did.
The cult like environment of social pressure that just so happens to mimic and embody fascist ideals - including attachment parenting being another form of female disempowerment - is a huge component of this particular pipeline. I remember arguments from all sides when I was still in the baby and toddler phase because I did attachment parenting but also a gender equitable version. On one side was the girlboss kind of thing, what about YOUR IDENTITY and THIS IS ANTIFEMINIST, and the other was horrified I let my kid's dad do anything. Because he didn't have the 'parts' which meant far more than breastfeeding. Because again, it's a call to this mystical imaginary past.
Crunchy parenting and living isn't the only pipeline to fascism like this - see wellness as an industry - but they all use those features of fascism to create a corporate fealty based on imaginary plots, machismo/gender roles, heroism through the body, purity and defender, and a kind of nationalism (depending on space).
posted by geek anachronism at 3:20 PM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Part of the crunchy pipeline is absolutely about parenting and birth. I cannot tell you the amount of folk who insisted every single bad thing about my pregnancy and birth experience was about the medical system. My body knows what to do was so paramount, so integral, that if something bad happens outside the system then it was 'meant to be'.
It is not all that many steps from 'the body knows' to rejecting things you feel are safe, or safer. Never mind how bad humans are at long term planning, population level numbers, or any of that. No, the prime mode of interpretation of anything is how one feels and interprets body signals.
Which has been an enlightening experience when attempting to reconnect with my body under general therapy models designed to acknowledge trauma and anxiety. Because yeah my body is telling me something is unsafe. It's a fucking brick wall. My body is confused.
The pursuit of purity and cleanliness of self from outside invaders is directly a mimicry of bigotry and xenophobia. Does it always pan out like that? No, of course not. I breastfed past 2, that doesn't mean I crusade about purity and so on. But I was around enough other folk doing it that did.
The cult like environment of social pressure that just so happens to mimic and embody fascist ideals - including attachment parenting being another form of female disempowerment - is a huge component of this particular pipeline. I remember arguments from all sides when I was still in the baby and toddler phase because I did attachment parenting but also a gender equitable version. On one side was the girlboss kind of thing, what about YOUR IDENTITY and THIS IS ANTIFEMINIST, and the other was horrified I let my kid's dad do anything. Because he didn't have the 'parts' which meant far more than breastfeeding. Because again, it's a call to this mystical imaginary past.
Crunchy parenting and living isn't the only pipeline to fascism like this - see wellness as an industry - but they all use those features of fascism to create a corporate fealty based on imaginary plots, machismo/gender roles, heroism through the body, purity and defender, and a kind of nationalism (depending on space).
posted by geek anachronism at 3:20 PM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]
Wikipedia says agave syrup is an alternative to honey for vegans, is sweeter than sugar, and it has a low glycemic index. Comparable amounts of fructose to high fructose corn syrup. I don't know why other people bought it, I bought it when it was a fad because it was novel and sweet and I like novelty and sweet things.
I feel like a lot of people are talking about people they define as "crunchy" as a monolith, and basing their understandings of what they think of as "crunchy" on their own personal and/or local experiences.
For just one example (of the many I could have picked from this thread), the UK "crunchy" people are apparently typically transphobic and in Portland the "crunchy" grocery stores employ an above-average number of nonbinary workers.
I get stereotyped as "crunchy" and "granola" and "hippie" and I feel just as not at home with a lot of aspects "crunchy" as I do with a lot of aspects of mainstream medicine.
posted by aniola at 3:45 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
I feel like a lot of people are talking about people they define as "crunchy" as a monolith, and basing their understandings of what they think of as "crunchy" on their own personal and/or local experiences.
For just one example (of the many I could have picked from this thread), the UK "crunchy" people are apparently typically transphobic and in Portland the "crunchy" grocery stores employ an above-average number of nonbinary workers.
I get stereotyped as "crunchy" and "granola" and "hippie" and I feel just as not at home with a lot of aspects "crunchy" as I do with a lot of aspects of mainstream medicine.
posted by aniola at 3:45 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
To others, there is a difference between ultraprocessed products and, say, a vegetable that was fermented by shredding and adding salt.
That's my point, though--it's not an easy line to draw (and sometimes the damn line moves on you, thanks, science!), and requires individual consideration of the wide variety of differents kinds of processing, and so just saying "avoid processed foods" is not a useful guideline at all. I think there was a Mefi thread not long ago about "ultraprocessed" foods where there was considerable dissension about what that meant, even if we can admit that, e.g., Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips (*) are probably far from the grace of God on most axes.
