Gwyneth Paltrow, Justin Bieber and other influencers help feed hunger for alternative therapies to feel better at any cost
Real money is to be found in serving a demographic known as “the worried well.” who spend on anything from scented candles and bath oils to high-tech kit costing thousands. “We only enter the NHS if we are ill, it is never about enhancing our health,” says Baker. Turning the adjective “well” into a noun is to add a price for being better. The anxieties of the better-off are being monetized.
In 2019, professor Stephen Powis, NHS England’s medical director and professor of renal medicine at University College London, said: “At a time when health misinformation is running riot on social media, it is reckless and exploitative to peddle ineffective and misleading treatments. The NHS position is that so-called ‘party drips’ are ineffective and potentially harmful.”
Gwyneth Paltrow, founder and CEO of Goop, has come under fire for the validity of some of the alternative treatments she supports. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty ImagesGwyneth Paltrow is the world’s best-known wellness influencer. She started her Goop site as a little newsletter in 2008. It was valued 10 years later at $345 million. Baker says that Paltrow was initially just “recommending restaurants and talking about things she did.
As Baker says, “This idea about a hero’s journey, having psychological pain or a physical condition and somehow overcoming it … within wellness culture, too often that stands in for professional expertise. It’s comforting and reassuring for people, that’s why they relate, but this is where the problems lie. There is no way of testing the truth of their claims.”
At the drinks afterwards, a nutritionist recommended wellness influencers for me to follow, including Rubio Fuerte. His bio reads: “Public health nutrition, nutritional scientist, University of Vienna,” which sounds reassuring and, at first, his posts seem fair: “Break your sugar addiction;” “Stop pretending obesity is healthy.”
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