When Diet Culture is Disguised as Wellness
If I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt, I’ll just say that Gwyneth Paltrow has really bad timing. During National Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2021, she promoted an upcoming diet book, Intuitive Fasting: The Flexible Four-Week Intermittent Fasting Plan to Recharge Your Metabolism and Renew Your Health. This is a book for which she not only wrote the forward, but also published through a partnership her lifestyle brand Goop recently forged with Penguin Random House.
If I’m not feeling so generous, I’ll say that she’s using her vast influence to profit from pseudoscience that promotes potentially harmful practices (like sticking rocks in your vagina, or taking health advice from a ghost). Paltrow shared in her blog that she is a COVID-19 “long hauler” and she turned to her friend — the book’s author — Dr. Will Cole, who is a functional medicine practitioner (and not a medical doctor, per his website) for help managing her lingering symptoms. Her post-COVID-19 regimen includes $90 vitamins, a $500 infrared sauna blanket, $60 detox powder and a variety of other expensive supplements and gadgets that somehow aid in her recovery — like a $125 “Goop University” t-shirt, and the “Wholeness Medallion and Gemstone Heart” necklace that sells for a whopping $8,600. She’s also fasting. Intuitively, she claims. It’s keto and plant based (“but flexible”) and according to the author, “by the end of the four weeks, you will have all the tools necessary to Reset your body, Recharge your metabolism, Renew your cells, and Rebalance your hormones. Along with more than sixty-five recipes, you’ll also find a maintenance plan, so you can adapt fasting and feeding windows to work sustainably with your lifestyle.”
There are so many problems with this. First, COVID-19 is a new virus and not much is known about the role diet plays in recovery. Many people who suffer from COVID-19 experience a variety of ongoing symptoms that diet may negatively impact, and they should be urged to consult with their medical provider before starting any new diet.
Then, let’s talk about the diet itself. The Ketogenic diet was initially designed to help control seizures in people who have epilepsy but it has garnered a following based on the weight loss that’s often experienced when on this high fat, low carbohydrate diet. It’s still prescribed by physicians treating individuals with uncontrolled epilepsy, and patients are usually followed very closely by a dietician because restricting entire food groups can lead to nutrient deficiencies and other health risks, including kidney stones and low blood pressure.
What about Intuitive Fasting? Is that really a thing? No, no it’s not. And it’s dishonest to imply that you can combine intermittent fasting with intuitive eating, to somehow turn it from a diet based on restrictive behavior, into a healthy lifestyle.
Intermittent fasting is an eating plan that restricts when you eat, starting with a period of fasting, followed by a window of time during which you are permitted to eat, often at a ratio of 16:8.
Intuitive eating is a philosophy that rejects weight loss diets and encourages you to get in touch with your hunger and satisfaction at any given point. There are 10 guiding principles of intuitive eating:
- Reject the diet mentality and diet culture
- Honor your hunger
- Make peace with food
- Challenge the “food police”
- Discover the satisfaction factor
- Respect your fullness
- Cope with your emotions with kindness
- Respect your body
- Exercise and feel the difference
- Honor your health
Intuitive eating is backed by years of scientific study and its principles are often used as part of an eating disorder treatment plan. Claiming that intermittent fasting, which is based entirely on restrictive behavior, can be combined with intuitive eating is not only misleading but dangerous. The author is co-opting a movement that was designed to help people learn how to trust their bodies and honor their health, to sell a diet book.
“Diet marketing is getting sneakier and sneakier,” says Caroline Dooner, author of the F*ck It Diet. “First, diets started claiming they were NOT diets, they were ‘lifestyles’. Now, diets are using buzzwords from the anti-diet movement like ‘anti-diet’ and ‘intuitive eating’.
Intuitive eating is a framework that was created to help people learn to trust their bodies, and to reject the diet mentality completely. Calling a keto/fasting regimen ‘intuitive’ is almost laughable, but unfortunately, the marketing will work, and people will convince themselves they can starve themselves ‘intuitively’. Which, for the record, is what people with eating disorders do.”
Are you wondering how pervasive and damaging diet culture is? According to a study conducted by the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, 75% of American women reported disordered eating behavior, or symptoms consistent with an eating disorder. They discovered that 53% of dieters are at a healthy weight, yet are still trying to lose weight, and 39% of the women surveyed say concerns about what they eat or weigh interferes with their happiness.
Each month, Goop reaches about 2.5 million people so despite the CYA disclaimer on the website which claims that content is provided for “informational purposes only,” Gwyneth Paltrow has devotees who are buying what she’s selling. So much so, 70% of Goop’s total revenue is made through product sales.
Paltrow insists that her platform is not “prescriptive” but is, instead, a space to discuss holistic alternatives for women, a population that has historically been let down by the traditional healthcare system. On the surface, that sounds great. And necessary. However if you scratch the surface, you’ll see that there’s nothing of substance beneath the glittery, Goop branded exterior. There’s no foundation in science that proves the efficacy of the majority of the practices and products they sell. The advice Paltrow and her staff offers has come under scrutiny by medical professionals around the world, including the chief executive of NHS England, who accuses Goop of “spreading misinformation.”
Gwyneth Paltrow has an opportunity to use her platform for meaningful dialogue about health disparities and to amplify practices that actually support health and healing. Instead, she’s selling sonically tuned water that contains moonlight and repels psychic vampires, and promoting toxic diet culture disguised as wellness.
