I opened my inbox yesterday to find yet another fear-mongering headline from alt-med osteopath and leading anti-vaxxer, Joseph Mercola: The Surprising Villian in Your Diet. Clicking through to the article, I learn that…too much sugar is bad for you.
Not exactly the type of demonization I’ve come to expect from a man who rails against linoleic acid (a derivation of the wellness industry’s assault against seed oils), diet soda, cereal, commercial yogurt—and that’s just in the last week.
These scare articles are countered by the incredible benefits of ashwagandha, curcumin, and maca (all available at Mercola Market!). There’s also the disproven belief that vaccinated youth are dying at a higher rate than their unvaxxed peers, the hidden dangers of 5G (the network most people are using to read Mercola) and a medieval remedy using garlic and leeks to battle MRSA, along with a pitch for colloidal silver (also at the market!). These topics don’t even account for half the articles published in the last week.
Mercola is only one example of alt-med practitioners constantly demonizing modern society who just happens to sell “ancient” and contrarian cures “they” don’t want you to know about. He’s a prolific grifter that employs the same tactic day after day in his newsletter: be deathly afraid of that, buy this instead.
Prolific, but not alone.
Two decades ago, I worked with a number of health brands. (Not directly: I would DJ their events across the country, and became friends with many owners and employees.) While I believe their intentions were in the right place, and their products were often delicious, one trend became apparent: every season another food was “in.” Suddenly, the amazing (supposed) health benefits of this or that nut, seed, herb, or blend would be aggressively marketed to the Whole Foods set—this was well before the Amazon takeover. Eventually, that food would dissolve into the marketing background to make way for the next hot new trend.
That technique still exists—ashwagandha is currently having another moment—but a more dangerous tactic has taken its place in the Covid era. While not really new, this technique is now a staple of wellness purveyors: demonize more and more foods.
Why it’s different: Instead of adding yet another unvetted and untested item to your shopping cart (often reserved for those who can afford them), this technique subtracts, which can affect anyone regardless of economic situation. When unnecessary fear-mongering replaces common-sense food decisions, the consumer is left paralyzed.
This process reminds me of my former eating disorder, orthorexia. (As I wrote about in Teen Vogue, orthorexia is not a clinical disorder, and so is not yet accepted by nutrition experts. I still refer to it, however, as the habits are similar to other eating disorders: an intentional restriction of foods that are not “pure” or “healthy” enough despite evidence to the contrary.)
Nowhere near the zone
I remember why it started: the Zone diet. I was in my mid-twenties, living alone for the first time in an apartment above a cleaners on a highway in Hackensack. I had just gone through my first serious breakup and wasn’t in the best mindset. At six-three, I dropped to a ghostly 159 pounds. I wasn’t intentionally not eating. The stressors at that moment were turned up to a glaring volume, and my physiology was in overdrive.
I was just starting a yoga practice, which helped. Years of chiropractic maintenance were becoming unnecessary as I moved my body in new ways to heal old injuries. The slow breathing combatted the anxious rush of chemistry that flooded my body. Yet along with that, I was being indoctrinated into a particular way of viewing food. (I don’t consider this indoctrination intentional by one individual or group, but rather a mindset that’s long existed in American subcultures around the “purity” of food.)
I wasn’t yet a fitness instructor, but I did split my time between yoga studios and gyms, both of which feature their own nutrition beliefs and practices. I don’t remember how I stumbled across the Zone. If you don’t know it, first off, congratulations, and second, it’s a low-carb diet created by biochemist Barry Sears. The basics: consume 30% of your calories via fats, 30% protein, and 40% carbohydrates to get into “the zone.”
There’s no science backing up this fad diet (a 2013 study verified this), yet I was employed as a crossword puzzle editor at the time, not a health journalist. The Zone’s marketing hype about getting into a flow state like elite athletes and maintaining an elevated state of physical and mental fitness appealed to me.
So there I was, inspecting nutrition labels on every product I bought, trying to piece together the perfectly ratioed meal. Given my financial situation at the time, my food budget was extremely low, and I often failed to concoct the right ratio. This meant I would often forgo meals. If I couldn’t dial in the right nutrient profile, better to let my body starve a bit than potentially pull me out of the Zone—even though I wasn’t actually in one to begin with.
I’d like to say The Zone was the only fad diet I fell for, but it wasn’t. I was pulled into the ebb and flow of the growing wellness industry’s trends, which was likely made worse by the fact that I ended up befriending and working with many top players in the health food scene. Thankfully, I did put on weight as the heartbreak eased, though the mental distress lasted with me, in varying degrees, for the 15 years of my eating disorder.
The irony, of course, is that Americans generally have access to more food choices now than at any time in history. This comes with its own paralysis: the paradox of choice. (In brief: the more options we have, the less likely we are to choose one.) Part of that paradox means we rely on others to make decisions about nutrition for us. By others, I don’t mean registered dietitians or clinical nutritionists.
No, diet is a battlefield wellness influencers, untrained in any clinical field, claim as their own. And they depend on the same circuit of nutritional misinformation that’s existed for centuries, now on the steroids of social media. So much of the current demonization rhymes with orthorexia that it’s hard to distinguish between good health and an eating disorder.
The tragedy: the people claiming to help you are often the ones pushing the disorder into your life.
Nutrients matter—not hype
In the coming weeks, I’m going to look at a number of foods victimized by wellness influencers. I’ll also be interviewing Dr Sarah Ballantyne about her forthcoming book, Nutrivore, which makes the case for understanding food in terms of actual nutrient composition, not marketing hype—and, importantly, doesn’t advocate for any type of diet.
I really enjoy Dr Ballantyne’s videos, as she highlights the benefits of low-cost foods like oatmeal and cereals to combat the bias against the social determinants of health many influencers refuse to recognize as reality. I’m going to specifically ask her how to use her system as a general guide and not as a constant calculator, like I used to when trying to get into “the Zone.” Understanding the wide variety of nutritious options despite budgetary restraints is essential given the flood of misinformation and demonization around food.
So when Dave Asprey calls oatmeal “peasant food” or a “men’s lifestyle coach” claims that seed oils are toxic, they’re not offering health. Rather, they’re partaking in an old marketing trope that eventually leads to their downline of products—and both of these men have extensive product and affiliate links.
Oatmeal and seed oils fill in nutritional gaps. Yet listening to these men, neither of whom have clinical nutritional training, doesn't benefit you. If anything, it makes attaining a healthy nutrient profile harder, which sets you up for the next move in the marketing chain: purchasing supplements they recommend (and profit from) to fill in your nutritional gaps.
This playbook isn’t new. It is effective, however. While the paradox of choice is a real issue for any decision-making process, we potentially choose products and services that work against our health—with added mental and emotional stress added by these contrarian influencers who use distrust of any systems to inform their marketing tactics.
Which is not a healthy way to live.
I’ve been an industry consultant for a while and one thing I learned was that the surface layer food trends can never be a permanent solution or else the symbolic driver of growth - the new attribute won’t work. It’s more about how food became fashion than truth or efficacy
I love oatmeal😋 Oh, the "wellness" industry is directly responsible for my friend's death from cervical cancer😢 She ignored medical advice and tried to treat it with colloidal silver. I'm sure hers isn't the only death this industry is responsible for.