How to avoid falling for wellness myths

We examine two popular health and wellness myths to demonstrate how you can sift through evidence and arrive at the objective truth

- Jen Thomas

Mis information is nothing new, but we live in an age where if you have a ring light, a camera phone, and a social media profile, you can film and promote information to the masses that could range from being partially true to downright lies. For an audience that considers an hour scrolling through Instagram Reels as "scientific observation," it's easy for influencers to take the wheel of your intelligence and have you believing in their snake oil-all within seconds.

Though social media does have some fantastic educators who relentlessly push back against the propagation of wrong information, sometimes, our emotional connection with a particular myth can stand in our way from hearing and believing counterarguments. We are too emotionally invested in what we believe to be true to listen to the truth.

Today, I'm fighting two battles for those willing to hear. The first is that adding weight loss foods to your diet can help you lose weight, and the second is that detoxes are necessary and integral as part of a wellness or weight loss plan. Before diving in, it's worth checking and asking yourself-what do you believe to be true about these myths, and what evidence do you have to go on?

THE NARRATIVE OF WEIGHT-LOSS FOODS

Every day, nutrition companies release new products in their weight-loss ranges, spanning multiple snacking categories such as high-protein 'weight-loss' bars, cookies, biscuits, and 'skinny teas." Do you need them if you're trying to shed a few kilos? Weight gain works like this: if you regularly eat more calories than your body uses throughout the day, your body will store the excess calories as fat over time. As humans, we do this rather well, and, at present, we are living in a global obesity epidemic, with recent figures from 2016 reported by the WHO as 1.9 billion people worldwide living with tremendous excess weight on their bodies.