Wellness Culture Isn't The Problem
The Real Problem With Health in the USA
I read an opinion piece for MSNBC about why so many people trust RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz.
Both gentlemen are slated to run important health agencies under the Trump administration. We know that both have said questionable shit related to health and science.
I even wrote a piece about why I hate RFK Jr. which I am linking to below.
I am not here to argue why RFK Jr. and Mehmet Oz are terrible choices for leading health agencies in the government, many people have done this already including the piece I mentioned in the beginning.
What I am against is the justification for why these actors are terrible and why people support them, but to do that I might challenge a few assumptions and dig into something which requires deeper analysis.
So, this piece might be part of subsequent discussions and other essays related to this topic on why Americans turned their back on science.
Okay, let’s begin… I am against the base assumption that the reason RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz are bad is that they represent the worst aspects of “wellness culture”.
Kennedy and Oz are dangerous choices to lead major federal agencies because they amplify the worst aspects of that sprawling wellness culture: conspiracy theories, cheap hucksterism and an anti-institutionalism
- Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, MSNBC Columnist
This is a classic argument against problematic wellness/fitness messages and business practices, that these ideas and products are representatives of a particular “culture”.
This culture is seen as a set of beliefs and practices that are problematic because they eat away at credible institutions and ways of knowing.
For example, wellness culture is bad because it promotes a sort of moral purity with being well and evaluates the idea that natural is better no matter what. Additionally, diet culture is bad because it promotes the idea of being thin at all costs.
These arguments related to a problematic culture that ultimately leads to questionable practices and beliefs have great explanatory power. However, pointing to culture alone does not solve the problem nor does it lead to further analysis.
Talking about diet culture or wellness culture does not serve to explain why people hold these particular beliefs or engage in particular practices. The explanatory power of appealing to a culture is that you don’t have to engage with the structural or material conditions that lead to the adoption of the culture in the first place.
Arguing from Culture
These are well-established facts…
Black people are incarcerated at higher proportions than other racial groups, Black people are more likely to be in poverty compared to White people, and there are health disparities between Black and White people.
One of the explanations for the differences between Black folks and other racial groups (particularly White people) is culture.
Black folks have a set of beliefs, values, and practices that hold them back from achieving whatever society sees as an achievement (financial freedom, higher education, better health, etc.).
We see explanations like this often in conservative political discourse about Black issues. What primarily holds back Black folks is not the faults of institutions and systems but because of cultural factors.
Cultural explanations are great for deflecting blame onto groups or individuals in question because it does not require the hard work of questioning systems and providing complex solutions.
Meanwhile, a more material analysis would look at the economic and political forces that lead to a particular outcome.
A more material analysis would require us to look at institutions, policies, laws, and economic systems that lead to the problems in the Black community.
In the case of Black Americans, we would have to look at topics like redlining, the carceral system, healthcare, slavery and how it tied into the capitalist system, Jim Crow laws generally, how the war on drugs unfairly targeted Black communities and more.
Given these considerations, it can be argued that a lot more can be understood from looking at disparities based on the faults of systems rather than just culture.
Looking at these systems gives us a more nuanced understanding of the potential causes and effects these systems play into the disparities within the Black community.
While culture can be a useful lens of analysis, especially when it relates to the adoption of cultural beliefs/values/practices stemming from systems and how it perpetuates these systems, it cannot be the end all be all of our understanding.
Culture is not born from thin air, culture comes from material conditions.
Material Analysis of Wellness Culture
Wellness culture is described in great detail by dietitian Christy Harrison in her book The Wellness Trap.
Wellness culture is tied to disinformation, discrediting the conventional medical establishment, fixating on individualism, supporting alternatives to conventional medicine, and undermining the scientific establishment.
I do not disagree with Harrison’s observations of wellness culture generally, but I do disagree with her fixation on the culture without getting at deeper systems.
Why would a culture focus on individualism, propping up alternatives to medicine, and undermining institutions of knowledge and health?
