Q:

I have this friend who I’ve always sorta considered “crunchy” and new agey but previously in a pretty harmless way. We’ve always had the sort of relationship with each other where we kind of tease each other because we’re so different. I’m like in my house eating Pringles and ordering pizza and she’s making her own artisanal jams and protein granola or whatever. But like I said, we’re like funny about it with each other and have always sorta enjoyed being opposites (I jokingly call her my Straight Bestie and she calls me her Gay Bestie). She would like bring over homemade healthy snacks for me, and I’d genuinely enjoy them! I’m just not going to do all that myself lol. But recently, her teasing has taken on a sort of critical and judgy tone. She made a joke about wanting to break into my house and throw away all the junk that did not land at all and barely even seemed like a joke. I recently made a joke to her about seed oils and she got REALLY WEIRD so then I was like wait you aren’t succumbing to seed oil bullshit are you? And maybe said something about raw milk too, I can’t remember. But she got so defensive and offended that I would ask that but then also….didn’t exactly deny it? It left a really bad taste in my mouth, and then I went down a rabbithole of some of her recent social media posts and none of it is like GLARINGLY bad. I know she’s vaccinated (though am unsure if she got subsequent boosters). But there’s stuff in there about eating healthy being the ultimate medicine and just some other language that could be orangey flaggy?

Based on the way she reacted to the seed oil question, I’m not sure I can exactly come outright and be like hey you’re not falling for any MAHA/RFK stuff right?!?!?! I know in my heart that she for sure did not vote from Trump and we talk about him being terrible all the time. But something definitely feels off and like am I going to have to deprogram my friend if some conspiracy theory stuff got to her?! I miss the teasing dynamic we used to have, which never felt judgy or mean. WHEN DID NUTRITION BECOME SO POLITICAL?????????

A:

Okay, this is exactly what scares me about all the MAHA stuff and wellness culture. It seems too easy for people of various political alignments to fall for some of MAHA’s talking points. Social media is flooded with information about nutrition and food that is not science- or research-backed. Even I recently had to text a friend of mine who is pretty well versed in wellness culture criticism to ask if red-lens sunglasses are mostly a scam (short answer: yeah, they are). Wanting to be healthy and wanting to eat more ethically are great goals, but they are not really what MAHA is predicated on. It’s an aggressively anti-science movement. And you’re right to be worried about your friend. The MAHA movement is more dangerous than mainstream media sometimes presents it.

If we take the politics out of it for a second (and tbh, nutrition has long been politicized! it’s just becoming more overtly so lately), it’s also just not okay that she’s being judgy of your own food choices. That is not okay, and that is not a good friend. Whatever teasing relationship you had before is between y’all and so long as you were both comfortable, that’s fine and dandy, but the second the dynamic shifted into discomfort and judgement, it sounds like the relationship was (understandably!) tainted. Referring to the food in your house as junk is not okay and assigning moral value to some foods over others is completely counterintuitive to a healthy relationship with food, something your friend supposedly values I’d assume!

So if you aren’t comfortable yet being direct in asking her about her broader beliefs, you might want to at least start here and focus on the personal and intimate. She’s saying things that feel mean to you. You need to let her know how you feel and why. The thing about specific dynamics in a friendship is that, as with any relationship, they can be renegotiated at any point. It sounds like y’all might need to have a conversation about pressing pause on the teasing for now while you work through some of your differences and rebuild trust.

But rebuilding that trust is going to be impossible if your friend is indeed succumbing to dangerous anti-science beliefs. It’s one thing to have playful differences and another to have deep political differences that put your values at odds with each other. It’s a slippery and short slope from “drinks raw milk” to “anti-vaxxer.” Being crunchy doesn’t automatically make you conservative these days, but the right is staking claim to more and more crunchy spaces. If your friend starts selling or pushing supplements, that’s a big red flag, so maybe you should jump in before it gets to that point. I agree, it’ll be hard to do in a way that doesn’t potentially upset her. But I think it sounds like it’s already past the time for those difficult conversations.

You can go into those conversations in good faith but also hold in your heart the possibility that they could have devastating impacts on the friendship. But if there’s at all a chance you could reel your friend in from going down a bad path, I think you should take it. In any case, you should enforce a boundary that criticizing your own food choices is not okay and not something you’re going to tolerate. My guess is that conversation alone will naturally dig up the deeper underlying roots of where your friend is coming from and allow you to get to the bottom of where she really stands.

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