(*) Note: I love Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips and their bright red dusting of artificial flavor.
posted by praemunire at 4:30 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
That's my point, though--it's not an easy line to draw (and sometimes the damn line moves on you, thanks, science!), and requires individual consideration of the wide variety of differents kinds of processing, and so just saying "avoid processed foods" is not a useful guideline at all. I think there was a Mefi thread not long ago about "ultraprocessed" foods where there was considerable dissension about what that meant, even if we can admit that, e.g., Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips (*) are probably far from the grace of God on most axes.
(*) Note: I love Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips and their bright red dusting of artificial flavor.
posted by praemunire at 4:30 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]
praemunire, it's pretty difficult to define well, but well-researched articles are saying that ultra-processed foods are not healthy. Think Doritos and Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips. and, yes, I meant ultra-processed. I eat potato chips sometimes, but I'm aware they have a crappy calorie:nutrition ratio. I eat bacon, too, though quite a bit less since it has been well-documented that nitrates are carcinogenic. Because I don't eat dairy, I end up making a lot of my food from scratch. I try to emphasize vegetables. As a mildly crunchy parent, I raised a kid who loves Brussells sprouts and will always take an apple if there's a bowl of them out.
posted by theora55 at 4:40 PM on December 11, 2022
posted by theora55 at 4:40 PM on December 11, 2022
Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles
And what is the texture of these chips? Are they...crunchy?
HORSESHOE THEORY CONFIRMED
posted by mittens at 5:05 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
And what is the texture of these chips? Are they...crunchy?
HORSESHOE THEORY CONFIRMED
posted by mittens at 5:05 PM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
(*) Note: I love Flamin' Hot Sour Cream and Cheddar Ruffles fried potato chips and their bright red dusting of artificial flavor.
I knew someone who figuring out he could eat his daily flamin' hot cheetos with chopsticks. That way the bright red dust only stuck to his innards, not his outards. It was a very exciting moment.
posted by aniola at 6:48 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
I knew someone who figuring out he could eat his daily flamin' hot cheetos with chopsticks. That way the bright red dust only stuck to his innards, not his outards. It was a very exciting moment.
posted by aniola at 6:48 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
I was raised in a series of cults, because cult hopping is a thing. The last four years has been a real terror show of watching the same forces that brewed large group awareness trainings and communes and alternative health just play like a skipped record from my childhood. My mom was a DOCTOR, an ob/gyn. We didn’t get inhalers for our asthma, we got scalding hot wool compresses on our chests to open the bronchials. Now we have permanent lung damage. My parents believed in chemtrails and chemicals that would give us leaky gut. I didn’t find out until college required my vaccination records that they had been filing conscientious objection for years and that I had never been vaccinated. Whooping cough as a ten year old sucked, but it was worse when I was 21. I wear hearing aid’s because I had scarlet fever as a kid and an ear infection for the first three years of my life that they claimed got worse when they treated it so they candled my ear instead. I’m legally blind and didn’t get glasses until high school because they had me doing eye strengthening exercises instead to cure my eyesight.
I could go on and on about the lasting health impacts of having crunchy parents and that it is extremely likely that 80%+ of the issues that keep me largely bed bound are directly due to their choices and their distrust of the medical system. But this homeopathist is GOOD because sometimes she flies to England to treat someone vaguely related to the royal family, and they wouldn’t do something that didn’t help 🙄.
They are now full QAnon. They’ve been in the fascist pipeline since I was a kid and they were registered Green Party. Ecofascism isn’t new, and it has been the underbelly of hippies and crunchy parents since at least the 70s. People make the mistake of thinking that if they don’t own a car or they grow their own food or they push for environmental policies that they can’t be fascists, when, in fact, those were core tenants of fascism in Europe in the lead up to WWII. Environmentalism and fascism have always been bedfellows, and it’s always been the case that this fact is obfuscated from the general populace until it is suddenly a full fledged movement. Waldorf education was started by an actual real Nazi in the early 1900s. Forest schools were popular among the same. It’s not at all a surprise that these institutions that were designed to create ubermenchen are attracting and creating fascists. That’s what they were designed to do.
This pipeline was already well in place by 1905 and can trace its roots back to at least the mid-1800s, which is where I personally stopped my research. Healthy perfect bodies are fascist ideology. The idea that they can be obtained through supernatural or occult means is also fascist ideology. (And that’s all crunchy is at root - the idea that there are occult rituals to perform that will make you and your kid healthy and impervious to illness.)
