Meet the 'crunchy' college students crusading against fast food, forever chemicals on TikTok
Sophie Pokela just graduated from the University of Wisconsin with an English degree — and a rigorous education in nutrition.
Pokela grew up thinking she was a healthy eater because she mostly chose foods packed with protein and fiber. It dawned on her a year into college that she didn't actually know much about what she was consuming.
'I was scrolling on Instagram and came across a crunchy mom who was talking about seed oils,' Pokela, 21, told The Post. 'I'd never heard of them before, and I started scrolling through her page and realized that I had no idea what the ingredients in my food were.'
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4 Sophie Pokela recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin with an English degree — and a rigorous education in nutrition.
Sophie Pokela
Pokela quickly graduated from health-conscious to 'crunchiness,' a holistic lifestyle prioritizing whole foods while shunning toxins. Crunchy crusaders tend to avoid ultra-processed foods, plastics, 'forever' chemicals and pharmaceuticals in favor of alternative remedies, natural ingredients, organic fare and spiritual wellness.
The 'Make America Healthy Again' movement has helped this subculture become more vocal and visible, even on college campuses, where 2 a.m. pizza, borgs and the freshman 15 are rites of passage.
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Clinical psychologist Laura Braider said crunchiness can be positive — if managed properly. She warned that some students may overdo healthy practices, especially if they've struggled with an eating disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
'In moderation, I think this is not necessarily a bad trend,' Braider, assistant vice president of college mental health at Northwell Health, told The Post. 'I think being intentional in this population and being present and being aware can be a very good thing, as long as it's in a controlled atmosphere.'
Navigating online information
One concern is that crunchy enthusiasts are not receiving evidence-based advice. Online communities, particularly social networks, can be breeding grounds for misinformation.
'Social media can provide good information, but there's also a lot of erroneous information on social media, as we all know,' Braider said.
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'From a healthcare perspective, I think that we have to meet students where they are,' she added, 'and perhaps we need to be able to disseminate information in a more palatable way.'
4 In her TikToks, Pokela promotes whole foods, morning and evening walks and breathing exercises.
Sophie Pokela
As she became crunchy, Pokela turned to the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit alternative nutrition organization that promotes nutrient-dense foods, raw milk and cod liver oil and discourages strict vegetarianism, seed oils and fluoridated water.
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She also tuned in to the 'MAHA'-friendly health and wellness podcast 'Culture Apothecary,' hosted by Turning Point USA contributor Alex Clark.
Both outlets have been accused of spreading potentially harmful health misinformation.
Pokela dismissed the criticism, saying she's come to 'really trust' those two resources after doing extensive research.
Clark, 32, and Pokela are even on similar journeys. They have Hashimoto's disease, where the immune system mistakenly attacks the thyroid gland.
Pokela first learned about the autoimmune disorder when Clark revealed her struggles.
Promoting healthier swaps
Pokela has been detailing her approach to managing symptoms on TikTok, emphasizing whole foods, morning and evening walks and breathing exercises.
She had already overhauled her diet months before her diagnosis, replacing the so-called 'healthy' processed snacks that had become staples in her pantry with ground beef, sweet potatoes and avocados and giving gluten the heave-ho.
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She encourages her 400 TikTok followers to make healthier swaps, like organic coconut sugar for cane sugar.
'[It's] just a crime that people don't know that they're consuming these foods that aren't even real food,' said Pokela, who got a certificate online in health coaching from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. 'That's why I think this is so important.'
Finding balance
Courtney Beck, an 18-year-old rising sophomore at Texas State University, began dishing on her crunchy lifestyle on TikTok in December.
Beck spent most of her life training in classical ballet, which led to a 'really warped idea about what being healthy meant' and eventually, anemia and anorexia.
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After recognizing that being skinny at all costs wasn't sustainable, she quit dancing and sought health guidance elsewhere.
4 Texas State University student Courtney Beck became crunchy after battling an eating disorder.
Katherine Palomo/@expression.n.stuff
'I fell into a rabbit hole about being crunchy and eating whole foods and how counting your calories isn't the most important thing,' Beck told The Post.
'And it just took off from there,' she continued. 'I just got super into my health and vitamins … completely changed my life, and it just became something I'm super passionate about.'
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The former vegetarian slowly added ground beef and chicken into her diet and became a 'beef tallow connoisseur,' rubbing the animal fat all over her face.
She crowed that her skin 'never looked better.' (Experts warn that this trend may not be suitable for everyone.)
Most of Beck's TikToks are grocery hauls, recipes and peeks at her daily diet.
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She preaches moderation, confessing that she enjoys Dr. Pepper and popsicles now and again.
'I still eat out with my friends every once in a while, and I still go do fun things,' Beck shared, 'but it's just about choosing to make intentional decisions when you have the opportunity.'
Overcoming challenges for personal growth
One of the downsides of living this life online is the pessimistic feedback.
'It's really easy to take those [negative comments] to heart,' said Beck, who is majoring in mass communications and minoring in nutrition to pursue a career in holistic nutrition.
'At the end of the day, I know that I'm healthy, and I know that this is the best I've ever felt.'
4 Most of Beck's TikToks are grocery hauls, recipes and peeks at her daily diet.
Katherine Palomo/@expression.n.stuff
Pokela has endured difficulties as well. She recalled a few occasions in college when eating healthy was tricky.
'A lot of social events revolve around eating out and drinking, which I also don't do,' she said. 'Sometimes I would have to go to a restaurant and not order anything, which is kind of awkward to just sit there.'
She also admitted that consuming so much health information 'can feel like a lot at times.'
'But I think that the people who say that I need to be enjoying myself in my 20s don't realize that I am working towards a healthier future self,' Pokela said.
