Please don’t take nutrition advice from influencers on Instagram

I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram. While I think it’s a great way for healthcare professionals to spread information and make science/health easy to understand. (Feel free to follow my account @kaegoskitchen 😉). I rarely use my personal account because I find it quite fake and staged. 

Another issue is that it’s unregulated. This bothers me particularly when I see influencers or celebrities with no nutrition training selling the last diet craze to their followers. In this blog post I’m going to be looking at some of the posts and telling you whether the product they’re being paid to promote is actually worth it. (Hint: they're not).

Lauren Goodger and BoomBod:

Lauren has previously been in hot water for being caught on camera saying that she doesn’t use any of the products she's paid to promote and that she doesn’t care about the harmful ingredients they contain. This hasn’t stopped her from selling more diet products though.

She recently advertised BoomBod a ‘weight loss shot drink sensation’ that claims it can make you lose weight in 7 days. The active ingredient in BoomBod is glucomannan, a type of dietary fibre. The programme requires you have a glucomannan shot 30 minutes before each meal and follow the shot with a glass of water. While glucomannan has been shown to increase feeling of fullness, there is no significant effect on weight loss. It may cause a small amount of weight loss in the short term, but it is not substantial or long lasting.

Her caption says that BoomBod only works with an energy restricted diet, so it seems that the weight loss is due to the calorie deficit and not the product. When put simply, if you consume less calories than you need, you will lose weight. It’s not very fair to sell a product that promises weight loss when you are doing that yourself by consuming less calories. It also says you should drink a glass of water after taking the shot, which in itself can fill your stomach up and mean you eat less. 

Paying £30 for a 7 day course seems very expensive when the product itself doesn’t help with weight loss, it’s the calorie deficit and glass of water doing the work! It promises results in 7 days which is very unrealistic. It never states how much weight people should expect to lose but the before and after pictures on their website suggest drastic changes that do not seem physically possible in 7 days. 

The safe amount of weight to lose is 1-2 pounds or 0.5-1kg a week. If you are looking to lose weight you can try: filling half your plate with veggies, including a quality source of protein at every meal, and enjoying less nutritious food in moderation.

Various love island stars and fuel station juices:

Fuel station is a juice cleanse that tells you to fast and only drink their juice. They recommend beginners go for the 3 day cleanse which includes 5 juices to drink per day. I have an issue with this already. Fasting for 3 days and only drinking juice is starvation. 

A very low calorie diet is considered to be 800 calories a day and it’s only advised under the care of a medical team. These juices give you an average of 500 calories a day. It is also not cleansing or detoxifying. Nothing you eat or drink will detox you, this is simply not possible. Your liver and kidneys work very hard to detox and cleanse the body so they should be given the credit! 

When people say detox, I would like to know exactly what toxins they are removing and how, as saying that a juice will detox you means nothing. You can eat foods that contain nutrients to support the function of your kidneys and liver, but the food alone won't ‘clear you out’. The easiest way to support your liver and kidney function is to eat a healthy balanced diet that includes at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day.

The juices are made from fruit and vegetables so while they will provide some micronutrients it does not justify the lack of food. On the 3 day cleanse you are getting 538 calories per day. This is the same number of calories a newborn baby needs. The average adult needs around 2000 - 2500 calories per day, so this is a serious deficit. Drinking only juices will leave you hungry, tired, cranky, and with headaches. In Elma’s post, she says she's feeling slimmer already on her 3 day cleanse. This is because of the calorie restriction not because of the juice. And any weight loss will be water weight, as the body will be using your glycogen stores for energy. Glycogen is stored with water so when you lose the glycogen stores you lose the water as well and this is the ‘weight’ being lost. As soon as you go back to eating solid food you will regain the weight.

It’s also interesting that Molly is wearing workout clothes in both posts advertising the juices as their website clearly states you shouldn’t be exercising while on the cleanse. They say it’s because a juice detox allows your body to revitalise itself and it should be given the time to do so without exercise. In reality, it is because you're consuming such little calories that your body won't be able to support the physical exertion.

Please don’t spend money on these juices they are not worth it. If you want to lose weight, starvation is not the answer. You need to maintain a calorie deficit through a balanced diet, and you can still enjoy all foods in moderation.

Every reality show contestant ever and the Skinny Caffe/Beauty Locks:

The Skinny Caffe have a range of hot drinks that they say will help you lose weight. There are many ‘benefits’ to the drinks such as increasing your metabolism, glowing radiant skin, and increasing your stamina and fitness levels. These are some wild claims without a shred of evidence to support them. They do say that the claims are taken from customers testimonials, but they’ve made no attempt to verify the truth, so people may accept them as fact. 

The drinks have variety of ingredients like grape seed extract, green tea, and raspberry ketones. None of the ingredients in their products have been shown to cause significant weight loss. They won't help you lose weight or boost your metabolism. They promise instant results and have a host of testimonials from people that describe how much weight they’ve lost. But these testimonials all have something in common, the users were on a calorie controlled diet. Another product that promises results when it’s the user doing the work for them.

They also have a spin off called Beauty Locks which is a hot chocolate to stimulate hair growth and make your nails and skin healthier. It is basically a multivitamin in the form of a hot chocolate. While the nutrients it contains can support hair, skin, and nail function there is no need to spend £25 on this product. All the nutrients can be obtained through a balanced diet. 

It is also interesting that they picked a hot chocolate as the vessel for the nutrients as a lot of the vitamins it contains are destroyed by heat. I wonder how much of the vitamins you actually absorb. A lot of the influencers that promote their products also promote hair extension brands, but if the hot chocolate makes their hair grow faster, why do they need extensions? It’s almost as if they’re paid to promote nutrition products they’ve never actually tried or used.  

I’ve noticed that a lot of these nutrition products sold by ‘celebs’ on Instagram are targeting weight loss. It is quite sad that we are constantly told we need to lose weight and should take any measure to do so. Our worth should not be equated to our size and thinness does not equal better. 

Please do not take nutrition advice from influencers. They are paid to promote products and they don’t have the qualifications to give any advice.

If I discussed everything I wanted to about influencer nutrition, this blog post would be about 10 pages long, so I’ll end it here. I might make this into a series if I spot anymore posts. I hope this blog post gave you some food for thought and you enjoyed reading it.

Bye for now! 👋

References:

Boombod and glucomannan: https://boombod.co.uk/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29202887/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24533610/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25701331/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3892933/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882676/

Fuel station juices: https://www.fuel-station.co.uk/pages/faqs and https://www.fuel-station.co.uk/ and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/743790/Dietary_Reference_Values_-_A_Guide__1991_.pdf and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17784905/ and https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/102/4/807/4564599 and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23074240/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25522674/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29124370/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25911631/ and https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/10/hunger and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29112863/

The skinny caffe and weight loss hot choc: https://theskinnycaffe.com/collections/the-beauty-caffe/products/beautylocks-hair-skin-and-nails-hot-chocolate-drink-30-day-program and https://theskinnycaffe.com/pages/how-it-works and https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/10575327/lauren-goodger-promote-poison-cyanide/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19803548/and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250358/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28378858/