Instagram’s Jessica Knurick would like a word with MAHA moms

When Jessica Knurick was pregnant with her second child in 2022, her social media feeds were awash in warnings about all the things that could put her baby at risk.

“I was in such a vulnerable life stage, and I had really bad postpartum anxiety too,” Knurick told STAT one recent afternoon, speaking from her home in Denver. “And I found myself getting caught up in some of that stuff and being like, ‘Oh my gosh, like, is this terrible for my baby?’”

So Knurick, a registered dietitian with a Ph.D. in nutrition science, decided to start posting videos of her own — advising pregnant women and new moms about issues like caffeine and baby formula, and unpacking the fear-mongering tactics she saw wellness influencers using to discourage parents from safe, potentially lifesaving treatments like vitamin K shots for newborns. “A lot of their videos are supposed to circumvent rational thinking,” she said, “and hit you in your most vulnerable place.”

Knurick’s immersion in the world of health and wellness advice gone awry turned out to be the ideal training ground for what she has become: one of social media’s most prominent evidence-based critics of the Make America Healthy Again movement.