How Religious Food Movements Paved the Way for MAHA

The following is a guest blog post by Adrienne Krone, author of Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States which is now available wherever books are sold.

The front page of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website features the heading “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) followed by a description of this mission: “Under the leadership of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., HHS is taking bold, decisive action to reform America’s food, health, and scientific systems to identify the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” Secretary Kennedy’s implementation of the MAHA agenda at HHS includes food reform efforts like removing “Petroleum-based Food Dyes,” and “Updating the Dietary Guidelines.” In addition to these food reform efforts, HHS’s reforms of scientific systems have involved widespread cuts to research funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and staffing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both of which are overseen by HHS. Many of these cuts are related to ideas that Secretary Kennedy holds about “ultra-processed foods” being the root of all disease. This assertion of Kennedy’s isn’t particularly new and neither are his efforts to pursue health through food reform. 

A lot of the work MAHA is doing has roots in religious alternative food movements that have shaped public opinions about food since the early nineteenth century. In Free-Range Religion, I trace those histories and use ethnographic methods to describe four contemporary alternative religious food movements that advocated for changes to the American food system long before MAHA was created. Understanding this history and the work of contemporary religious alternative food movements is essential to understanding how their ideologies have contributed to cultural ideas about food and public policy through initiatives like MAHA. And perhaps more importantly in the wake of MAHA’s impact on scientific research, my book also demonstrates that religious alternative food movements are often well versed in scientific research and leaders are incorporating that research into their efforts, rather than rejecting it. 

         Each of the four case studies in the book offers a window into the ways that religious people are participating in and shaping the alternative food movement. The four case studies include the Adamah Farm Fellowship, a Jewish farming programs for young adults located at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in northwest Connecticut, the Hallelujah Diet, a raw and plant-based diet program with headquarters in Gastonia, North Carolina, Baldwin Beef, a grass-fed cattle farm in Yanceyville, North Carolina, and Pearlstone Center, a non-profit Jewish retreat center in Reisterstown, Maryland. The case studies also provide insight into the complicated reality of contemporary religion because in these spaces, religious people are coming together across a variety of religious and non-religious differences to change the food system, which is why I call both this form of religion and the book about it Free-Range Religion. 

At the Adamah Farm Fellowship and Pearlstone Center, their concerns are about detachment from the food system and climate change, so their work focuses on reconnecting Jews to the earth and their food as they learn more about the contemporary food system alongside the agrarian texts and traditions of Judaism. At Adamah, this meant that their farm fellows spent most of their day on the farm planting, weeding, and harvesting produce, caring for animals, and taking classes on agriculture, social justice, and Judaism. At Pearlstone, this meant pausing their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and fellowship programs for the year and cover-cropping their fields as they observed shmita, the biblical agricultural sabbatical year. A Pearlstone staff member told me “farmers don’t rest,” so they spent the year doing restorative work around the farm like removing invasive species and adding permaculture tree guilds. The food reform work at these two sites involved engagements with research in agricultural science, collaboration with local farmers and extension agencies, and interfaith work with religious communities that share their concerns. 

         At Baldwin Beef, the Baldwin family raises cows entirely on grass in accordance with their Christian values and works with a local halal slaughterhouse to ensure that their cows experience minimal stress in their final moments. The Baldwin Beef is sold to a broad audience in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, so the Baldwins work with animal welfare certification agencies, the USDA, and the North Carolina agricultural extension office to ensure that their work is aligned with best practices and consumer demands. For example, I spend a whole day collecting soil samples on the farm with V. Mac Baldwin as part of his efforts to certify the farm as sustainable in order have the land designated as farmland in perpetuity. 

 Each of the four case studies in the book offers a window into the ways that religious people are participating in and shaping the alternative food movement.

The final site, the Hallelujah Diet’s Health Retreat in Lake Lure, North Carolina, offered training for people interested in following the Hallelujah Diet. This diet is based on a verse from the book of Genesis in the Bible, where God instructs humans to eat fruits and seeds. Diet creator George Malkmus interpreted that verse to mean that humans were created to eat a raw and vegan diet, so eating the Standard American Diet (SAD) was making them sick. This site was the most closely aligned with the ideologies that undergird the MAHA agenda, but in the Hallelujah Diet world, science also held sway among the diet’s creator and its followers. In his book, The Hallelujah Diet, Malkmus cites scientific studies alongside testimonies from dieters to support his claims about the diet’s ability to prevent and reverse disease. But even as the book suggests the diet can bring followers full healing on its own, in my time at the health retreat I found that while participants embraced the diet, they also continued to visit doctors, take medications, and undergo surgery to address their illnesses. 

         In Free-Range Religion, I found that religious people were engaged in efforts to change the food system, but as they did so, they incorporated both religious and scientific sources to do so. As food reform efforts shape public policy through the MAHA agenda, understanding the efforts of religious people like those in the book can help us see that more holistic approaches that value and incorporate science are possible.