As Harrison herself points out in a podcast interview, the wellness industry promotes products and services that are largely ineffective to make money.
The wellness industry is a multi-trillion-dollar industry.
This industry takes advantage of people who often do not have access to healthcare and who have overall problems with the healthcare system.
Millions of Americans suffer from chronic illness and do not have health insurance, these issues are tied to socioeconomic disadvantage and barriers to healthcare access. This is a breeding ground for exploitation.
Recognizing social determinants of health and regulating supplements and related wellness products is bad for business. The industry has a vested interest in making you believe its narratives concerning health being individualized and commodifiable because their solution isn’t a matter of policy but of purchase.
Through the wellness industry, you can buy your way to well-being.
Consequently, the wellness industry isn’t unique in this endeavor to make money. We see many examples of corporations and industries spreading harmful narratives or engaging in harmful practices for profit.
The meat industry in the USA exploits undocumented workers to keep their profit margins high. A banana company in Latin America hired a fascist death squad to protect its landholdings. Hundreds of advertisers have been pressed by the government for making false or misleading claims concerning products.
The wellness industry is not unique in its exploitation, these are problems inherent to capitalism itself.
Understanding Culture and Commodification
Health disparities are connected to systemic factors like socioeconomic status and access to healthcare.
Changing the underlying system which has led to this outcome is difficult, to say the least. The easier solution is the commodification of health.
Health has turned into a commodity, a product to be bought and sold.
The wellness industry has provided its market-based solution to the health problems of millions and leans into the historical distrust of institutions (this distrust being justified in numerous ways). Instead of engaging in systems just buy a product.
Instead of going to a doctor you can’t afford or have difficulty with, buy a supplement.
Instead of addressing social determinants of health, buy a diet book.
The commodity of health quickly becomes fetishized by the cultural narratives surrounding it. Taking a supplement becomes taking charge of one’s health “naturally” (even though the supplement is highly processed). Seeing an alternative medicine “doctor” is seen as better because they aren’t paid off by big pharma (meanwhile they still make money off you).
The wellness industry positions itself as better than conventional medicine because good marketing means framing your solution as better than your rivals.
Nothing about your material conditions changes, but you feel better through consumption.
They sold you a promise of better health and wellness.
However, this promise doesn’t address what made you feel sick in the first place. The product/service does not address your lack of healthcare, the problems you have with doctors or the historical wrongs of the medical establishment.
Wellness culture is merely the narratives surrounding commodity fetishization, you think wellness products/services mean more than they do because that is what has been framed to you.
The wellness industry does not care about your health or well-being but about making money… it’s like every other industry.
Final Thoughts
This is one of those essays where I want to dig further and have a lot to say that wasn’t said. I will briefly touch on some of these topics and probably dig further into them at a later date.
This piece is not a defense of institutions and their failure. The rise of the wellness industry and by extension wellness culture is due in part to the failures of the medical and scientific institutions. Nevertheless, these failures are not isolated to these institutions alone and extend well into our economic and political systems.
The science communication community has lost and their warnings put on deaf ears as notable folks who are associated with anti-science stances will lead government offices related to health and science.
The fixation on culture is a distraction that detracts away from deeper structural and material problems. Cultural analysis can be insightful and important but it should be secondary to material analysis in my opinion.
The science community (in the US at least) largely follows liberalism as does most of our society because it is considered a capitalist liberal democracy. But recent problems in the United States are giving more credence to right-wing politics. Right-wing political orientations, particularly those of fascism, attack institutions of knowledge and education. The science community will struggle to fight against this growing influence because fascists largely do not care about facts.
I once turned down a job at a supplement shop cause I just couldn’t lie to people. I was trying to get out of the cannabis industry, and I was basically already doing that.
Love what you are writing here. I'm a board-certified holistic practitioner and work in the "wellness industry". It's becoming increasingly difficult to be heard if you aren't on the extreme side of things be it "anti-diet" or "wellness culture". Would love to chat about this topic with you.