On a recent trip to her local playground, Kiera Jennings’s seven-year-old son ran over to her, upset that the other boys were playing roughly and talking about a computer game he’d never heard of.
Kiera consoled Elliott, but she’s well accustomed to feeling different from the crowd. She proudly defines herself as a ‘Crunchy Mum’, one of a new movement who reject the familiar conveniences of modern parenting – from pre-packaged snacks to cartoons.
Kiera, a yoga teacher from Edinburgh, home-birthed Elliott and controversially refuses to have him vaccinated. He is treated with homeopathy instead of conventional medicine and rarely eats processed foods or uses screens. The family don’t even have a TV.
And, for their trip to the beachside playground, Elliott was barefoot – because Kiera, 39, is a great believer that going without shoes and socks helps to stabilise levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
She explains: ‘My choices may be “alternative” but they’re all made with my son’s interests at heart. Playing computer games and eating junk creates unhappy kids – there’s so much research to support this.
‘I see parents whose children are having meltdowns in the supermarket, and think “Oh, bless you. It must be so hard to not know that there’s another way of doing things”. My family hasn’t always understood, though they’ve mostly come around now.’
The ‘Crunchy Mom’ movement began in the US and spread like wildfire on social media – spread by the very platforms its proponents wish to safeguard their children from.
The name derives from ‘Crunchy Granola Moms’: women who wouldn’t dream of allowing their kids to eat Coco Pops. Concerned about toxins in the environment, they ditch the Domestos and Cif in favour of chemical-free cleaners, homemade from vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.
There are obvious crossovers with the ‘tradwife’ movement, whose controversial stars have huge followings on social media. Fans devour videos of them making their own toothpaste and cooking from scratch, babies on hip. But while both groups embrace going back to nature, Crunchy Mums do so without the heavy dose of patriarchal repression that’s a hallmark of tradwife content.
It’s easy to see why the ‘Crunchy’ philosophy might appeal to a generation of parents terrified about the harms of social media and the dangers of our unhealthy lifestyles. Yet there is a darker side to this movement, not least in its rejection of modern medicine and vaccination programmes to protect their babies against potentially fatal diseases.
Latest figures, from NHS England, show that 16.1 per cent of children who turned five between April 2023 and March this year had not received both doses of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine – the lowest level of vaccination since 2010 to 2011. Meanwhile, 8 per cent of babies remain unvaccinated against whooping cough at age one.
According to research, most parents who shun vaccines claim to be worried about safety, and the potential for side-effects, as well as believing in ‘natural immunity’. Public health officials are concerned that levels of both measles and whooping cough are rising, putting at risk not just the unvaccinated, but anyone more vulnerable to infection.
In the first six months of this year, there were 12,000 cases of whooping cough in England, resulting in nine infant deaths. There were just 856 cases in the whole of 2023.
There were 2,526 laboratory-confirmed infections of measles in England in the first nine months of 2024, compared with a total of 157 last year. It can cause encephalitis (brain inflammation), blindness and severe breathing problems.
The spike has been put down to a decline in inoculation rates over the past decade, exacerbated by the pandemic, which caused a further drop in uptake as increasing numbers questioned the ‘safety’ of vaccinations in general.
However, so virulent are these diseases, once there’s an outbreak, case numbers climb incredibly fast.
Of course, it would be wrong to point the finger of blame for this at alternative lifestyles, as there may be other reasons parents do not have their children vaccinated. But the anti-vaccine aspect of ‘Crunchy Parenting’ is certainly a concern.
There are online groups where members exchange information about the potential consequences of ignoring appointments for their babies to be vaccinated.
One commenter writes: ‘I have nervous thoughts and moments too, I think that’s normal as we’re going against everything drummed into us our whole lives. That’s hard but I believe it’s [not vaccinating my child] the right thing and the more I talk to other parents the more I believe in the decision.’
One mother reports that she fears her partner may go behind her back and have their daughter vaccinated.
Other health advice is both preposterous and dangerous.
A forum member asks: ‘Please tell me about your stories of cancer cured naturally.’
