November Bonus: Podcast Payola, The 2022 Grifties and The Worst Thing We've Ever Tasted

I’m re-listening to this in 2026 and a different podcast I like not in the wellness space is doing ads after not doing them for a while. I am totally understanding of the hosts wanting to get paid and needing to paid for editing and producing. The weird thing to me is that knowing how contrived the ads are makes me so much less interested than if it was just a standard nationwide ad on the radio or tv. I don’t want this host, I understand is doing this because it’s just the best option so some behind the scenes person can get paid, to pretend to use this product. Just be honest and tell me what it does. It gives me the ick and makes me immediately write off these products. Way to backfire companies!

Helloooo, I'm a new Patreon member and just listened to this for the first time and have been making up the theme song for "GOLDENMIND" for the last 20 minutes

How much I enjoy listening to Michael and Aubrey taste these weird products is insane. It brings me such joy.

Y’all do not take coffee seriously enough; that shit goes OFF in like 30 minutes. Brew a fresh cup please. Old, lukewarm coffee is such a tongue monstrosity. Much love, drink fresh coffee 🫶

That review of Huel being like throwing up in reverse is spot on

Those episodes where you try foods and drinks are so funny !ahahah

I know AG1 from Cody Johnston of the some more news podcast... he does chug it

I think it’s interesting that the number of ingredients is a big deal to Michael especially. For people like me who can’t eat certain foods for medical reasons like dairy, many nondairy packaged products are going to have lots of ingredients. The commentary feels like it’s not “natural” enough so it’s a bit uncomfortable for me. As long as I can eat the ingredients, I’ll take what I can get.

Listening to you two taste test things is just so delightful. Cracks me up. Y'all are great. Your honest reactions and thoughts have freed me from some self-imposed idea that I just need to choke down these nasty health faddy things to stave off the inevitable cancer that will come from all the toxins in the environment. Also, I appreciate that Michael's self-described "cheapskate" ways means he has not encountered so many wellness-faddy things that I honestly can't remember a time in my life that I didn't know about. I grew up as a millenial with a nurse-practitioner boomer-hippie mom who, with the best of intentions, followed all the new "health recommendations" that government orgs would release every few years. I still stare at milk in the store wondering if I should buy skim milk. I harvest wild Chaga mushrooms here in Missouri (Mike had no idea what Chaga mushrooms were). Long story short, I still feel so pulled in by the newest health fads and hypes, and your podcast has slowed me down, I feel a bit liberated to spend less money and live a more simple life. It's awesome. I am very grateful.

I kinda like Huel savory - but I always am adding stuff in: garlic powder, onion powder, chili oil, etc. peps it up just fine. I definitely have my preferences. I will also say, I no longer regularly order/eat Huel. I LIKE cooking and meal prepping, I have found.

Chaga is something Indigenous people use in Alaska. You can burn it and use the ash in chewing Tobacco for an extra buzz. I know there are other uses for it in some Indigenous cultures that I’m not aware of. We also call Chaga, Bear Bread in Alaska.

Yeah huel takes some getting used to however the shakes were something I was able to consume when I was recovering from heart surgery, and it tasted better than the nasty nestle stuff they gave me in hospital. There's a gap in the market for an actual healthy food for people who can only take fluids. Huel just about filled that for me.

Y’all I was so close to buying a box or two of Magic Spoon (the art is so cute!!) but they contain dairy. I’m lactose intolerant, and even though they’re probably lactose-free, I feel weird about eating cereal with dairy as the first ingredient. Funny how they brag on their website how their cereal is gluten-free/grain-free when many other cereals are vegan/dairy-free and Magic Spoon isn’t. Vegan/raw/lowcal/gluten-free usually all goes together in “health foods” but I guess this just goes to show how arbitrary it all is. Joke’s on them — Reeses Puffs is dairy free AND delicious so I’ll stick with them instead

Hey! Re-listening to this, and as a water chemist and someone who lives on a well, just wanted to say something about reverse osmosis that was briefly laughed at. Brita filters can't remove some contaminants that are a major concern in many rural areas, and you do need a specialized filter, distillation system, or a reverse osmosis system. In particular, in many agricultural areas, nitrates in groundwater are really high and can cause something called "blue baby syndrome" in infants and small children, and are also associated with hypertension and possibly cancers. I have no doubt the podcast payola RO system was grifty as all get out, but there are good reasons for folks to have legit water filtration systems that are better than a Brita! And that says nothing about how many people live in cities with old infrastructure and poorly maintained pipes (though I'm not sure what water filtration is best in those circumstances). Just thought yall would be interested!

Literally drinking Huel as I listen to this lmao. They literally picked the worst product of the whole brand to eat. Black Edition is fine depending on the flavor, it’s great for after exercise.

The only reason i can even think of for the square food is for autistic kids. I've worked with one kid who had to have everything round and something ive ran into often is everything being a certain color for their food. But as a health thing its just weird and often you can just cut the food into the shapes

I'd love if Mike would expand on why he's so salty about electrolytes (pun intended). As someone in the POTS community, electrolytes are super important to me NOT PASSING OUT, and the same is true for everyone I've talked to in the community. So as a result i've never heard anyone say anything negative/skeptical about electrolytes and I'm super curious!

I tried it again--after listening to this maybe ten times I still start laughing so hard I cry when Michael says that it tastes like it came out of someone's body.

All I can think of when I hear ads for Huel and its ilk is like….. so it’s human dog food.

I really appreciate that you don’t have ads and I’ll keep paying you forever if I can! Thank you for the work you’re doing.

Long time listener/new Patreone. I’ve been a Huel customer for a long time. The shake mix is indissoluble and intolerable— but the ready-made bottles and hot & savory are kinda staples of this busy doc’s work week. I actually like the Mac’n’Cheez best. 😂 (You have to mix the water in when you pour so the powder at the bottom gets in.) There’s a lid for every pot!!

UK regulator called out Huel ads. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/15/huel-adverts-banned-in-uk-claiming-shakes-could-help-cut-food-bills?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Polarrrrr…. The best

"how dare you, it's polar!" Made me little New Englander heart happy

Not even kidding--I have listened to this 3 times now, and have only recently learned that I cannot being drinking anything during the last taste test. EVERY TIME I have started laughing so hard that tears stream down my face and I have to spit out my beverage because I am dying. I seriously start laughing even thinking about Mike saying, "it does have a weird, like a weird body taste".

Every time I think I can’t love you more and then you are you and I just do.

Just listening to Mike cackle about all of these grifter products is LIFE! 🤣

Will you please PLEASE do Plexus before my obsession with Sister Wives contributes to a cave in and I buy the crap? (Stop the MLM madness!)

I'm pretty sure everything from Huel is super gross. One time I was running late for yoga class so I grabbed a bottle of the readymade chocolate shake (the one in the white bottle), and it was one of the worst things I've ever put in my mouth.

Yes an episode on Michael mosley would be great!!

I would LOVE an episode on Michael Mosley!

I had never even heard of the liver king. Totally bonkers!

Hey, I have no idea where to post this put I know that I want to make it known. I know that many of us are here as a part of our journey away from EDs. I also know many of us are scraping the podcast barrel right now to help drown out the anxious thoughts caused by being around family/the holidays in general. I personally have been trying some new shows and would like to give a mini warning.... While I recognize that Fad Camp is clearly an awesome show and I can tell that the hosts have been on a long journey please don't go into expecting a Hobbesian dismantling or Aubrey's reassuring scoff at diet claims. I just listened to their episode on juice cleanses and while they definitely spend plenty of time going over the ridiculousness of the diets and all of their negatives I think I am still too close to the beginning of my journey to hear diets praised. I know that this is my situation but I also know that I am not alone and wanted to give a heads up that it's a little different than mom and dad's. *Edit* They are absolutely NOT telling you to try the diet and I don't think any one could really have that as a reasonable takeaway, they just spend a few minutes talking about how good it made their skin and the ED monster in my mind stirred. This is also just the only place I know to reach out to this community, they are not at all grifty.

I also saw an ad (Why does the algorithm think I want these?) For a product called Zozosuit, which is a leotard that looks like something you might wear on a movie set if you were playing a CG character. Then there's an app that will take your pictures as you turn slowly so that you can get accurate measurements. The guy wearing it was lean and muscular, of course, and he was saying that he's so concerned with his body size that he's always taking measurements but was worried he wasn't getting accurate data, and this suit takes out all the guesswork! So now we have tech to help us achieve our ED goals! Yikes!

Okay, so it's probably too late to get in on this now, but I just saw a new ad for BetterHelp, the online therapy app. It had a picture of an exercise bike piled high with clothes and books. The text was something about how we make resolutions, but never keep them, but Better Help can help transform you into someone who does make changes! So are they saying that mental health is now mainly a means to thinness? UGH!

Ever heard of "obesogens?" Neither had I. Sounds like more junk science explaining environmental factors affecting metabolism and other underlying diseases correlated with obesity or in some circles, diseases caused by being fat. Would love to get the skinny on this concept. Pun intended :)

Would love to hear you guys talk about Instagram influencer Turtle Creek Lane and their no sugar/refined carbs, wearing continuous glucose monitors lifestyle. Also the iv supplement places where you can pick out a cocktail of vitamins, etc and hang with your girlfriends while you all get your drips.

Ok, I am also running to comments here to talk about the most recent episode. I screamed in my car hearing about the woman with a new born and diabetes, because as we learned before, a BMI of 24 is exaggerated down in policies so people could get weight loss drugs! 27 or whatever it was before isn't suddenly an ethical benchmark, but people are being asked to pay more for health insurance if their BMI isn't a number that we *know* is lower than what can be healthy (at a population scale, w/e, not a BMI fan). It struck me how these harmful policies compound on each other in ways that nobody's keeping track of. It was exciting to me to connect those dots. But, still, great episode as always. I lived the point at the end about risk factors vs causality.

Ozempic!

i have actually had an experience with biofeedback after some nerves were damaged from back issues. it HELPED, but i can't imagine paying much for it. the help was pretty nominal.

