Episode 132: Are Crunchy Moms the New Almond Moms?
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Episode Description
In this episode of The Up-Beet Dietitians podcast, Emily and Hannah discuss the recent wellness development, Crunchy Moms. You might’ve seen Crunchy Moms talking about what they’ll feed their kids or NOT feed their children. You also might be wondering, are Crunchy Moms an evolution of Almond Moms? Tune into this episode to find out!
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hello everyone welcome back to another episode of the upbeet dietitians podcast
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hello guys welcome back to the Pod today we're talking all about crunchy moms
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this one might make some people mad but let's be honest we're always making everyone mad but before we get into the
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juicy content a few quick housekeeping reminders make sure you guys subscribe to YouTube where we post video content
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along with our audio every week you can see our lovely faces as well as any like cute little additives we might throw in
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there too we also have our beat de nope yeah we also have our beat Deets bonus
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section for our tud buds too many puns to keep track of um this is where you
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can hear our bonus questions every week for only $2.99 a month we often talk
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about you know childhood and weird food opinions and the ocean and space things
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get pretty weird over there it's usually not Super Nutrition related it's just us being little goofballs really and then
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along with today's episode being about crunchy moms I think there's a lot of confusion between crunchy moms and
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almond moms and we did do a whole podcast episode with brenna o malley you might know her as the wellfull on social
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media so we'll link that down below if you want to hear more about our thoughts on almond moms but today today we will
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kind of compare the two also and see share our thoughts on what the differences are there we are in for a
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fun ride today I'm excited I'm very excited let's just jump right into it
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so like Hannah mentioned there's a lot of confusion around crunchy moms versus almond moms today we're going to be
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talking about crunchy moms they have been growing in popularity and
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prevalence I would say over the past like couple months or so so I feel like
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in terms of like the trend yeah I mean theyve thing yes but like the labeling
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themselves and like I'm a crunchy mom I think it has happened a lot with
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that like Tik Tok trend of like I'm a crunchy mom of course I blank blank blank blank blank oh yes it's come along
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with that quite a bit it has grown from that I yeah bastard okay well that makes
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that makes a lot of sense then so what is a crunchy Mom it is a crunchy mom is
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a mom or parent really any parental figure who follows a quote unquote
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natural holistic lifestyle incorporates it into their parenting some kind of like practices we
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often seen are like limiting technology avoiding modern medicine and also eating
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quote unquote clean healthy and organic yeah
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yeah I made a list of like the common food rules that these crunchy moms tend to follow that I guarantee you've heard
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and I I have made some content recently on my own social media about crunchy moms
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and I've got a lot of feedback so a lot of my thoughts today actually have come from reflecting from comments that I've
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received both from people who take our side as well as crunchy moms themselves it seems to be a spectrum like there's
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crunchy moms who are like full crunch then there's they practice some of these things have you seen like getting off
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track already have you seen the labels of like silky mom scrunchy mom those
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things no okay what I have gotten fully into it because of the videos that I
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made I think I don't know what those mean I don't know what silky and scrunchy are to be honest but there's
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like labels for I think silky is the opposite of crunchy so I think a silky mom is maybe
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what we would be if we decided to ruin our lives by having children silute was a scrunchie Mom I
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don't know for sure I could be totally wrong on this but I think if I'm using context clues correctly I think it's
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like crunchy mom light it's like a not full crunchy
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mom what is happening I know I know we got almond moms too of course yeah it's
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granola I feel like granola and crunchy really go together I like a granola
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parent or a granola woman granola mother is a crunchy mother I will not I have
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seen granola girl in context related to hiking right that's true I think granola
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maybe is more like outdoorsy like I think maybe you would be granola and not be crunchy yeah I feel like we're
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speaking a different language I know if a Boomer's listening to this they're probably like pass down in their
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chair like they had to pull over it was like a car accident almost
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almost happening we just gave someone a heart attack like a brain aneurysm from trying to understand what we're
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saying oh my gosh okay but I'm to dive into this too as well to I did not
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because I have not heard about silky or scrunchie so yeah yeah so I don't know where I was going with that exactly but
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I've got a lot of comments talking about how it seems to be a spectrum and there's different labels but the common
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food rules that most crunchy moms seem to follow or abide by oh the biggest one
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I see a lot is they don't eat poison or chemicals they also are all about eating
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organic eating clean the food dyes are another huge one they're the people who
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avoid all the artificial food dyes and then I mean along those same lines making quote unquote healthy food