The pipeline isn’t incidental, it’s the POINT. That some people escape it is laudable, but it doesn’t change the basic fact. It’s very ideological foundation is fascist. Ecofascist, body fascist, and there’s a eugenicist under every rock you turn over.
posted by Bottlecap at 12:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [27 favorites]
I could go on and on about the lasting health impacts of having crunchy parents and that it is extremely likely that 80%+ of the issues that keep me largely bed bound are directly due to their choices and their distrust of the medical system. But this homeopathist is GOOD because sometimes she flies to England to treat someone vaguely related to the royal family, and they wouldn’t do something that didn’t help 🙄.
They are now full QAnon. They’ve been in the fascist pipeline since I was a kid and they were registered Green Party. Ecofascism isn’t new, and it has been the underbelly of hippies and crunchy parents since at least the 70s. People make the mistake of thinking that if they don’t own a car or they grow their own food or they push for environmental policies that they can’t be fascists, when, in fact, those were core tenants of fascism in Europe in the lead up to WWII. Environmentalism and fascism have always been bedfellows, and it’s always been the case that this fact is obfuscated from the general populace until it is suddenly a full fledged movement. Waldorf education was started by an actual real Nazi in the early 1900s. Forest schools were popular among the same. It’s not at all a surprise that these institutions that were designed to create ubermenchen are attracting and creating fascists. That’s what they were designed to do.
This pipeline was already well in place by 1905 and can trace its roots back to at least the mid-1800s, which is where I personally stopped my research. Healthy perfect bodies are fascist ideology. The idea that they can be obtained through supernatural or occult means is also fascist ideology. (And that’s all crunchy is at root - the idea that there are occult rituals to perform that will make you and your kid healthy and impervious to illness.)
The pipeline isn’t incidental, it’s the POINT. That some people escape it is laudable, but it doesn’t change the basic fact. It’s very ideological foundation is fascist. Ecofascist, body fascist, and there’s a eugenicist under every rock you turn over.
posted by Bottlecap at 12:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [27 favorites]
Waldorf education was started by an actual real Nazi in the early 1900s.
I don't want to nitpick but I don't think this is true (in fact I thought it was kind of the opposite, but it has been a long time since reading about them). Can you provide a cite?
posted by mittens at 5:04 AM on December 12, 2022
I don't want to nitpick but I don't think this is true (in fact I thought it was kind of the opposite, but it has been a long time since reading about them). Can you provide a cite?
posted by mittens at 5:04 AM on December 12, 2022
My mom was a DOCTOR, an ob/gyn. We didn’t get inhalers for our asthma, we got scalding hot wool compresses on our chests to open the bronchials.
OMG Bottlecap! I’m so sorry.
Can you explain how that works? If you’re an MD, you had to do the full med schools, pass the exams, a residency etc… did your mom just held her nose, learned all of it but decided to reject it all? I’ll assume she wasn’t working in a hospital setting, otherwise it would be cause for major conflicts, or were you the sole recipient of that secret knowledge??!!?
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:16 AM on December 12, 2022
OMG Bottlecap! I’m so sorry.
Can you explain how that works? If you’re an MD, you had to do the full med schools, pass the exams, a residency etc… did your mom just held her nose, learned all of it but decided to reject it all? I’ll assume she wasn’t working in a hospital setting, otherwise it would be cause for major conflicts, or were you the sole recipient of that secret knowledge??!!?
posted by WaterAndPixels at 7:16 AM on December 12, 2022
About Rudolph Steiner (and patron Rudolph Hess). As with a lot of things, it's complicated, but the Waldorf tour I had did not ease my mind about it and directly taught a lot of pseudoscience. We didn't choose it.
Anyways this has been interesting to read. I'm so sorry for those who grew up without the care they needed. :(
I have direct experience - after the medical system failed my daughter at her delivery in part due to trying to keep their c-section rates low, and thus started my obsession with the natural birth, which overlapped with so many other things, community. The largest online community at that time, Mothering.com, was rooted in part by an AIDS denier who refused treatment.
Even so, after I brought my first son home, I was really vulnerable. I did go down the attachment parenting road and spent my 1-year maternity leave really focused on breastfeeding, keeping our environment toxin-free (ha ha), being very selective about toys and avoiding sugar. For his first birthday I made my child a cake with a honey-sweetened frosting and he freaked out; he hated it. Now he's 17 and he buys himself candy fairly often.