This isn't so much related to this as it is to the most recent episode, workplace wellness. I wanted to clarify that biofeedback is actually a real thing! It's a broad descriptor referring to things that give visual feedback on biological processes. One example is those kegal devices that connect to apps. They give you visual feedback to let you know when you are activating the correct muscles, so that you can learn what it feels like to use those muscles. They do similar things for athletes, using electrodes to show when they are using the right muscles. This is a super brief description but I recommend looking into it, it's really cool and a helpful way to learn how to control aspects of your physical experience :D

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/style/menopause-womens-health-goop.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Complete with Gwyneth embracing her changing body by posing nude spackled in gold dust. 🤮

NYT had an article this week about how menopause has been hijacked by private equity. Our good friend Gwyneth is all in on this as are a bunch of other grifters. Nothing says opportunity like millennia of ignoring a legit woman’s health matter. I mean why actually provide good helpful advice when you can monetize it with BS products?!?

1 vote for Casey Johnston good influencer

Fad diet: 75 hard

Kind of off topic but I just want to say THANK YOU Michael and Aubrey - you two make me laugh, cheer, and occasionally cry - this show is something that is possibly a ridiculously bright spot in my life. It’s been a hard year, but thanks to a slowly improving financial situation I can *finally* do what I’ve always wanted to and support y’all’s awesome work! Thank you for all you do, for making me laugh, and for making a fat, chronically ill enby laugh and feel seen🫶🏽🥹🥰 Gonna go and marathon the bonus podcast episodes while I do my pre-holiday cleaning. 🎉😄

My guess is you've already seen this. But just in case. https://academic.oup.com/fampra/advance-article/doi/10.1093/fampra/cmac137/6849537

Fad diet /diet drugs: Ozempic and Mounjaro. The manufacturers offer coupons to make it affordable for the first few months, then it is over $1,000 a month and the weight comes back if you stop taking it. Totally a money making scam.

lol “the stevia slap”

you talk a lot about the weird sugars and sugar alcohols here can you PLEASE do an episode on all the fuckery around fake sugars!!?? intentions for inventions and all the bad for us stuff but hey at least it’s low cal?! I would love to learn from your statistical rigor

I’m friends with a prominent podcaster and he told me he actually really likes his Casper Mattress 😂 I was like “No one’s listening, it’s fine.” He really doubled down that he liked it… but maybe because it was free for him.

Would you please reconsider doing an episode on bariatric surgery? I know you expressed reluctance, per Mailbag episode; when people tell me things like 'there's no excuse for being that fat when people can just go get bariatric' it would be useful to have some thoughtful and nuanced language. I think you two would bring the care to this difficult topic that it merits.

When i worked night shifts at the hospital a lot of us drank huel because we didn't have time to eat and also at 2 am sandwiches feel weird. I liked vanilla in coffee it was pretty nice.

i use huel (the powdered drink stuff, cinnamon swirl is the best flavour by far!) sometimes as i’m disabled and sometimes it’s impossible for me to eat, so simply adding oat milk to powder and shaking it for 20 secs is a lifesaver. it is SO expensive though and you have no choice but to order like £50 worth each time, so it feels scammy sometimes.

And these guys I wanted to fight every time I saw them at the farmer’s market. https://www.enagic.com/en/

Best health and wellness take: @swolewoman https://www.shesabeast.co/how-to-feel-like-a-big-beautiful-horse/

I am fucking wheezing at this episode! My husband came into my office like 4 times to make sure I wasn’t dying

"It's like a snow globe. You've gotta get it in its suspended state." I. FUCKING, LOVE. YOU GUYS!

https://www.tiktok.com/@bdccarpenter?_t=8Y9BBoFi7UL&_r=1 This is best fitness influencer ever, no particular good take, everything on his TikTok is ❤️‍🔥

really...? 🙄. https://www.amazon.com/Taco-Cleanse-Tortilla-Based-Proven-Change/dp/1615192727

Ever since I listened to this I started getting targeted ads for Magic Spoon 🤦‍♀️

Weirdest trend/diet from this year was raw liver à la liver king 🤢

CRAP it's too late but I thought of a corollary to all of the diets! (My *therapist* made fun of this one and it reminded me that I thought of it!! EVERYONE I KNOW says it). "If you're hungry, drink water. You're actually thirsty." Whaaaaaat theeeeee aaaaactual fuuuuuuck. Like your BODY is an idiot! Also I live for these taste tests. You guys laughing your faces off so you can't even get through sentences, Mike's "fuuuuuuuuck" when it's too gross for words, and this time the description of *eating a packing peanut*, when has Mike EVER eaten a packing peanut!!! Oh my stars. I listen while driving, but it's kind of dangerous, because I'm laughing collapsed over the wheel. I've considered pulling over!

Griftiest grifter is 1000% better help. As a therapist it’s been so insanely frustrating to see so many podcasts use them for sponsorships

What was the WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? - Tom Brady’s whole TB12 program - weird focus on not aging. What was the WEIRDEST wellness trend of 2022? - Hormone balancing? Who was the GRIFTIEST GRIFTER of 2022? - Better Help

Laughing so hard at the Huel taste test that I’m getting stares at work, oops!

I have been DYING for you guys to talk about Magic Spoon and was so pleased that you guys started off your episode with it!!!

My brother is a vegan gym rat and drinks so much Huel he gets free swag. Just chugs the stuff. I can’t wait to make him listen to the taste test. He’ll get a kick out of it.

Worst celebrity take? Maybe all of the wierd coffee enema stuff that king Charles is apparently into

😂 I wonder if Mike has stronger bitter receptors than Aubrey. Mine are really strong and I abhor stevia and monkfruit. All I can taste is nasty bitter flavor.

I tried Magic Spoon and... it was disgusting. I got a full refund, thankfully, but I originally got it because I wanted a very protein-packed breakfast before work (I work a physically demanding job,) and this looked like something quick and easy with a lot of protein. Well, after eating it, I can safely say that sugar substitute 'mix' they use may as well be the flavor label on every box, because it was all I could taste. It tasted plasticy, acidic, and falsely sweet. Man, I just want a cereal with normal ass sugar and shit with a LOT of protein in it. Anyway anyone who says Magic Spoon is tasty is a liar. It is so nasty and Mike was right about the bitter.

Not sure if y’all are still taking Griffty nominations but tthe Whole 30 “wellness plan” needs to be examined and magnesium! I’ve had many recommendations for magnesium to increase energy/stabilize mood/give better sleep…sounds like another catch all miracle supplement!

Love the taste test but trigger warning for those of us with Misophonia. (I hate that chewing noises turn me in to hulk level ragey.) Also, want to bring up BeachBody's rebrand to BODi to try and embrace "body positivity" but their coaches/consultants changing absolutely nothing about what they're doing and still leaning on the "before and after" photos for their pitches. (Also, I think the health and fitness MLM industry could be a wild series of episodes and timely for the upcoming New Years Resolution season

Finnish person here, that sigmatic thing sounds like a whole lot of crap 😭 Never heard anything like that lmao

Big congratulations to Aubrey for getting quoted extensively in The New Yorker about The Whale!

I have a lot of friends who seem to be combining fad diets now. Gluten-free (which has become a fad, not just for people with legit celiac) Paleo Vegan? It seems impossible yet I know people who do this exclusively. I even have one friend who went full fruitarian.

What is it about “Blue Zones” that rubs me the wrong way? We have a local push here and it all SOUNDS good but weird restrictions like “no more than 3 eggs a week” and slight religious under tones like alignment with the 7th day adventists in loma Linda California? Such a weird focus on “~longevity~” and rich people wellness.

What was the WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? Has to be the British government mandating calories on restaurant menus 🙃

For fad diets - my parents are still stuck on Whole30, with special bonus appearance from an actual dietitian that told me to go Keto

Fucking Optavia, man 🤦🏻‍♀️

FAD DIET - 75 HARD! and then 75 soft for a "lighter version" and Athletic Greens but for me what takes the cake is the how to heal your gut health tiktok trends, so much pseudoscience everywhere. P.S. an episode on Red Dye number 40 would be amazing!

Fad diet sort of but soooo annoying was the 75 Hard challenge omfg that was all over Tik Tok

PLEASE the griftiest grifter of this year is absolutely Elon Musk, I know it isn't totally related to the content of the podcast, but he's absolutely the worst offender of the year.

Fad diet: MACROS! Which apparently aren't a diet (so I'm told) even tho it looks exactly like WW points and you have to weigh your food and obsess on not just calories but now every macronutrient too🤪

This could probably fit in the fad diet or griftiest grifter: The Liver King, Brian Johnson and his 'ancestral' diet. And he just admitted to using steroids after denying it for years.

I already listened to the episode but OMG you guys need to look into Beam dream powder. It's supposed to help with sleep. I get so many ads and a few podcasts I listen to are sponsored by them.

For the worst health and wellness trend, Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade

Rather than focusing on GLP-1s (including semaglutide), I would recommend covering the online services that prescribe this medication to anyone over text. Sequence, Push Health, Alpha, etc. It’s a good critique of our system in general because many people use these services too to get legit meds they need that they can’t afford to see specialists for under our health system.

This was a great episode and one that I would love to see released to the main feed someday. That info about how podcast contracts made out allow hosts to decline advertisers is really important information to have. I've been kind of annoyed with some of my favorite podcasts that have a ton of ads for athletic greens, etc, And I actually almost did buy that crap because when you listen to someone for an hour a week you start to feel like you really trust them! Now I can look at the situation with a little bit more compassion. But I do think it's really important information for podcast consumers to have.

Weirdest health trend has to be perineal sunning: pointing your actual taint right up at the literal sun. It's to boost your energy levels? Ass photosynthesis has to win this.

I really wish the team would do an episode on “gut health” and “gut brain”. Everyone in my life keeps talking about the “microbiome” and how it’s the “key to unlocking health” and it all sounds like classic bs to me.

Worst is definitely Kim K and her sauna suit. Those are so dangerous!

Weirdest has to be all the facial massage shit I see on Instagram. All these young white women rubbing their faces in weird ways, insisting that they look super young because they rub their face with their fingers and weird pseudo-Asian crystals or some shit.

Weirdest wellness trend is either the 75 Hard challenge on tiktok, which is a fitness and diet regimen where you just pick any diet (??) and work out twice a day with other "wellness" elements thrown in for flavor or the rise of this whole hormone/seed cycling with wellness girlies eating specific things in different parts of their menstrual cycles (that essentially boil down to a normal balanced diet lmao).