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swaps it this feels like a like a product or like a baby from like
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wellness culture was just think like erupted it's it's literally Wellness
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culture in mother form yeah yeah I would say I made a note of this but I'm I'll just say it now the only time I really
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see it in context just because I feel like I try to avoid these things at all
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costs so I like even if I start to see it I'm like o I don't want to see interested block um is the poison or
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it's like feeding the government is poisoning our children mhm
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chemicals that's the comment I've gotten a lot too is what we always hear about like us being dietitians like why are
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you promoting all these chemical poisonous food dyes and it's not that I'm promoting people eat more red 40 I'm
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just saying that the dose that most of us are consuming red 40 is perfectly safe unless you yourself do have an
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individualized intolerance or whatever I'm not saying eat more of it I'm saying it's okay to likely eat what's usually
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being consumed yes it's it's crazy I'm not saying to add red 40 to like your B
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cereal in the morning like whatever whatever yeah let's talk about is I feel
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like we had already talked about this because we've already know some distinction but are crunchy moms the
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same as almond moms and kind of but not like really yeah
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there's definitely a lot of over overlap a lot of overlap but almond moms like
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you almond Moms come from the origin story of like eating like a
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singular almond on a plate yeah eating as little as possible like oh my gosh
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I'm so full from my almond I'm so full from my Speck of lettuce like that is
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kind of the Vib lettuce those are the Vibes I never thought to use spec as like unit of
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measurement for lettuce I forgot what Leaf the word leaf for a second and spec was the next
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closest thing that's funny but then crunchy moms are more of the like
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obsessive quote unquote healthy eating where it's like very hypercritical foods
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like healthier quotequote healthier swaps yeah no poison or chemicals
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allowed there're still eating things it's just like almond moms are like as
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little as possible crunchy moms are like as quote unquote healthy as possible and I think
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that's why I got so many comments from the crunchy moms that just could not
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believe that they could possibly be passing on disorder to eating to their kids because this they're eating quote
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unquote healthy so they're doing the quote unquote right thing it seems like
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but we talked about orthorexia before on here and we're not done diagnosing anyone that's not happening right now
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but that does sort of seem to be the tendency of the crunchy mom is these
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more orthorexia type Tendencies where we're eating so quote unquote healthy
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that it's actually damaging our health whereas like you just said the or or the Almond moms tend to be more about like
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eating as little as possible a lot of times like body imagees tied into that too and once again not diagnosing but if
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we are going to compare it it seems to be like that's more like anorexia type Tendencies where we're eating as little
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as possible focusing on losing weight that sort of thing and they're definitely like you there definitely are
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both whereas like they can be an almond and crunchy mom almond are crunchy most
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powerful Evolution uh but not all like they
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aren't like the exact same they're not one of the same yeah I I have two comments here that I received I think
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that sums it up really well one person said quote the ven diagram for crunchy and almond moms is practically a circle
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I was like yep that's true another person said not all almond moms are crunchy moms but all crunchy moms are
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almond moms it's like yeah that pretty much sums it up so you can be almond you can be
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almond but not crunchy but if you're crunchy you're probably also almond yeah once again the Boomers
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listening are totally like they're like what is happening why are we if you're not on
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Tik Tok you're probably not even understanding anything you're saying you're not chronically online you do not
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understand a single thing we are saying and unfortunately we have to be chronically online to understand what is
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happening this is a very Niche episode that's for sure this is incredibly
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Niche um those SEO purposes you know that's right so I feel like honestly we've
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talked about kind of like what their kind of like reasoning behind all of this like why they are the way they are
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a lot of it is like just coming from I would say generally good intentions like
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wanting to care about your kids health educating people the feeding your kids poison
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that's I don't know like I'm glad you're not poisoning your kid
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right that's a a bare minimum if you'd like to have a child please don't poison your kid but also if you're giving your
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kid Doritos you're still not poisoning them you're feeding them like you should
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yes so we have different definitions of poison right that's the comment I like
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responded to the most on Tik Tok it's like we cannot call a food poison onless
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mentioning the dose how it becomes poisonous like what's the outcome of eating said poison
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you just can't do that but that's what they all say they just like see some grabby headline about red 40 and boom
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they're off the red 40 was like all in my comments you can probably tell I
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had someone you really either struck a nerve with them about that or that all
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the rage s yeah one video that particularly pissed me off was a mom who said she was
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donating all of her quote unquote toxic foods to a food bank okay the problem here is like so
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her kid who apparently has a lot of privileges having a mom who can afford the quotequote healthy swaps her kid's
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not allowed to eat them but it's totally okay for the poor kids that have to go to the food bank and can't afford the healthy food
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it's okay if they're poisoned what that
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makes no sense like if you truly believe in your heart of hearts that a food is
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toxic or poison you're going to donate it to a food bank for some other kid to eat I can't wrap my head around that
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logic the comparison I want to make is like if a food was recalled for eoli
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would you donate that food to a food bank because eoli is also not good for you
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definitively it just like goes to show that first of all they don't actually
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know like anything about nutrition which I think we can all assume
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that and also just again the privilege like they forget that not everyone can
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afford to eat the foods that they think are the right foods to feed children the very it's just like the privilege and
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entitlement yeah that you can lecture everyone else about their food choices
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but I guess in this specific example when it comes down to it like you only care about your own kids
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yeah but as we'll kind of get to I guess maybe as a good segue you likely are
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actually doing more harm to your kids by doing this kind of thing like if they think it's only okay
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to eat quote unquote safe healthy foods and not those toxic poisonous
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conventional not organic foods with all the red 40 in them they're going to be scared of those types of foods growing
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up which is not not a good thing like I always hear like oh I'm just educating
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my kids it's what's the problem with them like knowing what foods are good for them which ones are not like that's not
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what's actually happening here it's not education it's food fearce yeah and kids are so perceptive
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like we we talk about childhood trauma all the time literally almost every
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single episode at least every bonus episode we somehow find a way to bring
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our childhood up but kids notice these things they notice the way you like you
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eat they notice the way you talk about food they notice your like mindset and
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your philosophy around things like they are incredibly intuitive and when their
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primary role models are like saying these things they're going to be very
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heavily influenced by that yeah and they're going to remember when they
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start to turn like a teenager college or
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whatever and they're going to remember like oh my my dad like wouldn't
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eat burritos because of the chemicals or my
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Mom hated now I'm thinking of the Dy now I'm only thinking of I'm sorry that's
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like all I ever hear oh it's like literally
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anything in a package like anything like that literally yeah chemicals and poison um even though
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it's all chemicals cuz that's how the world like water can poison you but whatever yeah like water is a chemical
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you know what I just thought of these are the same people who won't eat a quote unquote chemical or poison in
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their food but throwing it back to our raw milk episode they will happily drink
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raw milk that is likely at least has a higher likelihood than pasteurized milk of having like act
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actual things that can make them sick oh yeah they go out of their way to consume
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that and these are also the people we're huge
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generalizations these are also the people that will demonize like now I'm think I'm I'm
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still in the the food die red food pun fruit punch I'm stuck in that but they
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will happily like drink their like mixed cocktail I knew you're GNA say that or like they're wine they're mommy wine yes
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with red coloring in their wine right they pick their poisons
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literally it's fine the hypocrisy that's the most annoying thing that and of
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course the safety of children I think that also is a very important matter at hand even though we don't want kids we
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do care about the health and safety of children yes very much so but that's one
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of the most annoying things from kids not getting EDS is just the hypocrisy of it all like they literally just like
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cherry-pick what rules they want to follow and then pass on to Generations yeah and like often
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times the research is not there to back it and they're just like the like very
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polarizing statements are what sell and get attention that's what gets promoted
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on social media so that's the best way to promote it and get exactly exactly I
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want you to talk about this next part because I okay um I actually made a video about this recently on Tik Tok but
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I have like such vivid memories I don't know if I would call my upbringing very crunchy I think I maybe maybe it's
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scrunchie if I'm using the definition wrong I don't know but we had as we discussed before what I just
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realized I might be this is why we need to be full-time doing this so we
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can record in the morning when my brain has energy I'm just now realizing
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scrunchie is just like kind of like crunchy with an S uhhuh but I was
