The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses, and Find Your True Well-Being

“Wellness culture is a trap, keeping us stuck in a narrow view of what it means to be well and exposing us to much that is harmful,” contends nutritionist Harrison (Anti-Diet) in this incisive takedown. She surveys the dangers posed by the alternative medicine industry, including the largely unregulated vitamin and supplement market, restrictive diets that can induce disordered eating, and Western practitioners’ superficial commodification of such traditional Eastern healing disciplines as yoga or Ayurveda. Harrison situates contemporary wellness purveyors in the tradition of 19th-century snake oil salesmen and posits that both exploit medical uncertainties to lure desperate patients into buying products that don’t work. Proposing smart and wide-ranging solutions, she advocates for legislation to ameliorate the social determinants of ill health and calls on readers to evaluate potential misinformation by following the SIFT formula: stop, investigate the source, find better coverage, and trace claims to their original source. The historical perspective elevates Harrison’s analysis, and her empathy for those who fall for disinformation yields illuminating insight (getting into wellness culture, she writes, “starts with feeling disappointed, unheard, or excluded by the Western medical system”). This is an ideal companion for those disillusioned by the medical establishment. (Apr.)