How to Spot Nutritional Wankery

Posted on 20 February, 2019

A lesson from the Celery juice trend.

Today’s post is based on this article. I am NOT linking to the post because I support it. Quite the contrary. We’re going to learn about nutritional wankery. And become more intelligent for it.

Lesson 1: Nutrition wankery will imply that it’s telling you a secret

Quote: “If people knew all the potent healing properties of celery juice, it would be widely hailed as a miraculous superfood.”

We all love a good scandal or conspiracy theory. It’s even better when it’s implied that the authorities covered up the truth or us qualified people have been too stupid to discover it. When you feel like you’re discovering a secret, it makes you feel special.

The truth is, if something was so amazing, it wouldn’t be a secret. The reason qualified people aren’t proclaiming the benefits of celery juice is because there is no evidence to back up these claims.

Lesson 2: Nutrition wankery will tell you that thousands of people have already discovered the secret

Quote: “I’ve seen thousands of people who suffer from chronic and mystery illness restore their health by drinking 16 ounces of celery juice daily on an empty stomach.”

Now that you’re hooked on the fact that you’ve discovered a secret, you realise (shock horror) it’s not a secret after all! How unfair! People are already benefiting from it! Why aren’t you?

By telling you that thousands of people have already discovered it creates a fear of missing out. It’s called FOMO.

Nutritional wankery pulls on your need to feel included. You better get on board with *insert new trend here* otherwise, you’ll miss out. Unfortunately, this usually results in no-one actually looking up and questioning ‘are we following the right advice?’.

Lesson 3: Nutritional wankery will insist that there is a special, detailed formula for their advice, rather than giving vague guidelines

Quote: “Celery juice is most powerful when you drink it solo.”

Specific instructions give the illusion of expertise and authority on a particular topic. It makes you think that if they’ve gone to the trouble of articulating a specific regime there must be a wrong and a right way to follow the advice. This communication of specifics helps us trust the advice more. We assume that a layperson wouldn’t know this information and that because the author does, they must be an expert.

The problem with this advice is it’s completely unfounded. There is absolutely NO evidence for this specific statement. Unless they’ve done a double-blind randomised controlled trial and repeated that methodology numerous times with similar results, you can assume they’ve just made that bad boy up to make themselves look like an expert, when in fact, they’re a nutritional wanker.

When it comes to nutrition, there aren’t wrong or right ways to eat. There are only key nutrition principles that can be applied to individual lives in a myriad of different ways to then promote health.

Lesson 4: Nutritional wankery will claim that their advice will cure: all the diseases, especially the mystery ones (and even the genetic ones…)

Quote: “…all of these symptoms and illnesses are mysteries to medical communities, even though they have names. Their true causes are not yet known by medical research and science.”

The list of diseases that celery juice claims to heal is laughable! Seriously, laughable. Most of them completely unrelated to each other! From diabetes to lupus, this one simple drink can cure them all!

This technique is all about playing on the desperation felt by sufferers of these diseases, claiming that because the medical community has no answers, their solution must be true. Not good logic at all.

I would like to know what the biochemical pathway is by which celery juice cures these diseases. Once you drink the celery juice, it’s combined with the hydrochloric acid in your stomach, endures the enzymes of the small intestine and then broken down and absorbed; what is the mechanism by which it cures diabetes? And which diabetes are we talking about? Cause they’re different.

If no specific mechanism is given, it’s wankery at its core.

Lesson 5: Nutritional wankery has made up qualifications

Quote from About page: “Anthony William was…born with the unique ability to converse with Spirit of Compassion who provides him with extraordinarily accurate health information that’s often far ahead of its time.”

I’m a spiritual person and believe in a higher power, so I’m not having a go at spirituality. However, if a higher power was communicating to this man, it would at least help him use the words inflammation and pathogen in the correct context.

For more lessons click here.

What can we take away from this?

Feeding yourself for good health has more to do with the small habits and routines that you repeat daily then applying these random pieces of information from a person who’s using the power of the internet to grant himself the authority to share with you wisdom from a ‘spirit’.

If it sounds too good to be true and ticks the five points mentioned above, you can ignore the information. You’ve got better things to do with your time than cleanse your organism with cluster salts.

I’m passionate about helping people create healthy eating habits so that they can consistently eat well for the rest of their life. If you’re keen on this kind of sensible, long term help, from qualified professionals click here.