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imagining scrunchies like like the hair TI hair tie and this whole time I've
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been like what does that mean cuz you saying you were saying silky and I was
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like oh like the silk wraps okay the silky I think is actually just
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the opposite of crunchy okay okay yes I was right scrunchie mom is like a mix of
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the two I wonder if it's like a combination of silky and crunchy that makes so much more sense to
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than the hair tie they're like they only wear scrunchy hair ties I was like are they like visco girl
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moms where scrunchies I'm so confused okay maybe maybe I was a
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scrunchy a result of a scrunchie upbringing so like I remember like my
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mom would she was like had a big anti-bpa phase like when Plastics would have like BPA and we had like look out
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for anything that had no BPA in it that was a whole thing for a while of course I've talked about the whole organic
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thing quite a bit eating all organic but anyway I have such vivid memories of one
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of my BFFs who I'm still friends with now she grew up in a house that just regularly had like little Debbies
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Cheetos Doritos like the snack foods that you want to eat when you're a kid or and an adult let's be honest I always
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have D on hand now but I like remember vividly going to her house and like
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wanting they have like this bowl of like little Debbies they call like a snack bowl and we would occasionally just like
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get in there and like get a Little Debbie tree like a I don't know which little debies are little debies which
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ones are hoos or which ones are hostess anyway we would get in the bowl occasionally and get little treats and
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of course my friend she didn't really care that much like she wasn't thinking about oh what time are we going to get
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in that bowl and get our little snack but me I was thinking constantly about when are we finally going to get to have
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our little Debbies because those were an off liit thing in my house we did not ever have
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those so because I was restricted from those Foods I was like obsessed with
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them when they were in my vicinity but my friend because they're around all the time
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she literally couldn't care less about them and when we were going to eat them wait how old would you say you were I
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want know like let's talk about how young you were when you like started having these like thoughts we became
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friends we became friends in fourth grade so anywhere from like fourth grade through Middle School I remember even
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high school actually you know age like what 10 11 all the way through high school when I was like out on my own and
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can finally like have these Foods whenever I wanted we would go to her house and they've always had that bow they
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probably still do honestly yeah and it was always crazy how you were like 10 years
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old and like you were like with your best friend but you were like thinking
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about the snack Bowl oh yeah I'm sure her mind was like what color are we going to paint our nails today like
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where are we gonna go shopping what movie are we gonna watch not me I was thinking about little Debbies the whole
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time I have had like almost identical experience to that not
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surprised where I would get so excited to go to my friends houses and like they
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had like there were like Pantry the snack pantry and like snack cabinets depending on whose house I was at and I
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would like get so excited for like a movie because we'd always get snacks for the movie sometimes I just want to watch
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like the movie Just for the snacks literally it was driven by that
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yeah and cuz like a lot of those Foods were not allowed at our house so and
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then I probably looked a little like crazy because I was like pounding these
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snacks and they're like and then we'd like leave feeling like crap because I'm just like eating everything in s so I don't know when I'm going to get to eat
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it again and we were like in like Elementary School Middle School yeah
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when this started kids are observant
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yeah and it just goes to show that like when those Foods we talk about all the time when foods are around more if you
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have you know food accessibility of course it also plays a huge role but yeah if you have the privilege of having
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snacks of any variety on hand most of the time you're not as likely to binge
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on those types of foods but if they're not allowed there's rules around them or of course you're food insecure and you
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just don't have enough to eat overall all those things just make you more likely to engage in binge type eating
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when those foods are finally in front of you exactly the novelty is gone when
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it's always there exactly um similarly I had another friend who had in their
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garage like this drink fridge which I have now house which I love but they had
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like all the sugary drinks we were not allowed to have like the sodas what were those called those like little monkey
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Barrel drinks you know what I'm talking about monkey FAL oh what are those
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called it's I want to say like Huggy something but that's a diaper brand they're like monkey Barrel juice
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Huggy Barrel wait that's coming up monkey Barrel juice oh my gosh I know what you're talking about I've never had
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any of these hug little hug yeah so she had these I never had to drink these
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yeah neither did I until this I went to my friend's house also um shoot what are they call the blue ones
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were like in the Kool-Aid shaped container the plastic twist the top off yes yes yes yes oh my oh those were so
