Edited by Peter

Every now and again it’s nice to take a break from the rather in-depth research required to produce content for this website and instead go for some low-hanging fruit. Luckily for me Zen Honeycutt, the founder of Moms Across America, has published the equivalent of subsurface fruit which not only exposes her level of knowledge but is also a rather sad example of a woo-peddler clutching at straws trying to pass unusual ingredients off as “all natural”.

Moms Across America is a group of mothers who for some unknown reason have decided to publish their ignorance and lack of critical thinking online. I know that sounds harsh but in all honesty, there is no better way of explaining these peoples promotion of bad science and conspiracy theories regarding GMOs. Virtually all their arguments against the technology have been countered by those who know what they are talking about, yet the moms have shown no evidence of slowing down. Recently they have taken to the road in their Moms Across America-mobile, printing out flyers warning people about the technology, and even renting space on 99 billboards proclaiming that GMOs are something to be avoided.



As you can imagine these things don’t come cheap so the moms have branched out into selling products on their website to support their cause. Unlike other similar websites, they have not limited themselves to the usual t-shirts, stickers, and badges but have started to sell and promote alternative health products. One of these products is called Active H2 and, according to Zen Honeycutt, it can help prevent inflammation which is responsible for asthma, autism, cancer, mental illness, to name a few – as well as preventing school shootings.

In the video, Zen explained that when added to water the pills produce “molecular hydrogen” (why she needed to bring attention to the fact that hydrogen is diatomic is anyone’s guess…) which she claims can cure practically all of life’s ailments. Now I am sure alarm bells are going off for a few of you reading this because, as we all know, hydrogen is flammable but Zen assures us that it’s not like the hydrogen found in the Hindenburg.

“It’s a gas, and we’re talking about molecular hydrogen, the very small particles, not the big ones that can cause, like, explosions in blimps and stuff like that, but it’s a very tiny gas.”

Next, you are probably asking yourself how do these pills produce hydrogen and how on earth can you market this flammable gas to the anti-western medicine crowd? Well, Zen tells us that the tablets contain 50mg of magnesium which will eventually react with the water to give magnesium hydroxide and hydrogen. As you can imagine this might be a hard sell but they somehow try to pass this stuff off as all natural. According to their website….

“Approximately 3.6 billion years ago Molecular Hydrogen served as the original energy source for Primordial cellular life, fueling its metabolic processes and protecting it from the hostile environment of early Earth. Without it, life would not exist.

Health researchers worldwide are rediscovering these forgotten benefits in a big way.”

If you strip down the flowery language, there is (believe it or not) a fleck of truth to this nonsense. According to a recent paper published in Nature (The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor), our last universal common ancestor (LUCA) may have fed off hydrogen gas around hydrothermal vents when the Earth was a mere 560 million years old. With regards to these vents being the original energy source for primordial cellular life many are sceptical. They point out that this hypothetical LUCA would have been a highly sophisticated organism that must have evolved from the origin of life where the lines between life and replication chemistry blur. Because we don’t have a time machine, the subject of abiogenesis (the origin of life) is much debated, however, one thing is for sure, that you should not base any therapeutic treatments on the metabolites of a hypothetical common ancestor.

Later the Moms Around America website goes on to explain some amazing properties hydrogen infused water has.

“An additional benefit is that Active H2 generates an electron-rich potential (-ORP) in the water (you can measure it!). This rare property is uniquely found in fresh, raw living foods and juices, mothers milk and many of the world’s healing waters.”

An “electron-rich potential” otherwise known as an oxidation-reduction potential is not “rare” or unique and is simply the tendency for a chemical species to be reduced. Put simply, what they have said here is pure bollox that means nothing, passed off as scientific backing. Also, what on earth is the “world’s healing waters”? This is one step away from telling us to use the force.

I honestly thought it could not get any worse but towards the end of Zen’s video, she began to talk about another product her website has for sale which is a drink made from coal….I am not kidding!

At the end of the day what you have here is an organisation that knows exactly who its audience is and knows that it will have to twist and bend the facts about Active H2 in order to sell it. Watching Zen try desperately to pass this product off as natural with her limited chemical and medical knowledge is not only hilarious but also very telling. She could have cited the credible research looking into the effectiveness of using hydrogen as a free radical scavenger to promote this product but instead told her audience that it was some kind of panacea to desperate parents. This predatory behaviour is shameless and should be condemned.