Oh! Also - Check Organo Gold Coffee. It's made from mushrooms but they don't tell anyone that.

I would love to see an episode on the Special K Diet or Carnation instant breakfast

Thank you for validating my experience of Magic Spoon being trash! I eat real cereal now. Re: fad diets - Some friends keep talking about intermittent fasting and it’s so dangerous for those of us with unstable blood sugar and or disordered eating and or chronic illness. A doctor even recommended it to me and and it took all I had to stand firm and say no to that. I will not give myself an eating disorder just to please him. He works for me and he’s fired. I’ve already found a new doctor who is weight neutral and the best ever. So . . . thanks to a fad diet for scaring me away from a bad doctor and straight to a good one?

Diet: intermittent fasting (the newest of my fathers diet ventures 😢)

WEIRDEST health trend = mushrooms/mushroom powder in coffee and lattes (for the adaptogens).

Ozempic, the diabetes drug, which apparently supports drastic weight loss? I can’t help but assume there would be awful side effects and that, um, people with actual diabetes should be prioritized?

Gut health as a weight loss method was HUGE on tik tok this year and it drove me NUTS. Like they started recommending for people to stop using MOUTHWASHbecause it would alter your gut microbiome and then would make you gain weight 🙄🙄

Also Jeannette McCurdy for best wellness take in how her mom’s harmful habits shaped hers, her journey trying to unlearn harmful behaviors, and the way being a child star placed pressure on her to keep her body a certain way

FlavCity/Bobby Parrish for biggest grifter

The Better Help scandal??? Do tell!! I feel like mental health is becoming once again the grifter paradise

Grifties: I really think that Matt Walsh is the ultimate grifter for selling his extreme misogyny and convincing transphobes that it's pro-women. I'd also like to nominate Worm Queen Kim for convincing people of Tik-Tok that they need parasite cleanses but I also apologise if Mike has to talk about butt stuff!

The idea of food that gives my body stuff it needs that I don’t have to think about or prepare is so appealing to me, why must I live in these dark ages where they haven’t figured out taste or texture yet?

if i may make a recommendation for next time you taste test powders - use a little handheld milk frother. i do drink lattes made from powdered matcha with lions mane bc i am not immune to mushroom propaganda but i buy it from a guy at the farmers market who grows them.

My nominee for weirdest/ worst wellness trend: Charcoal in freaking EVERYTHING. The wellness trend that removes medicine from your body!

I’m going to agree with both Dr. oz and the liver king…both have grifted through 2022. Worst diet is still noom…

I haven’t heard much about the grifty-ness of Dr Huberman but he strikes me as particularly bad / a doctor Oz like situation with very legitimate background and knowledge while taking advantage of people through over simplifying research.

Fad Diet my coworkers won’t stop talking about - I can’t believe “Intermittent Fasting” is still making the rounds but I’ve heard it at least once a month every month this year. I used to use this excuse myself when i was deep in my ED and i’d skip breakfast and lunch going into the office. I’d even love to hear Intermittent Fasting as it’s own episode because I do not understand the “science” or justification behind this, there doesn’t seem to be a legit way to do it “right”. Feels more like a high brow excuse to waive away why you didn’t have time to make yourself a meal. Id rather my coworkers skip a meeting and eat something instead of skipping meals and then I have to deal with their cranky asses!

BEST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer - Jameela Jamil penning an article that screamed NO we will NOT go back to ‘heroin chic’ as 90s/Y2K fashion gets recycled. Honestly so great to see someone use their influence to say fuck you to the dumbest trends.

Omg you need to talk about cellulite creams!! I get advertised them all the time and they are soooo scammy!

The weighted hula hoop trend I saw a lot on tiktok and Instagram this year was super weird. At least it involved movement but I still think it's a scam.

Gotta say griftiest grifter prob Liver King

Mr. Hobbs, sir- THAT IS DIET COKE AND I NEED TO SEE SOME RESPECT.

Kinda a double for weirdest wellness trend and fad diet but the “F Factor” diet. I’m pretty sure it was like FIBER and people were absolutely shitting themselves. There was drama over an instagram (I think) account that was like telling the stories of people who said the diet hurt them. And also the creator is a “certified dietician” who said that “no one gets EDs from diets”. Definitely a weird diet and irresponsible creator.

I honestly feel like Griftiest Grifter really has to go to Dr. Oz this year. Laundering all of your previous grifts into the name recognition to bring you terrifyingly close to becoming an actual US Senator is a pretty serious meta-grift.

Liver King!!!! Griftiest Grifter. Not that I bought his shtick but it being revealed he uses steroids was the least surprising news of 2022. He gets my nomination for Griftiest Grifter because he made money of his insane lie.

the best of the athletic greens ads are the one of some more news where they make it obvious how digusging it is. A++

Yikes! This seems like a really bad idea: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/ozempic-hollywood-diet-drug?mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=vf&utm_social-type=owned

As someone who has had a colonoscopy, specifying that something needs to be mixed with cold water is an immediate red flag lol

not a fad diet per se but those weight loss injections are absolutely inescapable rn

“it tastes like it came from someone’s body” is the most disturbing food descriptor i’ve ever heard

WEIRDEST WELLNESS TREND: Lucky Iron Fish So apparently you put a literal HUNK of IRON in your food as you cook it and it adds iron to your food as an alternative to iron supplements. Does it seem dangerous? Yes! Is Oprah on the website endorsing it? Of course! https://luckyironfish.com/

HUEL is great! (Idk about macaroni, that sounds gross, but the vanilla drink mix is good). As someone who struggles with appetite a ton either because of depression, Wellbutrin, or adderal, it’s reeally nice to have food that you don’t have to make or think about. They also advertise VERY explicitly how to use it to GAIN weight. I promise the powder dissolves in cold water the longer it’s in there

Worst celebrity take: Kim k’s met gala crash diet!

Fad diet: celery juice!!!

I used to drink huel once upon a time when my depression was bad and I struggled to buy groceries and cook. I quite liked the taste, but that was before they brought out the meals. Always been curious what they taste like - so thanks for destroying your taste buds for our curiosity 😂

your reactions to taste tests are so funny omg…but nothing beats describing celery juice as tasting like a “haunted bog”. i think about that once a week

Worst health and wellness : detoxes that pull parasites out of you

Weirdest wellness trend: eating raw testicles (liver king)

Sunning your butthole as weirdest wellness trend.

The amount of screaming and groaning in this episode made my day

Just hearing about liver king on social media and would like to nominate him/the diet for a grifty!

Being a patron is worth it entirely for Mike’s impression of a Blue Apron podcast ad

DYING at my desk at work over the description of Huel as "tasting like it came from someone's body."

IdK if this is weirdest or most faddy, but Ozempic/Wegovy was EVERYWHERE this year. Wild how this drug that's been around for a while suddenly is the next big diet drug???

Ohhh, there are local morning shows -- like local Live with Kelly stuff -- that guests have to pay to be on. I used to work for an agency with clients who'd want to be on these shows and I just about died when I learned what they'd have to pay to be on it. It's like paying to be on Ya Heard with Perd. Why? (I know why. Still insane to me.)

I really like Huel! I like the berries or vanilla drink versions because I need the nutrients and have zero motivation to eat anything other than crisps. But I absolutely hate mac and cheese so I can’t imagine that being a good flavour haha

I can’t listen to a taste test without hearing Michael say “it tastes like the pants I go running in” and then I laugh all over again!

As a woman near menopause age, my social media feeds are clogged with “hormonal weight loss” and weird stuff about “subcutaneous belly fat.” It’s supposedly worse than normal belly fat, is unavoidable, and is literally going to shorten my lifespan. I have to cut out certain foods forever or I am going to die. I don’t read too far into it because it’s too enraging. I am too old for this BS.

As I am tipsy while listening to and loving this, it makes me want a bonus episode of you two having some wine/alcohol and talking shit. But I really appreciate the dedication you both have to keeping your integrity via not taking advertisers (despite being a marketing analyst, oops) and everything. Kinda fun when you talk about that integrity to the folks who are already supporting you - it honestly might not hurt to talk about it in a general episode so more people sign up to your Patreon. It does make me want to continue supporting you and going above the minimum. But honestly as a stats person, like full stats degree level, I am DYING at the four sigmatic shit. And Mike continues to be one of my fave fellow queer American men who moved to Europe to follow <3

really id love an episode on GLP1 medications in general

I had some hardcore jaw surgery this summer and couldn't eat anything requiring chewing for 8 weeks, and Huel was recommended to me but I passed on it. Sounds like that was a good decision.

I don't know if this counts under Fad Diet but I hate that everything supposedly healthy just has Stevia in it. I hate that flavor so much. I have been tempted by Magic Spoon so it's a relief to hear it's not worth the outrageous price.

Calibrate

in defense of electrolytes! i have a chronic illness called POTS, electrolyte drink mixes are widely accepted in the community and recommended by doctors as a way to help treat it. helps with low blood pressure and high heart rate caused by autonomic nervous system dysfunction.

Best: Jameela Jamil, Lizzo, and Celeste Barber Worst: Where to start Weirdest: I wish I could say I paid attention to all that. Fad Diets: I refused to listen to any diet people were on Griftiest Grifter: Beachbody changing to iBod or whatever the new name is, and claiming they have always been about health and not being about profiting off of failed weight loss attempts of millions. (That being said, I do pay for yearly access to their videos on demand, but I know what I am paying for)

Oh my god can you please do an episode about fluoride

I've seen Magic Spoon sponsoring a ton of Twitch streams, and I was almost convinced to try it. Glad to hear your review! I'll stick to actual cereal when I want cereal.

Fizzing greens water! 😂 I’ve been so tempted by Athletic Greens, but I appreciate your review stopping me. If I want greens powder, I can find it much cheaper. I was encouraged to drink a ton of electrolytes while breastfeeding so I did. So much that I ended up with kidney stones thanks to it. So watch out for those electrolytes.

I’m screaming and gagging! 😂🤢

Fad diet: general aversion to sugar, especially with the language of “addiction” and sugar as a drug; in favor of a sugar tax, etc.

I'm a T1 diabetic and we definitely care about net carbs for insulin calculation purposes! Different diabetics use different formulas, but for insulin purposes, it matters if carbs are sugar alcohols, fiber, or "normal" carbs. Not sure why the ADA doesn't mention it, though they are less focused on insulin-dependent diabetics.

