The Food Sensitivity Test to MAHA Mom Pipeline

Debunking the diet-y origins of Making American Healthy Again.

A few weeks ago,

Sara Petersen

dove deep into the MAHA Mom mindset. How did so many crunchy mamas (see: Rudy Jude, 1000 Hours Outside) end up voting for Trump? One big reason is influencer culture, as Sara explains:

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

Sara’s piece introduced me to Zen Honeycutt, a leader in the MAHA mom movement who pinpoints her moment of radicalization to her children’s “food allergies and autoimmune issues.” “I was a very stressed out mother, because I thought my kids could die from food,” she told CNN. Cutting out processed foods, growing her own produce, and raising her own chickens and goats has been the “cure,” in Honeycutt’s eyes, to her children’s food issues. And this motivated Honeycutt to start a crusade against GMOs and pesticides in the food supply…which led her to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and MAGA.

When I heard Honeycutt’s origin story, another piece of the MAHA mom puzzle snapped into place. I was also once a mom terrified for my child’s relationship with food. It’s been years but I can immediately tap back into how dark and vulnerable that place is. And how desperate you are for any explanation, anything that feels like the hidden truth.

Diet culture—and its twin sister, wellness culture—preys on this vulnerability.

I don’t know exactly how Honeycutt diagnosed her children’s food issues, but I’d be willing to bet that it involved various kinds of elimination diet protocols and at least a toe dipped into the wildly unregulated market of food sensitivity testing.