Through The Looking Glass Of The Cult Of Wellness (Part One)

Hello girls and gays, the time has finally arrived! Joan and Matt spend the next two weeks deconstructing and dissecting the incredibly shady, unsubstantiated, manipulative, expensive, and exploitative vitamin and 'wellness' industry so prolific on social media sites, specifically Instagram. We start with the controversial Sugar Bear Hair Care supplement, that was the center of last month's James and Tati YouTube drama, then move on to the various like-scams the populate so many influencer feeds, including but not limited to: online-survey based home-delivery supplements, Alex Jone's 'DNA Force' pills, vitamin-infused vodka, vitamin-c mega-doses, appetite suppressant lollipops, 'wellness' vapes, and IV drip 'bars'. Stay tuned for part two coming out next week, where we pivot into the real-world effects of these irresponsible companies, explaining how they propagate the myth of 'endless illness' in women, to trick millions into buying bogus products and spread misinformation.

Eating For Free is a bi-weekly gossip podcast reporting from the edge of the internet! We're a new wave of celebrity reporters at a time when pop culture is increasingly chaotic and media lacks the ability or moral direction to make sense of this capitalist nightmare!

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• Joan Summers: Twitter, Instagram, joaniesucks@gmail.com.
• Matthew Lawson: Twitter, Instagram

Links:

• The Truth About SugarBearHair Vitamins (CBC News)
• The Shady Marketing by 'Ritual Vitamins' (NYT)
• How Vitamins Went From Medical Marvel to Marketing Scam (Slate)
• Sorry, Your Vitamin C Megadose Is Basically Useless (HuffPost)
• We Sent Alex Jones' Infowars Supplements To A Lab. Here's What's In Them (BuzzFeed)
• The Problem With Those Appetite-Suppressant Lollipops (Refinery29)
• The Creators of Vitamin-Infused Vodka Say It Will End Hangovers (Vice)
• Vapable Vitamins (Cosmo)
• IV Drip 'Bars' (Harvard Health)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDADbDqlcbo