00:05:45.820Which are these sort of powdery supplements that are a mixture of usually like mushrooms and herbs and a lot of ingredients that are borrowed really heavily from Chinese medicine, from Ayurveda, from herbalism, a wide range of sort of Eastern slash alternative medicines.
00:06:06.020I can see why Gwyneth Paltrow likes this.
00:06:09.820right up her alley it's interesting you know gwyneth paltrow calls her website goop right it's
00:06:14.540kind of like a satire of people who are promising to fix your life with some sort of goop like yeah
00:06:21.400lol everybody has a goop they're selling ours is just going to be called goop right and they're
00:06:25.840doing it feels like they're doing the same thing here by calling it dust yeah right where dust is0.98
00:06:29.520associated with like dirt and filth they're sort of tongue-in-cheek referencing how much fucking0.97
00:06:34.660snake oil there is in this field. So potentially, that's the case. I will say I did read one review0.98
00:06:40.820of the dusts that was like, I really liked that it was dust and not powder because powder sounds
00:06:45.460synthetic and dust sounds natural. And I was like, this is bizarre. Yeah, that's probably going on
00:06:50.080too. Yeah, this this idea that everything has to be quote unquote, natural. Moon Juice is also big
00:06:54.140on adaptogens. Oh, fuck. It's like Chevron with Tecron. It's just a made up word. Yeah. So do you1.00
00:07:03.820know anything about adaptogens? Has that come across? Is that a real word? Yeah, it's a real
00:07:07.760word. What? Okay. It's totally a real word. And it's totally Chevron with Tecron. Here's there's
00:07:15.920a quote from the New York Times did a whole piece called what are adaptogens? Because if you are
00:07:22.280like me, a white woman in your 30s, adaptogens are everywhere on like Sephora, they're everywhere in0.99
00:07:27.280juice bars, they're everywhere in all kinds of stuff, right? Wow. So this is the definition1.00
00:07:32.120and sort of little explanation from the New York Times, quote, coined in 1947, the term adaptogen
00:07:38.600refers to substances that theoretically, quote unquote, adapt to what your body needs and help
00:07:44.360protect against various stressors. Oh, for fuck's sake. Although the science is as murky as a0.99
00:07:49.640mushroom drink looks, and these supplements are unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration,
00:07:55.060that hasn't stopped trendsetters from sharing their purported benefits, which includes supporting
00:07:59.160the body's adrenal glands, reducing stress levels and regulating hormone responses for an overall
00:08:03.800sense of homeostasis or balance. Oh, God. It's just like classic marketing stuff.
00:08:12.040So there's like a little bit of science that shows that there might be some benefits. Those
00:08:16.300studies have all been done in rats. Nice. Wait, what are they, though? Are they a pill or like
00:08:21.280are they found in like broccoli or something? Where are we getting these adaptogens?
00:08:25.340They're found mostly in like mushrooms, everything in the moon dusts. So there's like
00:08:33.180brain dust and power dust and spirit dust and something called sex dust.0.89
00:13:43.160Totally. She also gets asked a lot about her beauty regimen. And every time her response
00:13:48.300is like, I don't really wear makeup. And like real beauty comes when your body is in its right
00:13:53.120state, right? And when you're in tune with your body. So she's really able to sort of like bring
00:13:59.100that back to moon juice foods and supplements and the whole thing right which always bothers me
00:14:04.460because it's like someone who won the lottery giving you money advice the key is just to not
00:14:10.900care and don't wear makeup and eat lots of fruits and vegetables it's like or the key is to be born
00:14:16.240with genetics that make you not store body fat that make you not have acne that make you have
00:14:22.080nice hair and nice skin i mean so much of this is totally out of her control totally it's both like
00:14:29.680genetic advantage right plus having kind of astronomical amounts of disposable income0.99
00:14:36.460yeah so you mentioned in the google image search you said the first thing that came up was a food
00:14:41.940diary yes and that is actually how i came to know of moon juice because of what was in the food
00:14:49.980diary. So Elle magazine does this thing from time to time, where they say, like, tell us everything
00:14:54.520you eat. Oh, we're like, they invite celebrities to lie about it, basically. Yeah, totally. So
00:15:00.280Amanda Chantal Bacon wrote her own food diary. And I'm just gonna give you a couple of quotes
00:15:07.980from it. I'm not gonna, we're not gonna lead up, we're just gonna do quotes. All right, do it.