The wear and tear wasn't so much on him - we vaccinated and everything else on schedule, and I had a moment of realization when he was at a playdate around 18 months that food is also community and let him eat the Gerber Puffs man - but it really wore on me. Because the mindset wasn't so much "hey, eat good food in harmony with the planet" but NEBULOUS THINGS ARE GOING TO KILL YOU. Of course that's understandable, especially since my first child had died, but it's also - extreme.
It puts the mother, and let's face it, it's almost always the mother, and her labour against the world. On the one hand it's not a lot of work to make your own baby food. But it IS a lot of work to make your own baby food, crying, while you have mastitis and 2 weeks before going back to work because you feel like if you crack open one jar of commercial baby food your child's biology/gut biome/whatever is going to be ruined forever. It also separates you from people who would love and snuggle your child, give you a break, and maybe slip him a commercial cracker laden with sugar and salt.
I don't want my kids to get diabetes or cancer. But I also don't want them to live in opposition to a foggily-imagined enemy. I talked in another thread about The Rage Machine and I would call wellness a lot right now about The Righteous - at least a dozen people I meet at work have told me they won't get Covid because they 'live healthy lives'. Add the two together and it's scary.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:33 AM on December 12, 2022 [11 favorites]
Anyways this has been interesting to read. I'm so sorry for those who grew up without the care they needed. :(
I have direct experience - after the medical system failed my daughter at her delivery in part due to trying to keep their c-section rates low, and thus started my obsession with the natural birth, which overlapped with so many other things, community. The largest online community at that time, Mothering.com, was rooted in part by an AIDS denier who refused treatment.
Even so, after I brought my first son home, I was really vulnerable. I did go down the attachment parenting road and spent my 1-year maternity leave really focused on breastfeeding, keeping our environment toxin-free (ha ha), being very selective about toys and avoiding sugar. For his first birthday I made my child a cake with a honey-sweetened frosting and he freaked out; he hated it. Now he's 17 and he buys himself candy fairly often.
The wear and tear wasn't so much on him - we vaccinated and everything else on schedule, and I had a moment of realization when he was at a playdate around 18 months that food is also community and let him eat the Gerber Puffs man - but it really wore on me. Because the mindset wasn't so much "hey, eat good food in harmony with the planet" but NEBULOUS THINGS ARE GOING TO KILL YOU. Of course that's understandable, especially since my first child had died, but it's also - extreme.
It puts the mother, and let's face it, it's almost always the mother, and her labour against the world. On the one hand it's not a lot of work to make your own baby food. But it IS a lot of work to make your own baby food, crying, while you have mastitis and 2 weeks before going back to work because you feel like if you crack open one jar of commercial baby food your child's biology/gut biome/whatever is going to be ruined forever. It also separates you from people who would love and snuggle your child, give you a break, and maybe slip him a commercial cracker laden with sugar and salt.
I don't want my kids to get diabetes or cancer. But I also don't want them to live in opposition to a foggily-imagined enemy. I talked in another thread about The Rage Machine and I would call wellness a lot right now about The Righteous - at least a dozen people I meet at work have told me they won't get Covid because they 'live healthy lives'. Add the two together and it's scary.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:33 AM on December 12, 2022 [11 favorites]
The hole of Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, Waldorf and Nazism is deep enough that you would need an entire fpp for it. The anthroposophical society did not translate his anti-semitic works into English, quite deliberately. The page on him on Quackwatch is pertinent to this discussion. The citations for this podcast episode are broad.
I am not sure how many articles I should link, but anthroposophy is hella racist and explicitly antisemitic.
“In the context of theosophical doctrine, Steiner's earlier cultural antisemitism thus became fused with racial notions and occult premises. The anthroposophist Steiner saw Jews not only as an atavistic leftover, a remnant of long bygone eras, but as biologically different from all other people, especially regarding their blood.” Rudolf Steiner and the Jewish Question
posted by Bottlecap at 7:35 AM on December 12, 2022 [16 favorites]
I am not sure how many articles I should link, but anthroposophy is hella racist and explicitly antisemitic.
“In the context of theosophical doctrine, Steiner's earlier cultural antisemitism thus became fused with racial notions and occult premises. The anthroposophist Steiner saw Jews not only as an atavistic leftover, a remnant of long bygone eras, but as biologically different from all other people, especially regarding their blood.” Rudolf Steiner and the Jewish Question
posted by Bottlecap at 7:35 AM on December 12, 2022 [16 favorites]
I think about how different my life would have been if I actually was treated for the ADHD I was diagnosed with as a child instead of my parents, (who weren't on whole that crunchy) being convinced by the narrative at the time that doctors were using Ritalin to turn children into compliant zombies. Instead I continued to struggle through school for years because I couldn't keep my mind from racing non-stop. I went to biofeedback classes and some other similar things to "learn control" but all those taught me was how to lightly relax, which isn't really a substitute for medication.
