Why Wellness Sells

“Chemical-free” beauty products, clean eating, and a truckload of supplements may make us feel in control in the face of work-induced burnout and chronic symptoms that doctors still puzzle over and refuse to take seriously, but these wellness remedies rarely stand up to scrutiny. This examination reveals a religious reverence for nature and a two-faced self-empowerment that blames ill health on the individual who simply did not do enough to buy their way to salvation.

Wellness is often treated a lot more like fashion in the media. 

Crucial to the allure of wellness interventions is the appeal to nature: its influencers denounce anything synthetic as inherently bad while their products, originally derived from nature but processed ten times over, are seen as pure. There are no lipstick trees. You can’t shake vitamin tablets from a bush, yet the wellness industry’s marketing campaigns, tapping into ancient notions of good and evil, have clearly succeeded.

When they were asked to define wellness, their definitions were thoughtful but nonspecific and often circular, with frequent pauses, false starts and frequent interruptions. They zeroed in on ideas of balance and functionality, but wellness, it turns out, is an ideal, forever out of reach, and its hazy definition allows its industry to grow indefinitely. To us, a toxin is a biologically produced poison or venom, ironically a natural substance, whereas the worried well have been trained to think of toxins as industrial by-products that move around, play hide-and-seek in our environment, and are ultimately bad for you.

Pharmaceuticals are seen as dangerous, harsh, and suppressive of symptoms. Natural health products have been sold to the masses as benign, gentle, and targeting the underlying cause of illness. Faced with complex problems and rising levels of stress, it’s no wonder that so many choose a simple alternative that feeds off of magical thinking. Facts can work, but we are well aware that believing the pseudoscience of the wellness industry involves a complex ecosystem in which systemic problems, value judgments, and community forces all feed each other. Debunking is also part of an ecosystem and it can influence who the press chooses to spotlight, which has an impact on what consumers are exposed to.