00:15:12.180At 8am, I had a warm morning chi drink on my way to the school drop off drunk in the car.
00:15:18.800It contains more than 25 grams of plant protein thanks to vanilla mushroom protein and stone ground almond butter and also has the super endocrine brain immunity and libido boosting powers of brain dust, cordyceps, reishi, maca, and shilajit resin.
00:15:37.140I throw Hoshu Wu and Pearl in as part of my beauty regime, and I chase it with three
00:15:43.440Quinton shots for mineralization and two lipospheric vitamin B complex packets for energy.0.99
00:15:50.900You are fucking making this up, Aubrey.0.99
00:16:33.340she says this is such an easy elegant and light meal i made this while on a phone meeting before
00:16:40.980heading out for the rest of the work day i often alternate this with my other lunch staple a nori0.98
00:16:46.440roll with umeboshi paste avocado cultured sea vegetables and pea sprouts where the fuck is0.97
00:16:52.700she getting these ingredients i wouldn't even know where to begin getting like pea sprouts or1.00
00:16:57.300whatever. Yeah, I mean, like, so much of her food is like dependent on you take a day each week to
00:17:06.740make your nut milks from scratch to do bubble but really to do all this stuff to ferment things to0.93
00:17:13.980do all of that. And I would say all of this does sound like tasty. It sounds tasty to me as a snack.
00:17:19.980And it's really hard to me to imagine being like, my whole lunch was roasted seaweed, fermented plum paste, avocado, fresh seaweed, and pea sprouts.
00:17:43.900It's also interesting how this is wrapped up with sort of her work schedule, that she's mentioning with the breakfast that she's dropping off her kids, and she's mentioning with the lunch that, oh, I'm doing this on a meeting, and then I rush off to work.
00:17:57.220The fantasy is that we can all eat like this and deal with all of our other obligations.
00:18:02.640Like, oh, I just like whipped together a bunch of zucchini ribbons and a couple sprigs of basil, I tore them up.
00:18:07.780And it's like, no, the amount of preparation that goes into these kinds of meals and this kind of eating, unless you're like a stay at home person or you have a live in chef or personal assistant who's doing all the shopping for you, it's not attainable for most people.
00:18:23.440So like one of the things that happened is fallout from this on that note.
00:18:27.440First of all, I should say this blew up on the Internet.
00:18:30.720You can imagine the heyday that people had.
00:18:34.020There were like snarky pieces on like Jezebel and in the New Yorker and like everybody went to town.1.00
00:18:39.760I am all for just like heaping scorn on clueless rich people who do shit like this.0.99
00:18:46.900Like I think we always have to temper this with like sometimes it's like shot through with misogyny.0.99
00:18:50.840There's like there's other things that we need to be wary of and we don't want to go overboard.0.98
00:18:54.580But I also think that, like, clueless rich people are the most fucking infuriating thing, especially now.0.94
00:19:01.240And salty articles about them, I think, are completely fine.0.96
00:19:05.300Well, there were two headlines that were, like, outstanding.0.67
00:19:07.680One was Gia Tolentino's headline, which was, I've never heard of any of the things this white woman eats.0.80
00:19:15.160And the other one was from New York Magazine.0.99
00:19:18.740And it just said, this woman makes Gwyneth Paltrow look like Guy Fieri.
00:19:22.700Right. So it's partly like folks are, you know, there's backlash to the like incredible, weird, wealthy name droppiness of it all.
00:19:31.940And some of it is also this like incredibly curated life that people are like, that's not actually how people live.