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The GOP's embrace of psychedelics is another, and perhaps one of the more jarring, examples of cultural transformation that Trump's populist politics have brought. Veterans seeking cures for mental illnesses associated with combat, combined with the Kennedy-backed Make America Healthy Again movement's enthusiasm for natural medicine, have strengthened a libertarian strain on the right in favor of drug experimentation. Meanwhile, the left, where hippies are giving way to technocrats, has become more skeptical. When Joe Biden was president, for example, agencies studied the drugs' medical potential, but an air of doubt prevailed. The head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Nora Volkow, compared the hype for psychedelics as a cure for mental illness to belief in 'fairy tales' in Senate testimony last year. Then in August, the Food and Drug Administration rejected drugmaker Lykos Therapeutics' application to offer ecstasy, alongside therapy, as a treatment for PTSD. FDA advisers worried the company's researchers were more evangelists than scientists and determined that they'd failed to prove their regimen was either safe or effective. Republicans complained the loudest. 'These technocrats think they know better,' Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in Afghanistan, wrote on X after FDA advisers recommended Lykos' application be rejected. 'Their job is to say NO and support the status quo.' But Crenshaw, who's helped secure funding for psychedelic research at the Defense Department, got the response he wanted from Kennedy at Tuesday's budget hearing. Kennedy said results from early government studies at the Department of Veterans Affairs and FDA were 'very, very encouraging.' He added that his FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, sees it the same way. 'Marty has told me that we don't want to wait two years to get this done,' he said. Crenshaw was pleased. 'I've spent years supporting clinical trials to study the use of psychedelics to treat PTSD,' he told POLITICO. 'It's been a long fight, and it's taken a lot of grit. I'm grateful Secretary Kennedy is taking this seriously — helping to mainstream what could be a groundbreaking shift in mental health.' Kennedy's comments have revived hope among psychedelics' advocates that the Lykos decision was more hiccup than death knell. 'It's important for the entire community and the entire value chain around psychedelic therapy to hear that he wants to responsibly explore the benefits and risks of these therapies,' said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, a health official at the VA under Biden who sees promise in the drugs. The VA, under Trump's secretary, Doug Collins, is working directly with Kennedy on clinical research. Collins has referenced psychedelics on a podcast appearance, on X and at a cabinet meeting this spring when Trump pressed him on what he's doing to drive down the high suicide rate among veterans. 'I talk with Collins about it all the time,' Kennedy said Tuesday. 'It's something that both of us are deeply interested in.' Earlier this month, Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed a law to put $50 million into clinical trials of the psychedelic ibogaine, as a mental health treatment. 'That culture shift is underway,' W. Bryan Hubbard, who spearheaded the Texas bill and is executive director of the American Ibogaine Initiative, told POLITICO. As Hubbard sees it, the narrative around psychedelics has evolved from counterculture recreation to a promising medical treatment for the 'deaths of despair' from alcohol, drug overdoses and suicides the United States has grappled with in recent decades. Kennedy was happy to see it. 'It's super positive. It is really notable that the Republicans have become the party of some of these issues you wouldn't have expected before,' Calley Means, a top Kennedy adviser, told POLITICO. 'States pushing the envelope is certainly aligned with what Secretary Kennedy is trying to do. It gives him leverage to push bolder reforms.' The Texas effort involved a six-month sprint by Hubbard and former GOP Gov. Rick Perry to convince state lawmakers to pass the bill. Rep. Morgan Luttrell, another Lone Star Republican who credits ibogaine he took in Mexico with helping him overcome trauma he incurred during military service, also lobbied for it. Hubbard attributes their success partly to Texas' independent pioneer culture and a red-state philosophy that was receptive to his pitch for a medicalized psychedelics model. It didn't hurt that Abbott had signed a bill to study ecstasy, psilocybin and ketamine as treatments for veterans with PTSD with Baylor College of Medicine. And since Texans are no stranger to religion, conversations about the spiritual aspect of ibogaine treatment seemed to resonate with lawmakers. 'We had a message that was tailor-made for the Lone Star State,' he said. Veterans turned out at public hearings to describe traveling out of the country, often to Mexico, where ibogaine is unregulated, to receive treatment they couldn't access in the U.S. 'These heroes have gone to war to defend the land of the free, only to come home and be faced with inflexible, bureaucratic systems that offer ineffectual solutions, paired with the Controlled Substances Act that has forced them to flee the country that they have defended in order to access treatment in a foreign country,' Hubbard said. But the biggest momentum push was likely the boost Hubbard and Perry got from conservative kingmaker Joe Rogan when the two went on Rogan's podcast in January. 'That really put a tremendous amount of wind in our sails,' Hubbard said. Still, last year's FDA decision to reject Lykos Therapeutics' application underscores the concerns raised by many scientists that the utility of the drugs is oversold. FDA advisers raised ecstasy's potential to damage the heart and liver; a suspicion that trial researchers were more advocates than scientists; and a worry that results had been skewed by the psychedelics' pronounced effects, since participants could figure out if they got the drug. Ibogaine also poses heart risks. The Drug Enforcement Administration lists both it and ecstasy on its schedule of drugs with no currently acceptable medical use and high risk of abuse. That would have once been enough to make law-and-order Republicans say no. Kennedy's adviser Means says things are changing for the better. 'Ten years ago, nobody expected the Republican Party as the party of healthy food, as the party of exercise, as the party of questioning pharmaceutical companies, as the party of psychedelic research — but that's where we are,' Means said. 'The Democratic Party has become the party of blindly trusting experts,' he concluded. 'The Republican Party has become the countercultural party that's asking common-sense questions.'
