When Instagram was first created, back in 2010, the intention was for it to be a fun photo-sharing app. But over the years celebrities and influencers began to use it as a medium to profit from through advertising products to app users – one of the most popular being slimming products.
Boom Bod, Flat Tummy Co, and Bootea are only some of the diet/detox supplements that most social media users are all too familiar with; Kim Kardashian, Katie Price and Chloe Ferry are just a few of the big names that have posed in bikinis and crop tops to show off the effects of their sponsored products.
Diet culture, the social construct that places importance on being thin, may seem like a recent phenomenon but has actually been affecting dieting habits for years.
The Tapeworm Method, where you would swallow a tapeworm which would live in your stomach and consume some of your food, was rumoured to be a popular fad dieting method in the early 1900s. Since then, fad diets and weight loss solutions such as the Atkins diet, the Keto diet, and slimming shakes have faded in and out of popularity.
When she was in University, Jade Hart, 27, became enchanted by the appealing results of diet pills and shakes plastered all over Instagram and decided to take the plunge and order Juice Plus+ – dietary supplements that were all over Facebook at the time.
“I used it for a couple of weeks, but it cost £60 for two tubs,” she says now. “You’d have two shakes a day and one six hundred calorie meal, but I was just hungry all the time, with headaches too. Then I tried Bootea which is a two-week course, you have one drink in the morning and one when you go to bed, and you’re supposed to lower your calories.”
The side-effects quickly proved to be disruptive.
“Bootea mainly had a laxative effect, but with the night-time tea too, I couldn’t sleep – I’d be awake for ages. They were successful in making me lose weight, but that was because it was like a laxative which obviously isn’t healthy in the long run.”
In fact, an issue commonly raised is that celebrities and influencers don’t disclose the long list of side effects and dangers that comes along with the use and misuse of dietary products. These side effects can range from insomnia and increased blood pressure to nausea, vomiting, headaches and constipation.
One of diet culture’s biggest critics, Jameela Jamil, an actress and body-positivity activist, recently shared a screenshot of TOWIE’s Lauren Goodger promoting Boom Bod, an up-and-coming weight loss company that sells dietary shakes, stating: “So sick of this irresponsible advertising. With all products sold, adverts are supposed to disclose side-effects. Unregulated diet/detox products are not recommended”.
This isn’t the first time that Jamil has spoken out about this issue, she’s regularly called out celebrities that promote diet shakes, including Iggy Azalea, Amber Rose and Cardi B. In 2018 Jamil also set up her ‘I Weigh’ movement, a social media platform and website with an aim to combat diet culture and help women see that their worth goes beyond how their body looks.
In an interview with Stylist, Jamil said: “They [the diet industry] want us so distracted with self-hatred that we don’t notice that there is a game being played here. A really sick, twisted one that is costing us a lot of time, money, and happiness.
“From lollipops that claim to suppress your appetite to “detox” teas that are essentially just laxatives, celebrities and influences are being paid thousands of pounds to endorse products we know little about”.
It seems that for most women, diet culture has been ingrained into us from a young age, with most people counting the calories or restricting foods at some point in their lives. The question is, how does this trend of diet culture affect its participants? How healthy can experimenting with different products and diets in a desperate attempt to shed pounds be?
It seems that the link between diet culture and eating disorders is a disturbingly clear one.
This is reflected in statistics posted by Gov UK in 2017, which found an alarming number of dieters succumbing to the pressure of diet culture. Three quarters of dieters (77%) were enticed by the promises of rapid weight loss, almost two in three (63%) suffered side effects such as diarrhoea, bleeding, blurred vision, and heart problems after taking slimming pills, and four out of five (81%) didn’t report these side effects to anyone. The effects of extreme dieting can also be long-term and range from malnutrition, heart problems, osteoporosis and seizures to hair loss, gum disease and sleep problems.
“The market for [dietary products] is well beyond saturated,” says Rose Wyles, 28, a nutritionist from London who advises to always get in contact with a doctor before consuming any dietary supplements. “Some of those products may not have gone through proper safety tasting for contaminates, side effects, and other potential contraindications.”
“Not all these products are healthy, properly tested, or necessary safe just because they are presented online and are marketed to us.”
In fact, in 2018, Clean Label Project tested 134 of the top-selling protein powders, finding that the majority of them ranked over the regulatory safety limits for Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and Mercury as well as BPA.
Diet culture can also take a huge toll on mental health, with those who have developed eating disorders being more prone to depression, anxiety, substance abuse issues and negative body image.
In 2019, Instagram edited its guidelines in an attempt to limit diet culture’s influence by hiding weight-loss products and plastic surgery from anyone under 18. While many celebrated this step forward in erasing the pressures felt by teens on social media platforms, body positivity activists called for further measures, as those over 18 are also susceptible to social media’s unrealistic beauty standards.
The diet industry appears to have created a cause-and-effect reaction to the world, from the influencers who make a living from promoting these products, to those who buy them and suffer the side effects, and those advocating for their banning. A quick fix to get slim has become the most enticing route to take when bombarded by the seamless hourglass shapes advertised on Instagram.
But the question remains, when faced with everything that could go wrong – is it still worth it?
* featured image by Flickr.com