Go With Your Gut: How Wellness Brands Deceive us with the Promise of a Detox
Thoughts | Lilly Stewart
How I healed my gut. How I stopped bloating. How I cured my hormones by eating clean and raw. How I reduced my cravings.
Cleanse. Detoxify. Burn. Flush. Parasites.
Words and phrases have power. A phrase like “cleansing parasites” evokes the grotesque image of a swarm of little black bugs swimming around in your stomach and nibbling at the “bad” foods you are eating. Words like “flush,” “cleanse,” “reduce,” or “cut” evoke an image of cleanliness, of power-washing one’s insides, of “flushing” everything out of your stomach, or eliminating one’s “cravings.” Cravings are the human body’s natural desire for food in order to survive. The bright green powders, shiny packaging, aesthetically curated Instagram feeds, and purposefully designed pictures and graphics are meant to drag you away from your breakfast and towards a silver straw, a $500 “detox” package, and let’s face it, towards your toilet, which is where the real “flushing” happens.
Several “gut health” wellness companies are directing their marketing towards women with promises of weight loss and gut cleansing. Their programs often involve smoothie powders and supplements with an adjacent rule book of what is and is not allowed to be eaten in addition to the smoothies. Often, the smoothies are marketed as “meal replacements,” which speaks for itself as a dangerous mindset about food as not something that is necessary for survival, energy, and brain activity, but as something that is morally corrupt and causes fat. One such brand, Purium, markets one of their products as activating the “skinny hormone.” Venturing over to their blog, the “skinny hormone” refers to adiponectin. Adiponectin is a hormone that research suggests may help in creating treatments for type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. By characterizing this hormone as a “skinny” hormone, the brand is attaching a moral value to being “skinny,” when the hormone itself may have positive health effects for people who are suffering from diseases. The choice to call adiponectin as “skinny” is purposeful. This is diet culture propaganda at its finest. The word “skinny” indicates that the hormone’s sole purpose is to burn fat and trigger weight loss, when in reality, the hormone has “anti-inflammatory properties” and may help to fight insulin resistance. Insulin resistance does cause weight gain, but it also plays a role in diabetes.
Another brand, Shaklee, features a laxative in their main “cleansing” supplement package, the purpose of which is to “cleanse the body.” Without being too graphic, I’m sure that a laxative will have you feeling “skinny” without having to trigger a hormone or eat a liquid diet with raw cucumbers on the side. Purium employs a narrative of “bad” versus “good” foods, where the good foods are called “flex” foods, which include celery, cucumbers, avocado, berries, carrots, and of course their own special juices. The “bad” foods are pretty much everything else, with a whole paragraph dedicated to demonizing bananas by characterizing them as a trigger for weight gain and the cause of a “sticky” stomach. By using this type of grotesque language that evokes images of dirtiness and stickiness, and by making a division between good and bad foods, Purium is cultivating fear and guilt about eating. Their phrases and word choices create a black cloud of evil over bananas, onions, beans, and olive oil, while attaching a golden halo around “raw” foods like uncooked spinach and their own smoothies and juices.
The main draw of these brands is weight loss. If someone follows the formula laid out by these brands, they will lose weight. However, it's unsustainable weight loss because no one can stop eating bananas and eat only raw spinach and laxative smoothies forever. These brands are designed in this way so that customers keep coming back after they gain weight again, creating a vicious cycle that exploits a woman’s desire to become skinnier based on socialized beauty standards.
Shaklee makes claims about the results of each supplement that is included in their smoothie and juice package. Each ingredient includes an asterisk, which reads that their claims have not been evaluated or approved by the FDA. Alongside the cleansing supplements and smoothie packs, Shaklee and Purium both suggest eating raw vegetables and fruits all day long (because raw fruits and veggies aren’t filling). The term Shaklee uses for this is “grazing.” Last time I checked, women aren’t cows.
These products are marketed towards women, seeing as how the ads always feature a female model. The “success stories” on Purium’s blog, for example, only feature women’s transformation photos showcasing their weight loss. The goal of the cleanse is to lose weight and become thinner, where being smaller is a body standard for women. Women shouldn’t feel pressured to eat raw spinach and a handful of blueberries with a laxative drink to accept our bodies. These brands are exploiting a “self-care” and “self-love” culture in conjunction with a phenomenon of women feeling inadequate because they do not look like stick-thin models and Instagram influencers.
On top of it, these brands have a green and white color palette and feature statistics about the devastating effects of climate change. While this information is important to share, they are using the very real and demanding issue of climate change as a guilt tripping marketing tactic. For example, Shaklee promised to plant a tree for every purchase made during Earth Day weekend. Purium is plastic free and uses biodegradable packaging, which is good, but the fact remains that these brands are profiting from a woman’s socialized desire to be skinny. The brands pointedly ignore the fact that big companies and corporations, including banks, are responsible for funding the vast majority of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Placing the onus on the individual to use a reusable water bottle—a wellness brand’s water bottle—and stop using plastic straws exemplifies the intersection between capitalism and climate change. A brand will take whatever stance is most profitable to them based on the market they are targeting. In this case, they are targeting upper middle class, mostly white, and liberal women who want to be thin(ner). Without explicitly saying so, their marketing tactics indicate that in order to love yourself, you have to buy their laxative shakes and “cleanse” your stomach of parasites (which, by the way, is a complete lie. If you had parasites in your stomach, you’d know. Trust me).
Gut health in and of itself is not unimportant. Taking a probiotic or trying to eat more fruits and vegetables, fiber-rich foods, and less meat for example, is objectively good for you. That being said, nutritious foods are not accessible to everyone to the same extent based on income, living area, race, and class. And if you do have access to a more nutritious diet, you don’t have to chug a green smoothie to get those health benefits. The main conflation that is made by these brands is between “health” and being “skinny.” This is a dangerous correlation to make because everyone’s bodies are different. We are not all supposed to look the same, and we should not feel like we must “flush” ourselves away in order to accept our bodies.