00:19:37.580There's also the thing that usually these clueless celebrity look at my life type articles, there's usually also a through line of sort of couching this as like sustainability or couching this as like, oh, look how good I am for the planet and all this other fake virtue about eating like this and living like this.
00:19:58.320I mean, oftentimes it comes with this implicit or explicit social message about how if everybody lived like this, wouldn't the world be better?
00:20:05.540And it's like, no, all the data indicates that we cannot live like this.
00:23:56.960So the idea was that your uterus essentially becomes detached from your vulva.
00:24:01.600So totally biological concepts that aren't socially determined at all.
00:24:04.940Neuristhenia is sort of a twin diagnosis to hysteria.
00:24:08.940It was this purported sort of nervous system condition in which people had depleted energy and that depleted energy or sort of weak nerves is the other way that neurasthenia gets described is seen as a natural consequence of modern civilization.
00:27:48.780It's also around the same time that Kellogg's is founded, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, which were invented by John Harvey Kellogg, who was a doctor who ran a sanitarium.0.67
00:28:00.720The sanitarium was a sort of, it sounds a little spa-like.
00:28:05.240And he came up with this recipe for toasted cornflakes, and his brother bought the rights and started Kellogg's Cereal, and it was marketed as a health food, right?
00:28:12.460Some of these products were also specifically marketed to women, including one that was advertised in a 1902 Sears and Roebuck catalog.
00:28:30.200No matter who you are, what your disfigurements may be, you can make yourself as handsome as any lady in the land by the use of our French arsenic wafers.1.00
00:28:42.460Yeah. Arsenic is the only thing standing between you and true beauty. That's awesome.0.99
00:28:48.840Totally. So they say it will take care of your freckles. It'll take care of like any skin
00:28:53.440breakouts or redness or jaundice or rough skin. They say it will sort of like make you more
00:29:01.480beautiful than anyone. Just eat arsenic. Small doses of poison. Yeah. So as you've noted,
00:29:07.880Like there's a lot of this, like we sort of hear echoes of this today, right?
00:29:12.640And, you know, as close as we get in the moon juice world and in contemporary wellness,
00:29:17.440in terms of a definition of being well, is just like, is your whole life going the way
00:29:32.480But again, like this is just being a person in the world.
00:29:36.460Yeah, it's I mean, yeah, it's so hard to talk about this without sounding judgy, right? Because people do struggle with fatigue, people do struggle with sleep, general, you know, aches and pains, people get lower back pain as they get older, their knees hurt. You know, there's just a lot of hurt going around. And like, you don't want to in any way invalidate that or act to people like, oh, just you complaining, which it objectively isn't like people are hurting mentally and physically.
00:30:00.700But also what is gross about stuff like Moon Juice is that then you get these fucking vampires coming in and using those real problems as an opportunity to sell you bullshit that does not help you and enriches them.0.99
00:30:15.900Right. And as any person who is disabled or who has a chronic illness will tell you, you will hear about this shit, like this moon juice style nonsense all the time as a prescriptive thing. Right. Right. So people who are disabled will get like a, hey, you just need to try this mushroom powder or you just need to eat more vegetables or you just need to exercise more or you just need to blah, blah, blah. Right.0.99
00:30:41.700So it also sort of like not only does it not help people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, it also sort of feeds into this weird concern trolling, abled people saying I know better than you disabled person kind of vibe that's really creepy.
00:30:57.700creepy. Yeah, it reinforces this idea that, you know, if you have a real illness, like it must
00:31:03.880be because you're not eating enough probiotics, or there's something you're doing wrong,
00:31:10.660as opposed to just trying to connect with that person and trying to find out what their experience
00:31:16.180is like. It's like you're constantly looking for a reason that they've done it to themselves.
00:31:20.440Totally. Like if you have chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a real thing that people
00:31:23.340have thought is fake for decades. It's like, oh, no, no, no, it must be a food allergy. It
00:31:27.540It must be because you did this wrong.
00:31:28.740It must be because you're not getting enough fresh air.
