In cities across the country, a growing number of American moms are embracing a lifestyle

built around natural foods, fewer screens, homeschooling, and avoiding processed ingredients.

On the surface, it sounds like a return to simplicity, part back to the land, part clean living. But something else

is happening inside this movement, distrust of the medical system. Conspiracy theories about

vaccines abound amid a political shift toward health and human services secretary Robert

of Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again Agenda.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, January 21st,

2026. USA Today National Extremism reporter Will Carlos has been reporting on the rise of so-called crunchy moms, the online

ecosystem that shapes their beliefs and the very real consequences the movement poses to public

health. Will, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's always great to talk to, Dana.

Your piece starts with two mothers in suburban Cleveland who proudly describe themselves as crunchy.

They garden, check food labels, avoid dyes, and homeschool their kids.

Who are crunchy moms well?

And how do they define themselves?

Well, the label has definitely changed over the past couple of decades, really.

I mean, back in the day, Crunchy really described a, I say sort of an archetypal liberal,

like somebody who is very progressive, you're sort of classic, like, tree-hugging liberal mom.

These days, what's interesting is that the crunchy label has actually come to represent

a very different group, which is a group of conservative moms who tend to have very traditional

kind of Christian values. What's similar about the two groups is that they're all about, as you

mentioned, nutrition. They're all about what their kids eat, about ingredients, about checking health and things

like that. But there's also this kind of anti-vax element of crunchy moms as well. And so today,

...