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good and so I'm wanting to get like drinks on drinks on drinks the whole time but my friend is just like having
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one maybe two that whole day and I'm like when are we gonna go back to the fridge and me being my anag n self I
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hate asking for things I'm never gonna ask to go out to their drink fridge and get another drink so I'm like the whole
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time thinking about when is my friend gonna get thirsty again because I want some more I couldn't just ask that'd be
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crazy like giving her salty things like sabotager oh could you like
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you know it sounds really good right now oh my gosh that's so funny yeah
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because we were a I think you mentioned this too we were a milk juice and water
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household yeah I would say yeah exactly now that we've talked about our
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childhood trauma and we can move on from that segment of the episode Hannah talked about this a
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little bit but we just want to reemphasize like how being crunchy is a very privileged Behavior to practice
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like not everyone has the time money resources to make all these like or to
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purchase these quote unquote healthy alternatives literally people are trying to survive they're just trying to get
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through the day oftentimes eating is one of the last things on their mind from like a parent standpoint you're just
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hoping your kid we are not parents we are not parents but from what I've heard from parent clients is they're just
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hoping to feed the kid like literally fed his best yes so getting up on your
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high horse and like saying like
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oh I care about my kids so much it like creates this like sense of guilt to
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other parents like oh my gosh I don't care as much about my kid as they do and
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this doesn't take into account like food insecurity food accessibility and also
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like it's it's just such a privilege to have
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to be able to make different choices in what you are purchasing in this economy in this economy yeah and it becomes like
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a competition too so not only are like is there like guilt being caused
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from the crunchy moms but also they like compete to be more crunchy than the other it's just a toxic area to be in
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it's crazy Yeah we actually have like a really good
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motherhood episode as well oh yeah where we have two fellow non-diet intuitive
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eating dietitians come on if you've heard of what the actual Fork podcast we have Sam and Jenna on and they talk
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about just like the struggles of being a mother and navigating diet culture so
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this would be a really another really great episode to listen to my last like
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little note I want to make Is We I guess speaking for myself I'm sure you do feel
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the same Emily but I have empathy for the crunchy moms the Almond moms and
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like they usually can't grasp that what they're doing is disordered that's
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that's the whole part of disordered eating and eating disorders is like you think it's the right thing to do you think it's good for your health but as
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we always said mental health is health and it's possible to be quote unquote too healthy pursuing Fitness is not
28:09
always pursuing health and so that's just what these moms are caught up in and it's just a
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result of the bigger systemic issue at hand that is diet and wellness culture
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so if you feel like maybe you're listening to this and you are reflecting and you're like oh wow I maybe a crunchy
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mom I could be doing some harm here we don't want to cause any feelings of shame or guilt that's just as bad as the
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crunchy moms shaming the silky moms it's just good to I guess reflect is kind of the bottom line and it makes
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sense that crunchy might become or feel like the norm or like the best way to be
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a mom and that's what we're always told is like if you're not pursuing the healthiest version cutting out this that
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and the other then you're a bad parent yeah and you don't care about your kid
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exactly when that's not the case like clearly I'm assuming most people care
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about their kids well I'm I'm saying that's why I say I assume most
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people care about their kids
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yes maybe the actions don't always portray that but that's another story that's another story the end of the
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day it's just culture it's just culture's fault as always that's the
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real you know how there's Public Enemy Number One D C is like private Enemy Number One
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because they like are the main issue and
29:44
problem but it's very like secretive right it's the pursuit of
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Health yeah especially Wellness culture I feel like that's even more so like a
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hidden what's the word like health Halo type thing nasty people and things and
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system all right well guys we've got some more diet reviews coming up so get
30:12
excited for the upcoming weeks but otherwise thanks for tuning in be sure to subscribe follow along and we'll see
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you next week yeah leave a review come over and listen to the beat Deeds immediately where we can talk more about
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our trauma and granola today today we'll be talking
30:31
about granola which will be very exciting and we'll see you guys next week okay bye
The Beet Deets Bonus Segment
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This bonus episode might be the funniest one yet. In this episode, Emily and Hannah discuss "what is the best kind of granola?" and "what is the best way to eat granola?" Because this is The Up-Beet Dietitians, they naturally deter quite quickly. Hannah discusses her ultimate slime-textured entree, Emily discusses her sad grocery store "treats," they discuss rather going to their OB/GYN than the dentist, and Hannah talks about her interesting reading techniques (not what you think). Tune in for lots of laughs!