Recommendations include the ‘energy healing’ technique reiki, turkey-tail mushrooms and juicing.
Another, whose 17-month-old child became so unwell with whooping cough that they were prescribed antibiotics, was advised: ‘Work with a classical homeopath. Works immediately.’
The mother of a ten-month-old with measles boasts about administering ‘colloidal silver’ (a liquid containing silver particles, which can cause serious adverse health effects when ingested) instead of paracetamol to treat the fever.
Fortunately, Kiera’s son Elliott has avoided any serious illnesses. He did, however, get the first round of childhood immunisations, at eight weeks old. She says this was because she felt ‘pressure from my parents, my then husband, the midwife, even though I knew it felt wrong. I didn’t let him have any more.’
She puts his good health down to his healthy lifestyle and natural immunity. Kiera hasn’t always been interested in healthy living. It was while pregnant with Elliott that friends at maternity yoga classes introduced her to the ideas embraced by ‘Crunchy Mums’.
Today, Elliott lives, like his mum, on a diet of meat, fish, dairy products and vegetables, all home cooked. When he was given a chocolate by another parent at a recent woodland yoga event, Kiera says he became mildly hysterical, screaming and lashing out.
Distressed, he told his mum he didn’t know what was ‘wrong’ with him. She told him it was the impact of the chocolate on his system.
‘He is very high energy, so I think if he was fed a load of junk food and didn’t move so much he could be diagnosed with ADHD,’ says Kiera. ‘It makes me wonder whether, if everyone lived in a more natural way, ADHD would even be a thing.’
With the nation in the grip of an obesity epidemic and increasing numbers of children diagnosed with anxiety and depression – and with various studies blaming this on the amount of time they spend on screens, rather than outdoors – it’s understandable that parents are looking for ways to keep children healthy, physically and mentally.
Ruby Deevoy, 35, is another devotee of the ‘Crunchy’ lifestyle.
She feeds her son, Faelen, seven, only organic and homegrown foods and won’t allow any chemicals in their home in Fife, Scotland. ‘I’ve started making my own laundry detergent out of conkers – when you soak them for a long time, they create a soapy substance. I make all our kitchen and bathroom cleaners,’ she says.
‘We don’t have a microwave, or any Teflon, and use only non-toxic paint in our house.’
Faelen has not been vaccinated. Ruby breastfed him until he was five to maintain a close bond and because she believes it helped boost his immunity. He is home schooled, which Ruby fits in around her work as a writer, helped by husband Tom, 46, a ghost tour guide.
It was he who introduced Ruby to a more natural way of living when they met 15 years ago. ‘He made his own shampoo from horsetail, a type of plant, which I could see was really good for his hair. He taught me a lot about alternatives to chemical-filled products.’
The couple are very much on the same page. The only time their son gets to look at a screen is if he’s unwell and is allowed to watch a film. Instead he reads or listens to audiobooks, makes potions from cooking ingredients or builds mechanical circuits using his favourite game, Spintronics. ‘We’re very much in favour of him using his creativity, intelligence and personality and not being squashed into some kind of box, as he would be in a mainstream school.
‘It’s exhausting. Some friends ask why I make life so hard for myself, but it’s what’s best, and healthiest, for my family.’
Ruby is aware the most contentious choice she has made is not having her son vaccinated, and avoids discussing this with others who might be critical.
‘I know some people feel strongly that everyone should be vaccinated – people got very cross about those of us who refused the Covid jabs. I’ve never had an argument about it because I’m not an angry anti-vaxxer.
‘We’ve just done our research and believe it was better for us to avoid vaccines because Faelan has multiple allergies. In most cases, our bodies are able to fight off these viruses naturally.’
Ruby shuns other modern medicine, too, using oil of oregano for bacterial infections and elderberry tincture to treat viruses, including colds and sickness bugs, unless medications such as antibiotics are absolutely necessary. If Faelen develops a fever, she tries what she calls ‘plant energy healing’, channelling the ‘energy’ of plants in her garden.