Athletic Greens

Listening to this at my son’s basketball practice and the other parents are side-eying me as I laugh and laugh.

Oh man.. wish I could’ve listened but immediately became a misophonia nightmare

GRIFTIEST GRIFTER of 2022: better help better help better help better help!!! I’d love to hear you guys pop off

Yeah… unpopular opinion. I actually think Athletic Greens tastes good. (Walks away as people throw things at me)

Am I the only agronomist who was a little disappointed when it turned out the episode was not in fact about peola - the intercropping of peas and canola? Okay a little narrow maybe, but would have been fun haha

Wellness trend: all the tiktokers who talk about needing to get a hormonal balance to loose weight. Is that even how hormones work?

Weirdest wellness trend: mudd water. It’s supposed to be anti coffee, wellness dirt

Omg that was so much fun!

Hahaha "sucks the smile out of your mouth."

Liver King for Grifter of the Year!

I just had this flashback the other day about my childhood. I remember there was this "diet" method people used where they would wire their jaw shut which is bananas! Im not sure if that ever got covered. Does anyone else remember this?

i’d like to nominate squareat for weirdest wellness trend

Eww, that cereal. About a year into my widowhood (0/10, do not recommend), I was trying to stay alive by, ya know, eating food. Part of grieving a partner who liked to cook was resenting having to prepare and consume food. I am a person with lifelong disordered eating, who had stopped dieting over a decade before I was widowed, who was happy, whose weight had not changed in years (stable 300#, yay). Suddenly I had the anorexia of grief (not anorexia nervosa), this symptom of no appetite, no desire for or enjoyment of food; nutrition as an onerous chore. So, I tried a couple of things I saw on FB. Simple, fast, palatable. (That last adjective is a lie.) I tried the drinkable Huel, and the Magic Spoon. OMFG, y’all! Tried the cereal first. My son and I both gagged, neither of us could make ourselves swallow. He refused to try the Huel after that. Smart guy. (My appetite has improved, and I have found some easy, reliable meals for my neuro-unique self. None of them have stevia…)

Thank you for tasting these products so we don’t have to! 🤢🎉

What was the BEST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? Lizzo especially changing verbiage in her song lyrics once she recognized the problem and it’s direct effect on others well-being What was the WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? Taylor Swifts fat scale in her music video and the mob responses to those who tried to address it. Probably not the worst offense by a celebrity or influencer but the impact was huge What was the WEIRDEST wellness trend of 2022? Greek yogurt In EVERYTHING What was the FAD DIET your friends, family and coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about in 2022? Cutting a sugar. The total demonization of any sugar. Who was the GRIFTIEST GRIFTER of 2022? “clinics” or crisis pregnancy centers that kept popping up this year in droves after the Supreme Court ruling claiming to offer abortion and other medical services when their purpose was to talk people out of abortions and provided misinformation often by non medical professionals

I know what Aubrey can do with the remaining Athletic Green packets! Do a drawing of Patreon listeners, and whatever names get drawn WON’T receive one. 🏆

King Charles lll. Crowned Grifter of the year. He has spent decades, this stupid, spoiled man, pushing nonsense. He praised Gerson therapy and other horrors. Gerson quackery had, and has, people doing fundraisers to send children and others to Mexico to treat their cancer, by which I mean not treat their cancer, torture them with lots of coffee enemas, and blame their deaths on previous chemo or missing/ throwing up some of the daily litres of fresh veg juices. Yeah, if you died, it was on you for imperfectly following the same insane protocols that (dead of pneumonia,) Max Gerson and his creepy old daughter have run for over half a century. (Edited to add: Charlotte Gerson died in 2019. She was 96, which gave her lots of extra years to preach dangerous and stupid) Charles’ own company sold supplements like Duchy Herbals Detox Tincture, he still defends Homeopathy. QE2 had her personal homeopath, and the foolish magic water scam sugar pills were paid for on the NHS until very recently…please look into the Good Thinking Society and their wonderful work bringing down this crap. I could go on. Edzard Ernst has a whole book about Charles’ anti-science.

Love the show, NOT a big fan of taste test episodes. We all know it will be awful. Prefer more informational episodes.

My nomination for weirdest wellness trend is definitely those bloom greens that I keep seeing every ticktoker use. It mixes into water and literally looks like pond scum. There’s no way it tastes good or does anything eating some broccoli couldn’t accomplish. Honestly it’s not even that weird it’s pretty on brand for a wellness trend BUT I hate seeing it and wanted to nominate it.

I'm not sure which this fits into, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Linda Evangelista's re-entry to public life and modeling. She's been sharing her story about how she had Cool Sculpt procedures that backfired, and there's been a lot of very inflamed language of "my body was disfigured", etc, how she couldn't leave the house, and was horrified by her body. Now when she's in public she tapes skin back and covers it in fabric as to not show it. It was a big topic in the fashion and modeling industry this year. I think there's a lot to dig into.

Weirdest wellness trend I keep coming in contact with is the Healy device. Please do an episode on the Healy!! The “oh we promise we aren’t an MLM, MLM company”. Individualized Microcurrent Frequency devices? What?

Ok, the 4 Sigma thing is making me so annoyed. That's not how sigma works! "Sigma" as a standard deviation refers to how much something deviates from the "norm" aka the peak in a bell curve. You then measure TO EITHER SIDE to confirm that something is within desired parameters. So when you say 4 sigma (or 6 sigma, which is what I was trained on), you're talking about the field of measure 2 deviations to either side of the center point. This makes me so annoyed that I'm laughing at myself

would love to hear more about intermittent fasting and why it doesn’t work for women!!!

I would like to nominate Optavia as the Griftiest Grifter. Why do these MLMs continue to thrive? Why are people calling themselves “health coaches” when they’re just hawking the processed wares of this shady company?

Whole 30 is still a fad diet that people don’t realize is a diet and consistently do. It’s not as exciting to cover but I do think bringing attention to how it’s changed over the years would be good!

Fun! I'll nominate the tiktoker Abby Sharp for best health/wellness takes. She takes those weird "what i eat in a day" videos and makes them balanced meals. I think the worst take are the carnivore people. Please god I hate the carnivore people. But it's so addicting to watch, check out this lady Courtney Luna on tikok. She's wildin.

BEST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? Although her weight gain remains central to reporting around Christina Applegate’s MS diagnosis, she has not directly addressed the weight and instead focuses on her ability, her work, and bringing awareness to early warning signs of MS. And she’s being a real bad ass and has the potentially to bring much needed chronic disability representation to mainstream media. What was the WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022? Honorable mention: Most in the public eye was Taylor Swift’s internalized fat phobia being externalized in her music video. This was super shitty, but only gets an honorable mention because her team quickly removed the word Fat from the scale. Whatever, it’s still shitty, but the worst part of this debacle was how much anti-fat fervor was whipped up in the general public. Even people who claim they don’t care about Swift or dislike her music were quick to jump to her defense. Lots of people expressing their absolutely disdain for fat people. Fun! But let’s be real, the WORST was Elon Musk’s promoting Wegovy and fasting for weightloss all over Twitter. Because let’s face it, this just ads to the conflation of fatness with diabetes. And it suggests that treatment for diabetes cause weightloss. So if you’re fat and diabetic, you must not be doing it right and have you tried Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda? What was the WEIRDEST wellness trend of 2022? I kept seeing ads for the Inflatable aero trainer, which doesn’t seem to do much but allow you to stay off the floor for some exercises (which you could do sitting up on in bed if you need do). BUT every time I saw this inflatable thing (shaped like a kidney), I kept thinking it would make a great sex pillow/wedge. It supports 5 or 600 pounds. I bought it. It works great. I have not used it as intended. Soooo, any workout equipment that makes a great fat-friendly sex pillow is pretty weird but awesome. What was the FAD DIET your friends, family and coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about in 2022? Everyone is on Noom. When will it die? Also flex diet is living its best life. So the answer is “all of them1” Who was the GRIFTIEST GRIFTER Shane Dawson. Hear me out. He keeps turning up like a bad penny, and regardless of what he’s making videos about, they are peppered with his internalized fat phobia. He gets hundreds of thousands of views and people get to watch him talk about how fat he is. (He’s fucking not.) It’s gross. It’s not the grossest thing about him, but it’s gross. And he makes money from perpetuating ant-fatness. Even if you’re hate watching his new Jeffery Starr video (like many of us did), we still get to watch his continually self-deprecating fat phobia.

Fad diet- quitting sugar and breaking “sugar addiction.” This has been everywhere online this year! Crazy how much traction it’s gained in the last few years bc I recall my mom in the 90s trying to follow a fearmongery no sugar diet book (I distinctly recall the cover being emblazoned with a huge no sign 🚫 over a sugar cube). Everything is cyclical and we never learn

Every "fitness" influencer coming out with an outrageously expensive subscription app. Looking at you Heidi Powell.

I nominate Human Design and it’s recommended “eating types” for something (weirdest trend, perhaps?) “If you know the exact time of birth, we use astrology to calculate where your digestion has the best potential to digest and absorb all your food correctly.” https://humandesigndiet.com/the-12-diet-types/

I absolutely live for the taste tests!

The fad diet I continue hearing the most about is Keto - my mom and stepmom-in-law are both doing it, with the latter consuming these keto-friendly fiber bars that make her audibly, shamelessly fart with abandon dozens of times a day.

The only nomination is for a fad I see everywhere - that awful sea moss gel that everyone simultaneously hates and obsessed over. It looks horrifying and it’s supposed to be like a multi vitamin? But people literally can’t get it down lol

Honorable mention for Weirdest (since it's not a trend but a single strange product) the CBS TV movie Fit for Christmas.

Love receiving the notification that a new episode has landed! Thank you so much for these amazing bonus episodes. Truly laugh out loud x

I was laughing alone in my car - I LOVE the taste tests! I have seen so many Athletic Greens ads and this is exactly what I thought it would taste like. I could smell it through the mic, haha.

Also very glad you have gone the Patreon route with this podcast instead of ads!! I'm so happy to support!

By golly, this is truly revealing that you two could make endless episodes (please do, I'm begging)

worst celebrity take is this Kim Kardashian quote: “If you told me that I literally had to eat poop every single day and I would look younger, I might.”

