Weaponizing Fear: The Wellness Industry Cashes In

The wellness Industry has made a business of scaring people into thinking they are at risk from the benign and mundane. They accomplish this by creating new diagnoses (e.g., adrenal fatigue, leaky gut) and discussing very vague, nearly universal symptoms that all people suffer from at least some of the time. Feel bloated? It couldn't possibly be because you had a big meal; it must be because you had gluten, and gluten causes leaky gut! Feel tired? It's not because you're a parent to a young child; it's because of adrenal fatigue due to environmental toxins!

Big Wellness also greatly profits from the “It couldn't hurt, right?” syndrome. This is when a person isn't totally convinced by the scare tactics around a specific issue or product but then allows the benefit of the doubt to creep in, thinking, “Well, even if it isn't going to kill me, it couldn't hurt to take the precaution, right?” Whether a consumer has bought hook-line and sinker to the fear-mongering or just thinks it couldn't hurt, the money is the same. 

Baby Food Ingredients

Baby food is, understandably, often an area where it's very easy to drum up health concerns. Babies are particularly fragile and completely codependent upon their caretakers. Most caretakers want to ensure they do their best for the baby. As a result, scares about baby food are almost cyclical at this point. Yes, there are real scares, such as heavy metal contamination. However, there are other scares mixed in with the legitimately concerning ones that are not based in science.

For example, in a blog post written by rising MAHA star Vani Hari (i.e., The Food Babe) warning about ingredients to avoid in baby food, she states,

“Citric Acid is naturally found in fruit, but they aren't using the natural stuff. Manufactured Citric Acid is fermented from a black mold called Aspergillus niger. This mold is a potent allergen, and experts say that this processed version of Citric Acid contributes to allergies and inflammation in the body, possibly leading to allergies, asthma, and other health conditions. Could this be a major culprit in rising cases of children with allergies?”

Within one paragraph, Hari has implied that “Manufactured Citric Acid” is responsible for allergies, asthma, inflammation, and increasing childhood allergies. The only source she cites is a case series of four case reports. Case reports, the lowest form of evidence, are anecdotal and cannot be used to prove a causal link. In this scenario, a case report can cast just enough fear and doubt to make people wonder. “This does sound scary. If she's writing it, there must be at least some kernel of truth to it.” 

The most remarkable part is that this is just the post's first paragraph, where she starts talking about ingredients to avoid. There are so many other paragraphs like this one in the rest of the post. There's one on fruit puree concentrate and juice concentrate. There's one on added refined sugar. She makes lots of claims about what these ingredients do to health and provides few citations to actually back them up. 

The real question becomes, “What does Hari gain by utilizing this fear technique?” The answer is the same as always: dollars, of course. She recently wrote a cookbook for the family, including the little ones. If you think her insight into “Manufactured Citric Acid” is great and want to know more about what to fear, there's conveniently a whole section in her cookbook called “The Terrible 10 Ingredients in Children's Food.” 

Liver Detox

In an article in the “Read & Shop” section of Goop lurks another scary story about the necessity of liver detoxes featuring none other than Will Cole. 

“If your liver is overloaded with those undesirable compounds because it can't process them into waste quickly enough, it can lead to chronic inflammation, which further affects your body's ability to rid itself of these toxic chemicals. It becomes a vicious cycle: Toxic chemicals build up, inflammation occurs, detoxification is inhibited, more toxic chemicals build up, inflammation levels rise even higher, and on and on.”

Similar to the previous example, in one paragraph, it's stated that your liver has toxic chemicals that continue to build up and cause inflammation unless you do something about it. There are no references to support these claims, just Will Cole's appeal to authority as a “Functional Medicine” provider (remember: he's a chiropractor). For those keeping track, “toxic” is used three times in two sentences. The word “inflammation” is also used three times. The term “vicious cycle” was meant to elicit a fearful reaction from the reader.

The article continues to expound on the virtues of a product sold on the Goop website, the G. Tox Detoxifying Superpowder, which was sold out as of this writing. But fear not! There is a waitlist you can join. 

Is there any evidence that this Detoxifying Superpowder does anything for your liver? Absolutely not. Do they even offer any evidence that your liver needs a detox beyond Cole speaking as an authority figure on the subject? Also no. But is it enough to inspire a shred of doubt and the “what’s the harm?” mentality? Goop is certainly betting so. 

Double Standards

The trick that Goop and Hari performed in these examples is not new. In fact, it's extremely old and cliche. The playbook is easy. 

• Cast doubt onto something you plan to profit from.
• Make several claims about how dangerous said something is, preferably in list form. 
• Don't worry too much about providing evidence of your claims about why that something is dangerous. None is fine, though flimsy is better. 

In the curious tale of patent medicine salesman Ed Greene, no better summary exists of just how old these scare tactics are:

“Marketing, rather than science, was the key to a successful pharmaceutical business. Nostrum advertisements sought to convince the public not only to believe they were sick, but also to trick them into believing their fake treatments worked.”

If you dislike that Big Pharma has engaged in these practices, it should also upset you that Big Wellness is doing the exact same thing. While I've picked on The Food Babe and Goop here, they are far from the only offenders; they're simply more visible than most. 

Being frustrated by marketing techniques and tactics is understandable. I am constantly frustrated that marketing seems to make the world go round. But to express frustration with only some of those who engage in these practices and not others is ideological cherry-picking. The Wellness Industry is certainly happy to lob accusations of fear-mongering at medicine, Big Pharma, etc., but let those without sin cast the first stone. In this case, no stones can be thrown.