Before the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1968, up to 800,000 people contracted measles and it caused 100 deaths a year in the UK. It was all but eradicated until anti-vax movements began gathering strength due to false claims made in the 1990s by the now disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield.
He fraudulently said he had found a link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Until the whooping cough vaccine became widely available in the 1950s, 2,000 people a year died from the disease among 100,000 suspected cases.
But these fatalities weren’t enough to encourage Elena Kerr, 44, to vaccinate her children. Elena acknowledges that her approach to raising her four children is ‘very alternative’.
Her eldest is now 22, and in her first few years as a mother Elena was fairly conventional. But for her three younger children – now aged 15, 13 and seven – Elena says she ‘knew better’.
After her second and third births, she buried the placentas in the garden and planted trees over them. For her fourth, she simply whizzed it up into a smoothie and drank it.
‘Most mammals eat their placentas after birth because they’re really good for balancing hormones and helping us heal,’ says Elena, matter-of-factly. ‘It can also stave off postnatal depression.’
The family lives in a remote part of the Scottish Borders, where Elena forages for food and herbs. She home schools her 15-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son, Ronan, while her 13-year-old daughter chooses to go to a mainstream school.
Elena makes herbal tinctures, balms and teas from feverfew, elderflower and chamomile, which, she says, bring down fevers. ‘They support the body’s natural processes,’she says.
‘If you just give Calpol, the illness tends to last longer, because the fever is part of the body’s healing process. If something really bad happens, like when my daughter cut herself outdoors and needed a tetanus injection, or the things you’ve tried at home haven’t worked, of course see a doctor. Otherwise I’m more in favour of treating things naturally at home.’
Elena’s eldest had the first round of inoculations; the others are unvaccinated.
She has spent ten years breastfeeding her children – the youngest until he was five. She still co-sleeps with Ronan nightly. She says he needs extra ‘reassurance’ since she and her husband, who works in props for TV and film, recently separated.
‘It’s relatively recent in human history that children have slept separately from adults,’ says Elena. ‘It’s a very natural thing.’
While her 15-year-old daughter has a smartphone, she is allowed no social media and can spend just an hour a day on it. Her younger daughter will get her first phone on her 14th birthday, but can message friends from her mum’s phone.
Elena is guided by research indicating that it is best for children’s mental health to steer clear of social media until 16.
The family eats a wholesome diet but the children are each allowed a box of sugary cereals a year – given on their birthdays.
Elena says she doesn’t really move in ‘mainstream’ circles. It’s a common refrain for the Crunchy Mums, many of whom live shielded in a largely home-schooling, anti-vax bubble, often in remote areas.
One exception is Vicky Portwin, who appeared in a BBC documentary, Unvaccinated, about adults who declined to be immunised against Covid.
Vicky, 46, a married mother of three sons, aged 19, 17 and 11, received death threats, via email, after the film aired two years ago.
‘I didn’t read them,’ says Vicky, who owns a company selling cannabidiol (CBD – a legal, non-psychoactive cannabis derivative) products.
‘I don’t care what people say. There’s no way I’ll be putting any vaccines into my body or my children’s. I had whooping cough and measles as a child, my husband had mumps, and we were both fine.’
Vicky believes today’s parents should expose their children to more risk. ‘I’ve always encouraged my boys to climb trees, jump in rivers and, from about 11, even build fires,’ says Vicky.
‘We have a boat on the local marina so they’ve grown up paddle-boarding and swimming. Kids need to learn to be independent.’
Her children are used to their mother’s passion for communing with nature.
The family holidays on the small Greek island of Lefkada and, if there is a night-time thunderstorm, Vicky encourages everyone into the Ionian sea.
‘When it’s pitch black it’s fantastic, floating around and watching the lightning illuminate the sky,’ she says. ‘It’s not dangerous. Water doesn’t attract lightning, you need metal for that. It’s just thrilling.’
Experts would, of course, point out that saltwater is an excellent conductor of electricity.
So, as with so many of the Crunchy Mums’ suggestions for healthy living, this advice should be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