Worst wellness "trends": the online demonization of birth control and whatever anti-trans nonsense is going on right now.

The quote at the end was just perfection.

I don’t know if it’s a fad diet or a wellness trend, but the large number of people I know personally who are taking considering taking injectable diabetes medication for aesthetic weight loss is one of the darkest and most troubling fads I’ve seen in a while. Worst of all, it’s causing a shortage of the drug for people with diabetes who need it.

The WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity influencer was Our Lady of Goop Gwyneth Paltrow endorsing Rick Caruso for mayor of LA, calling him a "real progressive" and using her platforms try to get people to vote for him. The post has since been removed but it was bananas - a whole girlboss voting guide for wealthy white women (I think it was even pink)- coopting the language of progressivism in their dogwhistles about crime and people experiencing homelessness. Kim Kardashian and many others jumped on board endorsing Caruso, but Gwyneth's was the most galling. But you know what? IT DIDN'T WORK!, Rep. Karen Bass won despite being outspent 10 to 1 by Caruso. It was great to see that there are limits to influencers' sphere of influence!

Weirdest fad diet of the year has to be the all-potato diet. It’s tied up with the theory that obesity rates are being caused by PFAS exposure and trace amounts of lithium in the environment? https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/04/29/potato-diet-community-trial-sign-up-now-lol/

For the grifties (or in general) I would love to hear Imani Barbarin on the pod! She has great insights on the intersections of disability, fatness, and race that are very relevant to MP in general and current trends. For worsts of the year: the return of "heroin chic", Oz and crudite-gate, the "low-vibrational plate" (please consult member of Black online community for more context/nuance but this was such a buzzy thing this year), Taylor Swift music video debacle, Ozempic, The Whale, COVID-minimizing and pretending it's over (including CDC caving), the trans kid healthcare moral panic, reversal of Roe. And for the best: justice for Elizabeth Holmes, Will Smith slapping Chris Rock for making fun of JPS's alopecia, queer community response to monkeypox.

Best: Megan Thee Stallion declaring she likes a sick with a little bit of curve? Scammy: Blue Light Glasses (CBC marketplace did a lil debunking)

I would be happy to waive my podcasting guest hosting fees to be of service to MP.

LIKE THIS COMMENT TO GENTLY ENCOURAGE MIKE TO GET A YOGURT FROM THE FRIDGE

How about BeachBody rebranding as BODi and co-opting intuitive eating and body positivity?

Speaking of the Stevia Slap, have they touched on artificial sweeteners? Not relevant here, maybe another topic!

Fecal transplant. I'm sorry, Mike, i know about your BAMU stuff, but y'all already sacrifice so much, i know you could euphemize your way through it. I would love this trend explored. I don't think it's a hot one (ha ha) for 2022 specifically, but it's still a topic that would benefit from your brilliant and skilled investigating.

“IT’S NOT COLLOIDAL, MIKE” is fucking sending me & I am on a train so thanks for that

Wellness industrial complex: DAIRY IS BAD. Also wellness industrial complex: EAT THIS CEREAL MADE ENTIRELY OF MILK PROTEIN BECAUSE CARBS ARE BAD MKAY!

This isn't really eligible for this year for griftiest grifter but could possibly be an episode: David Sinclair and his book "Lifespan - Why We Age and Why We Don't Have To". Basically claims that intermittent fasting and taking cold baths can extend your life, and treats aging like a 'disease' that is treatable (a pervasive concept that I think would be a really interesting topic to cover). It all sounds so gross and obviously grifty to me now after listening to MP, and I am so surprised that my parents (an orthopedic surgeon and a retired pediatric nurse practitioner) have really gotten into this guy's work. Also, is it just me or is there a lot of bullshit health and wellness stuff that comes out of Australia? Of course the US too, but there just seems to be an comparable amount coming out of a country with a tenth of the population. I say this lovingly as someone who lived in Australia for a couple years.

I love you guys, but my misophonia goes out of control with the smacking. If you could please mute the mic when you taste it or something? Sorry to bother, thanks!

I don’t think this works for grifties but I’m interested in workplace wellness programs and their ableist/fatphobic possibilities/tendencies. Getting insurance reimbursements for taking a certain number of steps in a day, tracking your water intake, sleeping a certain number of hours, etc.

From an embarrassed magic spoon stan- Fruity is by far the best flavor lol

weirdest wellness trends- all the talk about 'gut health' from people who aren't medical professionals & those Bloom greens that have been all over TikTok for a while now

"Don't come into my house with statistics!" ROFL...Oh, Michael...from that to "Four standard deviations." OMG

Michael, if you don't chew with your mouth closed, I swear to God 😂😂 Still love ya.

“You need to go on this diet.” “No this one.” “This one!” Ugh I have allergies and went on an allergy free diet at 12. It caused me to gain weight, ffs! So, doc, which diet do I go on then? Allergy reduction? That leaves me with apples, rice, milk, peanut butter, and game meat. Milk, doc, not dairy. I can’t even have butter. No? You want me on keto? But the fat content alone will clog my arteries. Diabetes diet? There goes my rice and milk. Apples too. And game meat isn’t easy to get cause I’m not a hunter. Intermittent fasting? But I have to go 12 hours between heart pills. No, I can’t take them too close together cause they will cause my heart ti beat too slow.” And apparently, I’m the problem cause I don’t want to die!

- Griftiest grifter: all of those direct to consumer “food sensitivity/allergy” tests that are not based on evidence. - Agree with the collagen fad thing that won’t go away - best take: Ragen Chastain is a fave - worst celebrity takes: I know it’s not wellness, but all of the celebrities who pitched crypto as if it was the best thing since sliced bread

Fad that won’t go away: Athletic Greens! Protein powder in general, does that count? Best wellness take: NFL mental health/anti-racism efforts, Lane Johnson and Calvin Ridley

Worst/weirdest wellness take: Butthole sunbathing Fad that wouldn't go away: Collagen! Namely the kind sold by Vital Proteins - seems like a bad idea to consume anything that comes with an arbitration agreement.

I know the son of the man who wrote the book the movie “Soylent Green” is based off of. Every single time the word “Soylent” is used keeps his father’s words alive.

Weirdest wellness trend: perineum sunning

Fad: Social media’s obsession with diet/health obsessed people making “icecream” by just blending cold fruit. It screams eating disorder. They put one measly teaspoon of maple syrup and a splash of coconut milk but the rest is just very blended frozen fruit. No, honey, that’s just a super dense smoothy. If you want icecream, just eat some icecream. Also, in the same vein, “salad” tik tok. It’s just people chopping veggies and coating them in very low-fat homemade dressings and then scooping themselves a tiiiiny bit onto a plate to show you how good it is. Trust me, I love salads. But what disturbs me about these is that again it feels like virtue signally for how little they eat and how by making a few more steps to a salad (blending cashews into the dressing) it’s actually a REAL meal or something. Again this seems to always be by health/thinspo influencers and I’ll see like 175 thousand likes on videos of freaking salad. Over it

a couple thoughts: i’ve been dealing with symptoms of a new chronic illness the past month or two and my family will not shut their damn mouths about “inflammatory foods” and primarily GLUTEN. it’s not new, my family has a history of allergies and celiac, but oh my LORD i can’t take any more gluten talk. I have to say my favorite take is a more general experience from various accounts seeing folks posting real “what I eat in a day” videos with normal portions and snacks and pizza and whatever they felt hungry for that day, more normal bodies with hair and cellulite, and just an overall rise in honest ways of talking about bodies and food on social media

Tea made from chaga mushrooms as a coffee replacement sounds fake but it was absolutely done during wartimes in Finland, not necessary by those people’s grandparents tho (there were other coffee alternatives too). And it’s sold with outlandish heath claims in here too, even though I think it was literally just something that looks like coffee, is bitter like coffee and won’t poison you, and that’s why it was used. Why would anyone drink chaga when you can drink actual coffee is beyond me though, I understand it to be bitter as fuck. This is not a grifty nomination since this has been going on for several years now, but speaking of Finnish health trends, the oddest must not bark flour/bark bread. Bark flour is flour made from inner part of tree bark, here it’s usually pine tree (other parts of Scandinavia have records of other trees used), and as you can imagine it’s not something that’s easy to digest, nor does it taste good, and it’s not easy to make since you have to get rid of poisonous stuff in it using several different processing methods, and you won’t even get rid of all the harmful stuff anyway. It was used as an emergency food during wars and famines, mixed in with regular flour to bake bread, and maybe as a source of vitamin C in the arctic even during normal times. It is stuff that people literally stopped eating as soon as there was anything else to eat, and consuming a lot of it made people sick, since it’s not really edible, it just feels like like you are eating. Anyway bark flour is sold as a superfood now and praised for it’s high fiber content. I fucking bet it has lot of fiber, it’s literal tree bark. But like, why???

I really just want to second / lift up all the comments about liquid diets of Tik tok influencers bc it is literally everywhere

ASMR by Mike

I’m eating cheez its while learning about the standard deviations. I’ll see your 4 standard deviations and raise you a unicorn because cheez its are perfec little squares of joy.

I'm in the small minority of people who actually needs to be use stuff like electrolyte powder and mineral/vitamin supplements like Athletic Greens - I'm a long distance hiker and endurance athlete, so for months on end my diet is mainly ultra processed foods that are shelf stable and available at gas stations. I need portable vegetable substitutes for nutrition and drink 4-8 litres of water per day, so those expensive fortified electrolyte powders are a good solution for me. Also, anything with citric acid makes highly alkaline desert water sources much more palatable. I actually find that Athletic Greens is one of the less offensively gross products in the category, although I kinda prefer Liquid IV which is cheaper and available at even the shittiest of small-town Walmarts. Also, diluting AG1 in an entire litre of water helps. I will say that my personal use case of "only eating ramen and granola bars for 5-6 months" is pretty niche and probably one of the only scenarios in which these supplements make practical sense.

Listening to the tail end of this episode in public was the wrong choice 😂. I’m laughing so hard. Thanks for the sacrifices you all make for us 🤎

https://twitter.com/Outkick/status/1597646061426061312

I physically laughed out loud when Michael said “maybe that’s what they meant by human” 💀💀 Thank you for your service Aubrey and Michael!

