Who’s the Clientele of the Mountain Juicery?

I became somewhat enamored with the Mountain Juicery‘s Peanut Butter Crunch smoothie bowl while working in South Asheville, and thus, a five-minute drive away. The Mountain Juicery is just as crunchy and expensive as it sounds, a tiny health food/fresh juice shop that’s very Asheville. 

These days, I don’t eat at Mountain Juicery as much as I’d like since I work from home and truly have no reason to ever go to South Asheville. Still, I trek every other week or so, typically on paydays to justify the unnecessary trip for a $12.00+tip smoothie bowl.

In large parts, the clientele of the Mountain Juicery is exactly who you’d think—stay-at-home Biltmore Forest yoga moms with tight faces and head-to-toe Lululemon or Birkenstock-wearing elders, but after over three years of frequenting this joint…I’ve noticed another type. 

He’s typically in his mid-to-late 20s and doesn’t exactly look like someone who frequents the gym. He’s often wearing cargo shorts, a blue-lives matter hat, and usually a Bass Pro Shop or patriotic tee shirt (or what he thinks might be patriotic—I consider “Don’t Tread on Me” tees more selfish than anything). He looks like the type of guy who’d make fun of another man who frequents a smoothie shop and considers organic eating girly. 

It had me stumped for some time. Who, I thought, is the Mountain Juicery for (I know every business should be for everyone, but like…the gas station up the road from me in Fairview with a whole display of pro-2nd-amendment hats or one of my hometown bars that is now bedecked in “Let’s Go Brandon” paraphernalia are not for me)?

I got my answer when I rediscovered an article from a while back that alleged that Gwyneth Paltrow (she of acting and wellness fame) and Alex Jones (the piece of shit who got rightfully suited to oblivion by Sandy Hook parents) essentially sold the same super crunchy, super “organic,” super woo-woo, wellness products, just marketed very differently to two seemingly different demographics. 

I say seemingly here because it underscores something I’ve already realized: that at some point, the super left and super right connect back into a circle (which, coincidentally, is also very Asheville). 

The article, Infowars and Goop sell the same exact pseudoscientific “wellness” products is well worth a read, but if you’re crunch(y)ed for time, here’s an excerpt of what you can expect—it’s genuinely insane (but also a big fat “duh”) how differently the same quackery is sold to these two demographics. 

There are two Americas, we’ve been told.

There’s Duck Dynasty America and Modern Family America. There’s “gosh” America and “dope” America. Sometimes, though, Americans unite around a common idea. Like the healing powers of eleuthero root, cordyceps mushrooms, and “nascent iodine.”

All make similar claims about the health benefits of these ingredients, but what gets called “Super Male Vitality” by Infowars is branded as “Sex Dust” by Moon Juice.

The Cut covered this 2017 piece back at the time, with, for my money, a better headline: Goop and Infowars Have Way More in Common Than You Thought.

Here’s their opening, which is just as good—if not better—than the original piece. 

On Thursday, Quartz posted an article revealing how the luxury lifestyle website Goop and the right-wing conspiracy hub Infowars essentially sell the same wellness products. This is remarkable — and hilarious — given that the two media platforms could not be targeting a more disparate audience: The former is essentially a sentient Instagram feed run by Gwyneth Paltrow that tells mostly affluent, mostly liberal readers how to live and what to buy. The latter is headed by always-shirtless conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose far-right fans believe Sandy Hook was a hoax and that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are literal demons. Nevertheless, Goop’s spiritual wellness products and Infowars’ virile supplements are just about the same thing. But dig a little deeper, and beneath the SoCal beauty of Goop and the underground paranoia of Infowars you may find that the two share more in common than just the “alternative” medicine they sell.

I also think The Cut did a great job in their article about pointing out how both marketing schemes reinforce what their targets already think (like..politics!): 

Both reinforce their audiences’ already-existing biases. Political extremists and lifestyle-blog devotees are both strictly committed to a singular, nonnegotiable way of thinking. Paltrow’s brand recently held a health summit — where tickets ranged from $500 to $1500 — and featured scheduled activities, like indulging in Crystal Therapy, that just continue to affirm the rich and health-obsessed biases of its readership. And it only takes one quick visit to infowars.com to see how every story is centered around how liberalism is always wrong and idiotic, like the simple and poetic subhead from a story today on the New York Times that just read “FAKE NEWS.”

More recently, The Atlantic took on this phenomenon in an article titled The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline. 

Crunchy, coined as a pop-culture reference to granola, has come to refer to a wide variety of cultural practices, including avoiding additives and food dyes, declining or spacing out childhood vaccinations beyond what pediatricians recommend, and more extreme actions in pursuit of health, independence, and purity. Back-to-the-land living and alternative medicine are hallmarks of “crunch.” Much of this subculture is benign, a declaration of anti-modernism or slow living. But this largely white cultural space shares some preoccupations with right-wing organizations, which have used it for recruitment.

In the 1970s and ’80s, women in the emergent white-power movement, which gathered Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Christian Identity members, tax resisters, and other militant-right activists, deployed what we would now call “crunchy” issues as part of a wider articulation of cultural identity.

These bits of crunchiness included organic farming, a macrobiotic diet, neo-paganism, anti-fluoridation, and traditional midwifery. All of these are often thought of as leftist or “hippie” issues, but they appeared regularly in the robust outpouring of women’s publications in the white-power movement.

While there’s a sizeable portion of the right—especially those in positions of power who’ve amassed significant wealth (my boy Madison Cawthorn comes to mind)—who throw out the term “Soyboy” at anyone who isn’t obsessed with only eating—or obsessed with showcasing this alleged obsession via social media—copious amounts of red meat (America! Hoo-Rah!), there’s also a sizeable portion—the super indoctrinated—who are obsessed with supplements and health food, as long as they’re not soy or tofu related (makes complete sense, right?). It’s the homesteaders. The carnivore dieters (and maybe some Paleo people). The fitness-obsessed—CrossFit is a haven for conservatives, and keto skews red. It’s an acquaintance of my parents whose Instagram is filled with memes “educating” the general populace about how Velveeta isn’t real cheese and only natural, organic, non-BIG PHARMA foods are the way to be the most optimized human. 
I guess this is just a long-winded way to say that The Mountain Juicery really is for everyone 🙂—God Bless the USA for that.