I finally got on medication for ADHD in my 30s and it made a world of difference, but that can't account for lost time. I wish I got to live a life where I was actually treated for a very real issue instead of body purity woo making my entire schooling so so so much harder than it needed to be. Even more mild versions of this sort of thinking can fuck people up long term.
posted by Ferreous at 8:46 AM on December 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
I finally got on medication for ADHD in my 30s and it made a world of difference, but that can't account for lost time. I wish I got to live a life where I was actually treated for a very real issue instead of body purity woo making my entire schooling so so so much harder than it needed to be. Even more mild versions of this sort of thinking can fuck people up long term.
posted by Ferreous at 8:46 AM on December 12, 2022 [9 favorites]
Florida State University College of Medicine researchers have linked aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in nearly 5,000 diet foods and drinks, to anxiety-like behavior in mice.
The volume of research in humans, at normal doses, suggests I need not spend much time worrying about what happened to these mice. As a lay person, studies involving in-vitro experiments or non-humans present little to no value -- their chief utility is to guide future research.
posted by Dark Messiah at 10:02 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
The volume of research in humans, at normal doses, suggests I need not spend much time worrying about what happened to these mice. As a lay person, studies involving in-vitro experiments or non-humans present little to no value -- their chief utility is to guide future research.
posted by Dark Messiah at 10:02 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
I just looked up my old PCP who left the hospital to do colored light therapy and "soul clarity" work. Well, the website is now scrubbed of all of that and is dedicated to "healing from narcissistic abuse." She calls herself a "Trauma Expert and Soul Strategist" and offers consultation packages up to $12,000 a month for her to use her "empathy super power" to physically remove trauma from your body.
She is not a psychologist and as far as I can see has no background or training in trauma. She does still have her medical license, I guess because she says it's not a therapy session and she's not a therapist. She's just an MD doing "consultations." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by brook horse at 10:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
She is not a psychologist and as far as I can see has no background or training in trauma. She does still have her medical license, I guess because she says it's not a therapy session and she's not a therapist. She's just an MD doing "consultations." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by brook horse at 10:29 AM on December 12, 2022 [6 favorites]
(I once went to a doctor for a physical injury, and the kindly doctor, in general conversation, claimed that if you have certain family histories your basically guaranteed to get type II).
I mean, it's anecdata, but all my aunts and uncles and grandparents got it, and only a couple of them were overweight at all.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:39 AM on December 12, 2022
I mean, it's anecdata, but all my aunts and uncles and grandparents got it, and only a couple of them were overweight at all.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:39 AM on December 12, 2022
they refuse to admit to themselves their ignorance, and now relish their secret knowledge.
The whole "secret knowledge" thing struck a chord because, for a brief time, I dabbled in Christian Gnosticism and the number of conspiracy nuts who run in those circles and often cross over with the very broad "crunchy" types we're talking about here is...well, it's a lot. I think there is genuinely something to this idea of having secret knowledge that drives a certainly segment of this larger "whatever-to-fascism" pipeline. I suppose that may, in part, be why western occultism has had a fascist problem going back to at least Nazi Germany.
posted by asnider at 1:06 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
The whole "secret knowledge" thing struck a chord because, for a brief time, I dabbled in Christian Gnosticism and the number of conspiracy nuts who run in those circles and often cross over with the very broad "crunchy" types we're talking about here is...well, it's a lot. I think there is genuinely something to this idea of having secret knowledge that drives a certainly segment of this larger "whatever-to-fascism" pipeline. I suppose that may, in part, be why western occultism has had a fascist problem going back to at least Nazi Germany.
posted by asnider at 1:06 PM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
This entire comment from Ferreous is one I related to so much. There are a fair number of types around here, as well. I often get food from them -- particularly meat -- and then eventually I make the mistake of following them on social media and discovering that, well, they sure treat their cattle well but they're also walking a very fine line between "alternative nutrition" and "anti-science conspiracy peddling." I just wanted some reasonably healthy and ethically raised meat, my dude, why did you have to start getting weird (especially noticeable during COVID and the whole trucker convoy thing)?
I've had to cut ties with a couple of smaller ranches because their views just became too extreme and I could not feel good about financially supporting them.
posted by asnider at 1:16 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've had to cut ties with a couple of smaller ranches because their views just became too extreme and I could not feel good about financially supporting them.
posted by asnider at 1:16 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]
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