Macadamia Nut milk! Milkadamia for the win!! Totally felt like Aubrey and I bonded on preference of milk alternatives.

“It’s like a wet dog” 😂😂😂

The mac n cheese "complete meal" brought to mind a workplace story from my cousin who works at *large canned soup based company* in quality. Most industrial food places have R&D teams that need internal taste testers and unless it's a desert company they usually offer gift cards etc for going through it. In the early 00s they were trying to make a "complete meal" mostly as like a direct to food-insecure organizations product. They couldn't pay people enough to try it. My cousin repeatedly tried it because I guess she's a glutton for punishment and repeatedly wrote down "Could not finish" as her review. Every time I see similar products come out I'm like... I see what you're going for but it's gonna be gross. It just will be.

This is becoming a fave type of episode: Mike yelling off mic from his kitchen, while Aubrey is quietly saying “ugh” into her mic as she reacts to what is happening in her mug of coffee. I will think of this every time I hear an Athletic Greens ad

Worst take: Media outlets like the Guardian and Variety lending legitimacy to semaglutide as a legit weight loss strategy. I'm diabetic and take a glutide, and I have no tolerance for thin, non-diabetic people bragging about how sick their expensive new diet is making them. Weirdest: Tucker Carlson convincing his conservative fanboys to tan their sacks. Fad: 75 Hard. Ok, I get it. You love rules and torturing yourself. Neat? Griftiest Grifter: @The.Holistic.Mother on Instagram promoting dangerous theories (getting measles is actually good for kids!), while having a discount code for seemingly endless alternative therapies. Best for last: @iamcoachholly and other coaches and therapists who are lifting up all kinds of women by helping them unwind traumatic cultural narratives and navigate the morass of modern living.

How many downloads do you all get a month?

Deworming is the absolute worst! I'm so sick of seeing TikToks of thin white women lecturing about how dumb Americans don't deworm like the rest of the world. Then go on to talk about the worms coming out of every orifice. 🤮 Also, I think Cindy Crawford is pretty grifty! Her beauty line with special anti-aging melons is ridiculous.

Another great meat diet is the eat raw organic meat trend on yt. Looks revolting

I'm surprised Brittany Dawn hasn't come up yet!! BDong and other Kristchen influencers definitely need an episode especially since so many shill MLM wellness stuff.

Weirdest diet (and weirdest griftiest wellness illness influencer): Mikhaila Peterson, who is an advocate for the lion diet. The lion diet consists entirely of beef, unsalted and unspiced (but its ok to drink copious amounts of alkohol with the diet). She claimed it cured her mood disorder and autoimmune disease. she stopped doing the diet earlier this year i think? Or was it last year? She is the daughter of a certain Jordan Peterson and she convinced him to do the diet as well. So all that unsalted unspiced beef spiel JP has been on about comes from her. if she isnt eligible for this year’s best of the worst she is a great subject, she is a fascinating grifty person in her own right. /edited to add some more context and info

Delightful. Michael's expressions of visceral disgust always make me laugh.

I appreciate the sacrifices you make for us all but I almost threw up in my mouth when you were talking about the cheese thing. I also have cereal and milk related trauma due to a summer camp that made us all pour our cereal milk back into a communal container 🤢🤢 so this was a rough episode for me.

Lion’s Mane is a fungus that is currently VERY popular with ADHD Facebook and Instagram grifters. Those grifters are a whole topic you’d probably love/hate, actually, but the problem does seem to be calming down a bit. (Sorry if someone has already said this, Patreon comments never load properly for me!)

Fad diet: The prescribing of medications like Ozempic for the purpose of weight loss. Not only has this caused a shortage of this and other medications used to help people with diabetes, but also this medication when not used for its intended purpose can cause serious harm. Once a person who loses weight on it (without diabetes) goes off of it, the weight is likely to come back quickly. We don't know what the long term effects are on using medications for diabetes on people without diabetes too. Weight cycling can contribute to many negative health outcomes as it is, let alone medication-assisted weight cycling. Add to this that folks I know who have taken Ozempic in particular (both diabetic and not diabetic) have experienced side effects that negatively impacted their daily functioning, and for most led to discontinuing the medication.

Loved this one. Had me lol'ing the whole time. Just sad that you missed Ka'chava - the one with the thick smoothie over flowing the glass. I'm really curious about it, but refuse to buy if I can't get a sample first. Please do a part two someday.

I think you’ve mentioned this before: but the papaya seed cleanse from tik tok is terrible. Met a girl who was doing it at a holiday party to “cleanse the parasites” from her body. I asked “do you feel like you had parasites?” And she said “I’m so bloated all the time!” Which was not a yes but…. She also made sure to warn me that she can’t eat too many papaya seeds because they are literally toxic.

A bad H&W take I have seen is a push of influences who call themselves "midsized girls" which seems like a faux body positivity way of legally distinguishing yourself from fatness. Maybe it just rubs me the wrong way idk

I'm not sure what exact categories these will fit in, but I think that worst wellness take is probably the best. All those healthy/homestead trad wife influencers who are against birth control because it "destroys your feminine fertility" or those people who have been freaking out about eating crickets. Big conspiracy energy off both of those takes.

(off mic) “It won’t dissolve” [Screaming]. This made my day!

I feel like some of the worst takes could just be anything from TikTok this year… “this seltzer water and vinegar tastes just like cola!” And all the parasite cleanses??? Yucky

I love every episode but this one I was cackling so loud alone in the car in the school pickup line then like making vomitous faces then giggling insanely again…

"See you in 2023!" what why

Thanks for reviewing Athletic Greens. I hear this ad so often, I was starting to think I should try it. So glad you saved me the trouble!

Lol! There is always a huge container of Huel on my brother’s kitchen counter when I go to visit. DYING at Mike & Aubrey’s reactions. 🤣

In answer to Q4, if one more person tells me to try intermittent fasting I’m gonna scream. I can’t even go 2 hours without eating…LEAVE ME ALONE!!

FAD DIET: Intermittent fasting. I know quite a few women who raved about intermittent fasting this year for jumpstarting their metabolism, detoxing, insert other generic diet claim here. They would eat only between 12pm and 6pm or so, which makes me so sad both as a breakfast lover and as someone who used to do the same: skipping meals to lose weight.

The taste test was amazing!

Celebrity grifters: Rebel Wilson. She recently released a loungewear label called R&R Club, which is not only NOT size-inclusive (only goes up to a size L - which is bizarre and unexpected coming from a formerly fat person), but is also ridiculously priced. Right now she's hawking a loungewear set that comprises of a $179 hoodie and $149 sweatpants. lolno. Weight-loss companies: Noom. I know I'm not the first and will not be the last to mention them. I gave them a try earlier this year and canceled almost immediately, as their methods are VERY close to eating disorder life I knew so well. (What was difficult for me was their insistence that you weigh yourself every day. Like, it's something you need to track in the program - did you weigh yourself today? Stop what you're doing and go weigh yourself. Etc.) Their coaching is laughable - I couldn't get my coach to even respond to me. Then they charged me for a continued membership AFTER I canceled, without warning. I had to speak with a Noom rep and tell them that this program is harmful to me as a person with an eating disorder. They offered for me to give it another try at a lowered cost. I told them that being on this plan made me consider self-harm, and it was only at this point that they issued me a refund and truly canceled my account. Ghouls.

Weirdest wellness trend: liquid death. It’s just water??

BEST: Picture of Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Brosnan living their best lives at the beach. WORST: Jennifer Rollins failing to monitor and moderate her facebook group. WEIRDEST: Fupagate or Olivia Wilde's salad dressing FAD DIET: Intermittent fasting and Peloton GRIFTIEST GRIFTER: Noom - its a freaking diet, stop gaslighting us.

As someone who has a lot of trouble remembering to eat I bought a ton of Magic Spoon thinking the protein would help me stay full for longer. I liked it at first and then got so sick of the fake sweetness that I tossed my last two half bags after letting them sit in my pantry for a year and just bought Cheerios again

Always such a pleasure to have those bonus episodes! I really always want to listento the taste tests because they are so funny, but as a neuro-atypical person with serious sound issues the mouth noises directly into the mic are absolute torture 🤣 and I have to skip! I don’t know if there is a solution really but I thought I’d mention it 😅 thanks for the podcast, it’s a game changer ❤️

Worst fad diet/trend: the essential oils!!! Specifically young living. Especially for children and BABIES!!! Freaks me the whole hell out that people are rubbing these oils all over their tiny babies. Make. It. Stop.

Griftiest Grifter. Elon Musk hands down. Just waiting for his diet book to come out.

FAD DIET… the whole eating everything in moderation. What the fuck is moderation????!?!!!?!

WEIRDEST… people are still doing coffee enemas… ick.

The BEST health and wellness is ANYONE who got off social media in order to take better care of their physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

I think the weirdest wellness trend was the MLM Elomir that created a dissolving supplement strip that you put on your tongue. Apparently it was supposed to give you energy and promote mental clarity, but it was essentially just turmeric, a hope, and a dream.

The griftiest grifter in 2022 and also every year since its invention is EVERY CHIROPRACTOR. (My real nomination is the pink sauce lady from TikTok.) Fad diet I couldn't get away from is fucking intermittent fasting. Free me. Please. (And also Noom. Fuck Noom!). Best health take (that I heard) was from Lizzo: “It sucks that we associate weight gain with the negative thing that causes it. It’s mixing this beautiful thing that’s food—and nourishing ourselves with it, but it’s the stress that’s the bad thing, not the 20 pounds. I feel very lucky because I don’t feel that weight gain is bad anymore. Nor is weight loss — it’s neutral. And food is fun. I love eating, and I have a chef now, and I’m not thinking about it. I had a brownie last night.”

I don't know which category this falls into, but the amount of people who have—unprompted!—told me to go on ozempic to lose weight...

no shade intended, cause as far as I can tell neither Mike nor Audrey are fiber crafters/fanatics, so it's not at all surprising to me that y'all missed the knitting podcast dramas back in the early days of podcasting...in particular the Lime and Violet podcast grifting was something to behold.

The fad diet ads that I couldn’t get away from this year were GOLO. Just constant in my tv.

MIKE! “The stevia slap.”