00:31:30.940The explanations change over the decades, but there's always some reason why you don't
00:31:51.680She's the only Moon Juice employee who's really quoted anywhere.
00:31:55.180That said, it's really difficult to dig in on her because the only things we know about Amanda Chantal Bacon are what she has told us, which is not much.
00:32:06.200There is not a Wikipedia page for her or for Moon Juice, which is super strange.
00:32:11.820All we have are sort of these kind of tales that she tells about her own wellness or lack of wellness.
00:32:18.600I should say, like, in fairness, all anybody knows about me is what I've told them.
00:32:22.880I mean, this is, yeah, being a public, semi-public figure. Yeah.
00:32:27.040Yes. So there are a couple of sort of stories that she tells about her own wellness or lack
00:32:33.240thereof that are sort of really important to the mythology of moon shoes. So she grew up in New
00:32:39.080York City, and she had this bronchial issue as a small child. She's like four or five when this
00:32:46.360is happening. She's coughing at night. She can't figure out what it is. Western doctors, she says,
00:32:51.180repeatedly or sort of no help. And, you know, sometimes they say she will outgrow it or
00:32:56.700whatever, right? So she's just like living with this kind of miserable condition until she and
00:33:03.360her parents are grocery shopping in a health food store when a stranger hears her hacking cough
00:33:11.720and comes over and says that she should stick out her tongue. He takes her pulse. He asks her a
00:33:18.860couple of questions. And it turns out that he is an Ayurvedic medicine practitioner from India.
00:33:25.820Oh, I thought he was going to turn out to be L. Ron Hubbard. Okay. That'd be great.
00:33:29.760So she says within just a few minutes that he makes this diagnosis and tells her everything
00:33:36.440she needs to do, which includes avoiding wheat, dairy and sugar. But she also says that within
00:33:44.780a week of doing it that all of her symptoms are gone. So here's a quote from her about sort of
00:33:51.140the effects of eating this way. As I grew, my immune system also became stronger. So I was
00:33:56.700able to have moments of flexibility. Even then, I always felt it the next day. And I was susceptible
00:34:02.660to bronchitis, chronic sinusitis and terrible allergies. As I moved into my teens, I began to
00:34:09.000receive warnings from Western medical practitioners, which became diagnoses of exhaustion,
00:34:14.780hormonal imbalance, and emotional distress ranging from ADD, autoimmune disorders, depression,
00:34:21.080prediabetes, and a whole range of other maladies. All of these diagnoses came with the message that
00:34:26.680it was a lifelong sentence that could only be addressed with synthetic drugs, and that failing
00:34:31.500to take those drugs would ultimately be life-threatening. Oh, God. I really love how much
00:34:35.940you hate this. Oh, my God. It's just such a, like, human story. And it's so, it could be such a,
00:34:41.880like inspiring and nice story of somebody who found happiness in this unconventional way but
00:34:47.500instead of using it as a platform to show curiosity about what's going on with other people
00:34:52.100she uses it as a platform to be like well everybody else's body must be just like mine
00:34:56.460totally uh i just we hear this so often it's like these nice inspirational stories0.92
00:35:00.680that just become gross marketing bullshit so she's doing all of this later on she also goes
00:35:07.700on a juice cleanse to to cure her own sugar addiction of course juice cleanses are involved0.98
00:35:13.880in this here's another quote from sort of the effects of going on this juice cleanse
00:35:17.680the changes weren't all physical i noticed that the inclusion of green juices and live plant foods
00:35:23.440in my diet incited a personality shift okay thought patterns and roles i had assumed were
00:35:28.780part of my quote-unquote personality dissolved these apparently deep-seated traits of mine
00:35:34.480were disappearing just as my cough had vanished in the absence of sugar, wheat, and dairy.
00:35:39.800The foods I was choosing were changing the nature of the thoughts that were creating my reality.
00:35:45.600Oh, no. She's like a kid who studied abroad. And then they come home, and they're like,
00:35:52.500actually, in Belgium, the way that they do things is...
