In the most woke state in the union, one influencer is a radical — because she enjoys cooking healthy food for her family, including homemade Cheez-Its and Oreos.
California mom Gretchen Adler has gone viral for her “ancestral diet” and unprocessed versions of classic junk food, and for embracing the role of homemaker and traditional wife — or “trad wife” — despite critics who say the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing stereotype sets women back to the 1950s.
“I think a lot of women are looking for this lifestyle,” Adler, 38, told The Post. “They want to take back their homes. They want to get out of the fast-paced lifestyle of the job environment, the boss babe mentality, and they just want to be home.
“I don’t think it needs to have a negative connotation at all,” she added.
In one recent video from her San Diego kitchen-to-die-for, Adler, in a flowery sundress, prepared a McDonald’s dupe with fermented sourdough buns, einkorn flour-battered chicken and homemade mayo.
“I wanted my husband to come home from the office to eat lunch with me today so I told him I was making a McChicken — it worked,” she said.
Adler, originally from Ohio, started getting her hands dirty in the kitchen about six years ago, she said, when she was pregnant with the second of her three children.
For her, the chicken came before the egg.
As her family was preparing to move, a hen appeared on her doorstop and laid an egg, inspiring her to find a home that would be fit for a coop so she could start making meals from scratch.
Now, she has six chickens, three dogs and makes everything from sour cream to cooking oils to bread.
Adler says her lifestyle doesn’t mean giving up her passions or a pursuit of higher education.
She went to Babson College, one of the country’s top business schools, and has built an empire around her master class, The Nourishing Kitchen, and subscriber-only recipes on her website. Her following has skyrocketed to 430,000 on Instagram and 75,000 on TikTok this year.
“You don’t need to be like an 18-year-old that gets married and has seven kids and has no education, and then gets divorced and has no income,” Adler said from her San Diego home as she baked sourdough bread. “I figured out how to have my business at home and raise my children.”
Housewives such as model Nara Smith and Mrs. Utah 2021 Hannah Neeleman — mom of eight — have become icons in the trad community and have been mocked and criticized in recent years.
Australian blogger Jasmine Dinis shocked the internet last year by saying she would teach her daughter that it’s “perfectly acceptable [to] depend on a man.”
Women made up 47% of the US labor force in 2023, up from 30% in 1950, according to the Pew Research Center. In the 1950s, 85% of husbands were the primary breadwinners — now only 55% are.
Critics say the controversial trad trend romanticizes an era of sexism, forces them into submission and reverses progress made by women.
Supporters, however, say the choice to remain in the home and reject corporate culture can be empowering.
“Our most important job is to raise healthy children and have a happy home … but it’s about having passions and goals in life too,” Adler said.