Omg and nomination for the griftiest grifter: the pink sauce lady on TikTok — she really fuckin tried it 😂🤣

AUBREY! “I just like exploring the nuance of nut and seed milks, ya know.” This is peek Millennial. And I am here for it. Also, you folks hung out in Portland and didn’t ask me over? Shame.

"It tastes like sweat" made me snort

The fad diet has to be intermittent fasting. I’m so tired of hearing about it. Wow, you didn’t eat for a day and now you weigh less? Fascinating. Please tell me more about your ED

Nomination for fad diet: Dr. Gundry and his anti-lectin diet My 60 year old MIL is a new devotee of Dr. Gundry. Per his diet, she isn't allowed to eat zucchini, tomatoes, any kind of seed, edamame, brown rice, or green beans because of their toxic lectins. Rather, she subsists on two small meals a day of half a sweet potato, an avocado, and dark chocolate. She also buys Dr. Gundry's supplements -- $70 jars of red and orange powders that are supposed to give her energy, improve her digestion, promote weight loss, and cure aching joints and inflammation. She's no stranger to diets, but she swears this -- THIS is the one that really works! Has anyone else been plagued by this guy?

A: “You don’t feel more sigmatic?” M: “I’m still a beta cuck over here.” I fucking love you guys. 😂

GRIFTY-EST GRIFTER: I don’t think you can top the Lockheed Martin Nepotism Hire reveal

The media trying to push thinness on women once again, calling it “heroic chic” is an absolute atrocity. They knew it would have a visceral reaction and go viral for attention. And unfortunately it worked, with no thought out into the damage it could do.

FAD DIET NOMINEE: Bright Line Eating. There’s a terrible CPTSD channel on YouTube with a large following (Crappy Childhood Fairy) that is amplifying this style of eating to vulnerable people.

For the worst wellness take, I nominate the formerly fat celebrity discourse. Thinking especially about Rebel Wilson, who used her size as a joke before she lost weight, but also Adele, etc. “I just wanted to be healthy” without any critical introspection or challenge to the weight loss of it all is a real bummer, but I’m sure it won’t be the last of it now that the BBL body is “out” and “thin is in”.

Worst wellness take: The Supreme Court telling states it is ok to take away access to reproductive healthcare from millions of people with functioning uteruses!!!!

Intermittent fasting ads are targeting the hell out of me

Omg the reverse osmosis water grift (LOL) reminded me to ask about a Berkey water filter episode! I have so many otherwise reasonable people in my life who have been pilled by this SUPER EXPENSIVE water filtration "system" and have given me guff about my regular degular Brita.

Listening to you explain why you don't have advertisers inspired me to increase my tier. Make this one public. I love you both so much I could burst.

There was a brief moment in time about a month ago when I was getting an insane amount of Instagram ads for a diet shake called Colon Broom?? I eventually hid it from my feed cause 🤢 but the shadiest thing about it I didn’t realize till later. I don’t follow or do much searching for any “wellness” or weight loss industry stuff so I couldn’t figure out why I suddenly started getting those ads along with Noom and some other workout stuff. BUT, I did ask my boyfriend to marry me in October (yay!!) and then looked a few dress designer and photographer’s pages. So my ads got pretty wedding saturated pretty fast so I’m about 99% sure that the laxative shake ads go hand in hand with wedding dress ads. Yikes.

Best take: I think Jameela Jamil’s take on the “heroin chic is coming back” nonsense was great.

I feel like Whole 30 really took off this year. Other diets I hear about about the same amount as previous years but it seems like all my friends did Whole 30 at least once in 2022

Wait what was the Better Help scandal?!?!

channing tatum did an interview on kelly clarksons show about how awful and unhealthy it is to look how he does in magic mike and it was the best celebrity take i’ve seen this year

Not sure if this counts, but I want to give a shout out to the kids book that came out this year, I Love My Body Because. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside and I love reading it to my kids.

Fad diet: Intermittent fasting is still be talked about amongst my colleagues. I also don’t think some of the people i talk to would consider it a diet! Honorable mention for Noom, but it my world is seemed to fade away quite rapidly toward the latter half of 2022. Thrilled my dad isn’t telling me what he weighs and what he ate on every phone call anymore.

BEST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer - WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer - Kim Kardashian’s starvation diet to What was the WEIRDEST wellness trend of 2022? What was the FAD DIET your friends, family and coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about in 2022? Who was the GRIFTIEST GRIFTER

Fad diet: intermittent fasting (as someone in school for nutrition, hearing my classmates and professors praise this drives me up a wall). Keto takes a close second Maybe not the worst health and wellness take, but a bad one I didn't expect: Jonathon Van Ness's Getting Curious episode "Why do I love snacks so much?" on Netflix. He talks to a neurologist about being "addicted to sugar" and really pushes the idea that we can fight back against processed food companies by having the willpower to control our serving sizes.

Love your work so so much and really enjoy the Patreon episodes! May I suggest editing out the mouth sounds for people with misophonia?🫶 please and thank you

Fad diet everyone wouldn't stop talking about: intermittent fasting.

Someone doing things very right in the body positive space is Virginia Sole-Smith. I love her Substack and podcast Burnt Toast, and I think a crossover episode would be AMAZING. She approaches things form the POV of a parent, which could be a nice perspective to add to your show.

I don’t even know if this counts as a health and a wellness take, but I appreciate Lili Reinhart’s take that Kim Kardashian lost weight in an unhealthy way for the Met Gala and she shouldn’t be promoting that.

Also yes, Noom is forever the worst and the facebook groups surrounding it are toxic, sad places, but what about sea moss. First off what is it and why does it come in so many weird flavors. Do you chew it?

Is it wrong to say I really dig Melissa Urban? I know I know, whole30 was it's own weird thing, but she got clean got a divorce got a head injury and now she's on Instagram with some of the best advice about personal boundaries I've seen.

My husband is a consumer of all things "superfood" powder, including Huel. There is a big ass unopened bag of it in our pantry right now. I played you two taste-testing Huel and he cracked up.

Two points. I love these taste test episodes so, so much; hilarious and informative. My second and arguably more important point: PLEASE MANUFACTURE AND SELL ME MAINTENANCE PHASE MAGNETIC POETRY (MPMP)

Spent my dog walking hour listening to this with such excitement. I was literally laughing out loud and joining in the conversation. I love the intimacy of the taste tests because the stirring sounds, "food" prep sounds are so great. Then comes the reaction. PRICELESS! Michael's 'slap of stevia' stands out and Aubrey's complete horror and disbelief cry of "why is it sweet? WHY IS IT SWEET???" are such fantastic honest moments that you share with us and I for one am here for it every time. I will gladly pay my yearly fee for Patreon which is worth way more than a $3 packet of Athletic 'Swampy" Greens, because after all, laughter is the best medicine! (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) Thank you Aubrey & Michael!

Best health and wellness take is from Emma Thompson who has been sharing a lot of wisdom and reflections about her body/dieting, etc. not groundbreaking, but it’s nice to hear someone talk about some regrets that came with obsessing over their body in Hollywood and how their attitude has changed as they’ve aged. Also, just the best take in general- Lizzo and Watch Out for the Big Girls.

I know y'all have already talked about it, but the Fad Diet that is still horrifically popular to me is keto and intermittent fasting. The keto one drives me up the wall.

1. now I want MPMP (maintenance phase magnetic poetry) 2. "aca-scuse me?" 🤣

Grittiest grifter is doctors (and Kim K) for pushing diabetes medications like Ozempic for weight loss. Literally just happened to me last week.

I love this conversation around advertising!! So important. For Fad Diet of the year: may I submit Noom? I found that Noom was very insidious in the way they were being advertised by my local NPR station, my socials, and even recommended by MY THERAPIST! Weirdest wellness trend: the raw meat girls on TikTok. It’s scary. Also submitting the beef tallow obsession. Griftiest Grifter: Dr. Oz. With the political motivation, I feel like he just turned the grift up like 1,000% and really did prey on poor, uneducated Pennsylvanians. Best celebrity wellness take: LIZZO!! She is so wonderful about using her platform to highlight how unfair the world is to fat people, and she proves that being physically fit does not mean being skinny. She is such a great example of fat acceptance. Also just dope as hell, too!!!

Gut health definitely falls somewhere in there along with the TikTok people who claim hormonal birth control is terrible for your health. Honorable mention to Better Health - I am waiting for a scandal to break about that.

Lumen is the weirdest diet trend. It seems to be a breathalyzer for metabolism? Idk seems like coocoo nonsense, been hoping y’all would see it and tell me what the hell it thinks it is.

Those Athletic Greens ads always irritate the shit out of me. Like do I really believe Roberta Blevins is drinking that garbage every day? Terrible products like this just reinforce the notion that being healthy requires suffering.

Gut health. I'm not even entirely sure what it means in the context of all the cliclbait articles I see. As someone with IBS I just try to avoid triggers? The other one that stresses me out is the drugs being used for weight loss that are for diabetes like ozempic. I just get bad feelings about where that could go in the future and I think it needs it's own episode!

I gotta say, I’ve been seeing these commercials for “Healthy Wager” and on the surface it looks positive but I have to wonder what the “catch” is that allows them to make money. I recognized one of the “spokespeople” from a Fasting Facebook group I was once in and I was immediately saddened by the connection between her weight loss and this Healthy Wager scam.

I just can't get over how much the people selling these products seem to hate food. "Drink thus gruel to have a nutritionally complete meal" like sure but that's not the point of food! Yes we need it to live but a good meal is so much more than that. Good food is one of the pleasures of being alive. And these folks are denying themselves that in search of magic immortality powders.

Guestio Patreon tier when?

My nomination for the weirdest wellness trend of 2022 is light hygiene and circadian rhythms for weight loss! It includes red light panels and walking barefoot in the grass at sunrise - things sure to help with weight loss! If you need the Insta account of a person who is very into this, please DM me. I know her personally and it's... strange.

Idk what category this falls into, I guess fad diets?? But the absolute worst diet grift I heard this year was an ad for a website where you make actual money bets on your weight loss. Because, clearly, people need even more reasons to believe that being fat will ruin their life

Loved the ep as usual, but especially the bit where it felt like I was chilling and listening to Mike and Aubrey yell to each other across a house 😂 also loved the Magic Spoon taste test; as someone who listens to a podcast about cereal, I've heard a good deal about them in review form rather than as ads, and those reviews have never really been stellar. For fad diet nominees: def either intermittent fasting or Noom for the second year in a row. It may just be bc I actually saw extended family for the first time in a few years but I feel like EVERYONE was talking about and/or doing IF, and I'm still getting a TON of Noom ads, which sucks since they're starting to put the weight shaming in those first 5 seconds that I can't skip on YouTube.

