“Clean Eating” in a Polluted World:Theologies of Purity and Toxicity in the MAHA Movement

Many ideals, theologies, and values from the purity culture movement have resurfaced in 2025 under a different guise, manifesting themselves in the ways that food, cleanliness, wellness, and toxicity are discussed in society today. In the 2020s, especially leading up to the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the US Secretary of Health and Human Services under the second Trump administration, many have witnessed a rise of wellness movements--often implicitly or explicitly associated with right-wing politics or championed by politically conservative influencers--that promote clean eating and the removal of toxins from one's everyday consumption. Seed oils, a broad category of vegetable oils extracted from plant seeds, are deemed to be "poisoning America" and causing inflammation due to the presence of the hazardous chemical solvent hexane, added during the refinement process. Meanwhile, products such as beef tallow, raw milk, and bone broth have increased exponentially in popularity after being sold with the promise that these more pure and unrefined oils and food are the solution to chronic illnesses.

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https://doi.org/10.2979/jfs.00076

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