00:35:56.220Michael, she did this juice cleanse in Italy.0.87
00:41:30.520This just feels like a very insulated, very wealthy white woman who does not imagine,0.99
00:41:36.340you know, I think she thinks this is like only a net gain to the world0.84
00:41:40.080and doesn't really think about like, who could this hurt?
00:41:43.420Okay, you know, she doesn't think about all that stuff.
00:41:46.000And I also don't think she's like necessarily cynically profiteering off of it.
00:41:49.300I think she's just wealthy and has always had money. It doesn't occur to her that a $14 juice
00:41:56.080is like not an option. I also think that as adults, we should all be cognizant enough of
00:42:03.680history to know that some of the worst things that have ever been done have been done with
00:42:08.300genuine good intentions. Yeah, the road to hell. Exactly. I mean, there's oftentimes,
00:42:13.020especially in the media, how we sort of give people like Gwyneth Paltrow a pass,
00:42:17.560because it is very obvious that like they believe what they are saying they think that they are
00:42:22.340helping the world they are doing this out of genuine like philanthropic instincts but oftentimes
00:42:29.740regardless of the intention the effect of their advice can be really pernicious and at a certain
00:42:36.060point if you are one of the people in an industry where you are giving this advice and it is having
00:42:40.620documented pernicious negative effects over and over and over again at a certain point it is
00:42:46.760negligent to not change what you are doing. Totally. I would say there has not necessarily
00:42:52.420been a lot of documented pernicious effect with Moon Juice. That's true. I mean, it's not it's
00:42:56.500not like Fen Fen. It's not people are not overdosing on it, I guess. Totally. It feels
00:43:00.100kind of like the wellness version of the college admissions scandal. Oh, right. Where you're like,
00:43:04.340oh, it's just like rich people doing rich people things. Right. And it's sort of all happening in
00:43:09.360that closed world. Yeah. Right. And the rest of us can see into it. But we can't. I'm not like
00:43:15.840affected by i'm not negatively affected by anyone else taking moon juice or believing in it or
00:43:21.180whatever right on some level me and you can just not buy moon juice and continue to live our lives
00:43:25.980and it's fine that's right i will say i do think it feeds rhetoric that's unhelpful right yeah and
00:43:31.400is sort of feeding into a culture like a sea change culturally that i find unhelpful yeah but
00:43:36.520i don't i don't think like i don't think amanda chantal bacon at least i haven't come across
00:43:41.000anything that's like i was personally harmed by moon juice i don't want to like put her in the
00:43:45.340gulag like i have no totally same thing she's not sauron so this is actually another thing about the
00:43:51.300moon juice cookbook that i find really interesting she talks about like i'm not a doctor but i have
00:43:56.220studied under all of these herbalists and alternative medicine practitioners and all
00:44:02.300this sort of stuff and i want to bring the lessons that i've learned to you she doesn't cite the
00:44:07.120sources right there's no there's no footnotes in the moon juice cookbook there's no citations
00:44:12.820That's because they're all like QAnon Facebook groups.
00:44:16.640But like in addition to not citing her sources and not saying, hey, this came from this study at this point, she also sort of flows pretty freely back and forth between her own experience and her own worldview and these findings that she sort of says exist.
00:44:34.060And she doesn't really announce when she's changing.
00:44:36.940As a reader, it becomes really difficult to pull apart. What is a widely accepted scientific claim? What is a disputed scientific claim? What is her own worldview? What is my wishful thinking as a reader that I want to believe? Right? Like, it's really hard to pinpoint what is coming from where she talks a lot about purging fat soluble toxins, but doesn't say what those toxins are.
00:45:03.780Oh, no, toxins. That's like such a red flag for me because it's such a poorly defined term.
00:45:08.600Well, also every health care provider I know, including alternative medicine providers, are all like, that's why you have a liver.
00:45:15.580So did you make any of the recipes in the book?
00:45:18.100I did not. I thought about there are some that look actually like really good to me.
00:45:22.220She has a recipe for cherry and black pepper jam.