I know you've covered Dr. Oz extensively, but I feel like he deserves some kind of Grifty Honorable Mention for his senate run.

The taste testing was hilarious 🤣 I am also not surprised by the Lauren Bosstick promoting overpriced products.

I was only on TikTok for about a week so this might be less of a trend and more of a "one to watch" category and it's the evolution of the "midsize" which includes what I consider slim and straight size people. I understand that beauty standards and societal pressures can impact anyone so I don't quite know how to fully explain why I found it jarring. But I think part of it is because some people seem to be using it to keep the benefits of body positivity type movements but at the same time distance themselves from fatness and actual discrimination. Perhaps I am overthinking it (which is honestly going to be true regardless) but it definitely gave me pause for thought.

Worst diet trend or worst health take is the influencers on tiktok who make videos of the hundred thousand different types of liquids they drink in a day (including multiple shots of various green juices) and never talk about solid food! Or the girl who eats a whole clove of raw garlic every morning as a "natural antibiotic" along with sea kelp and spirolina(???) from Erewhon for "gut health"

Lol “chewing food”, Aubrey. Crunch crunch!

one of the weirdest health and wellness trends of 2022 has to be the explosion of energy drinks that are somehow considered “healthy” even though they have an ungodly amount of caffeine in them (looking at you, celsius)

I need to know about the Better Help scandal

Utterly hilarious! I’ve never been tempted by any of these podcast ad “foods”, and I thank you for sacrificing yourselves to validate my choices! I was also very interested in why you accept no advertisers, and I’m even more pleased to be a Patreon supporter.

What was the FAD DIET your friends, family and coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about in 2022? 1000% intermittent fasting. Or food combining maybe. Or ‘intuitive fasting’ which is just stupid.

My partner came into the room while I was listening and asked "why don't they just not eat those things?"

I think the biggest grifters are anyone who marries wellness, health or diet to an MLM. These people do not have your best interests at heart it’s a pyramid scheme and also training for an eating disorder. Optavia is the worst I have encountered but let’s throw Young Living essential oils in there too.

Magic Spoon! I haven't heard the ads on podcasts but they're all over facebook. I am not a cereal fan so I was desperately curious to hear what they were like, especially as they're pretty expensive. 😑 Not surprised to hear they taste bad like so much health food.

Ok so I don’t know in which category I would put this (because it’s not “diety” per se), but I saw an incredible rise in “wellness hormonal coaches” who are basically your average crunchy people (antivaxx and the whole package). Basically they advocate for people to eat a certain way according to what hormones they want to “lower”, such as cortisol or any other “weight-gain hormones”, or to (and I can’t believe this is a thing) help in avoiding pregnancy so people with uteri can drop their “toxic contraception”. Not only this is highly irresponsible and untrue, but these coaches give me pro-life vibes by telling people to get off their birth control 🥲they also mostly advocate for a natural form of contraception which consists in taking your body temperature and other stuff, as the only viable and non-toxic form of contraception. Oh and also they say that birth control is a tool of the patriarchy to subdue women and people who can get pregnant 👏🏼

Well I am not sure there’s any articles in English, but in Germany weightwatchers (or ww) had the glorious idea to give a married “celebrity” chef (Paul Ripke) a Tinder account (pretending to want to meet someone) and then have him contact all matches with a weightwatchers ad…

FAD DIET - Intermittent fasting. Why are all the Boomer dads (including my own) suddenly into this?? Love the podcast 💚 Thanks for all the work you put into it!

Not done with the episode but I looove these episodes😂 just hilarious, plus I’d love to be there and try it with you two.

On Huel, I live in Belgium and on a pretty loose "drink less, exercise more, eat less crap" attempt at dropping some lockdown weight ended up with LOADS of their Dutch language adverts on my YouTube videos. The slight grimace on Fitness Lady's face when she says "that's delicious" on the mac and cheese ad makes total sense now.

This episode made me laugh out loud many times. Re advertising: I definitely audibly laugh when some extremely rich people advertise items I know they never use a day in their life. More so, I get sad when people (and it’s many) advertise for “better health” as it is so dangerous and unethical. It is not good for either the therapist or the client. And I know podcasters advertising for it don’t receive therapy on that platform, well I don’t know but I am going to definitely assume. Hearing your thought process behind ads and learning more about requirements of ads was very intriguing and thought provoking.

In my experience the athletic greens definitely needed a strong shake or blender situation to make the powder dissolve. I actually thought it was better tasting than wheat grass juice straight, but that's not saying a lot.

I desperately hope the taste test episodes will continue. For anyone who loves them as much as I do, Drew Gooden does "trying weird products from instagram ads" videos that are equally as funny, although less diet-culture focussed. Anyway, here are my grifties nominations (please take me on as an official member of the nomination committee). I do not have a best and worst take because I simply refuse to pay attention to celebrities' eating tips unless they are outragously funny like my nomination for griftiest grifter. Weirdest trend: for this I would like to nominate something that has been in the wellness sphere for a couple of years now, but in 2022 broke containment into even my highly correct choice of podcasts in the form of ads for the product, and that is the concept of nonmedical nutritional IVs. Some notable brands: liquid-iv.com, revivme.com and vitamindrip.com Fad diet: tiktok is a bringer of gifts and awful things, and this year they have brought the awful gift of liquid chlorophyll for weight loss. Which I am too scared of to even google. Also, intermittent fasting. More like intermittent starving, amiright folks. Griftiest grifter: I was actually tempted to put this person in the "worst take" category, but I learned they've also attempted to make money of this take, and thus, absolutely and unequivocally, the weirdest, grieftiest wellness take this year should to go to Jeffree Star for his beautifully twisted Yak Meat Moment(TM) on the 28th of may. He tried to sell the yak meat as "Super high in protein, zinc, and B vitamins ... 90% fat free ... and [having] more dense nutrional content than salmon" https://popcrush.com/jeffree-star-yak-meat-store-wyoming-ranch/

I ended up on the Huel subreddit after looking for an image of what the mac & cheese looked like and judging from the posts, it seems Huel's been having their own problems over at least the past year with folks finding shreds of plastic in their powders, which feels kinda funny in an incredibly dark way after the Daily Harvest episode.

The fad diet that nobody in my realm would shut the fuck up about was also intermittent fasting, with sprinkles of keto (still! It's like the flu!). There was the really odd patch of something I absolutely misheard as marzipan that went around one of the departments at work, yes also like a disease. I didn't bother to figure out what it was really called. I might like a marzipan diet.

Great episode! I agree that electrolytes aren't something most people need to worry about on a daily basis. For most people, if the situation comes up, they can just run out and get some Gatorade or Pedialyte for electrolytes. I'm one of a minority who really does need to be concerned about electrolytes most days in summer (on my feet all day in an un-air-conditioned warehouse) and my body doesn't get along with Gatorade and a powder mix is cheaper so that's what I use. Just slightly jarring to hear talk of electrolytes like they don't exist or like powdered electrolyte mixes are inherently silly. A small thing, I know, and I'm sure that's covered in spirit in your disclaimers. I just wanted to mention it. Everything else was entertaining and quality info as always!

Haha, Four Sigmatic made it to your taste test! 🙈 Def not my favourite company as a dietitian. 🙊Thanks for a brutal analysis! 😄 But what is true is that chaga has been used in Finland (and in Russia) as a brew for a long time. I don’t drink it because it has zero taste on its own, so don’t see the point. Too impatient to wait for the miraculous effects, haha.

What was the FAD DIET your friends, family and coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about in 2022: definitely intermittent fasting. Why are we not just calling this an eating disorder?

so excited to listen!! would love to hear you guys discuss the gut health phenomenon one day!

I tried the magic spoon cereal and the allulose killed my stomach. I deduced that because that same thing happened when I tried smart sweets.

oh god, that much sugar alcohol in a cereal would make my ibs gut explode! especially since i typically eat cereal for breakfast. as a cushion for my sertraline.

thank you for trying those cereals so I can stop wondering if I'd like them.

Can we get pics of what you tasted?

I'd like to nominate Dr Oz's little shopping expedition at 'Wegners' for crudite for the WORST health & wellness take from a celebrity or influencer in 2022. Maybe not a 'take' as such, but such a strange, cynical and completely failed attempt to play health/access to fresh food and class issues, that then brilliantly displayed his own elitism. Or even better, dr Oz for griftiest grifter.

I’ll nominate The Liver King aka Brian Johnson, an influencer and CEO who makes his fortune selling nutritional supplements and an ancestral lifestyle involving raw meat diets, intense workout, barefoot walks and more. You can find him on social media eating raw testicles and taking part in ‘simulated hunts’. He sells his product with his frankly insane physique while artfully dodging frequent questions about steroid use. Griftiest Grifter 2022!

It's hard to say about a general trend, as I have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia - so obviously people recommend all sorts of absolute shit to "cure" me 😂. Of course I could have cured them with celery juice were it not for the fact that I'm horrifically allergic. I think the one I heard the most about in CFS communities was co-enzyme q10. I have a vague idea there's some preliminary indications that it's not complete bollocks, but idk this is coming from a community that had a huge three-day showdown between paleo and keto for which helped symptoms better. I just ate ice cream and read all 4000 comments of people fighting on the internet, so maybe I'll propose that as the wellness trend for 2023. Only about 12 people recommended yoga or going vegan so I count this year as a win. I also tried yoga and it's actually helping somewhat, and I'm so mad about it.

Griftiest Grifter? Jack Monroe, AKA @BootstrapCook on twitter. Check out the Awfully Molly blog (https://awfullymolly.com/2022/11/04/jack-monroe-saint-or-scammer/) for a catalogue of their grifts, scams, half truths and fantasies over the last decade.

I moved to the Netherlands in 2021 after living in Sydney for 10y and I'm just so shocked at how completely I do not see diet foods or ads here, and nobody I know seems to be on any kind of diet (other than a lot of vegetarians and vegans, which isn't really the same thing)