The wellness industry uses “meaningless pseudoscience” to bait consumers to buy products they don’t need. 

That’s according to science writer David Robert Grimes, who told Lunchtime Live wellness has a “nebulous meaning”.  

“It means whatever you want it to mean,” he said. “But the global wellness market, by most metrics is about four times the size of the pharmaceutical market worldwide.” 

“So, a lot of people are making an awful amount of money based on something they can't even define.” 

Mr Grimes said since the trend around “wellness” emerged over five years ago, it has influenced people’s lifestyles – sometimes unnecessarily.

Examples of wellness industry products include essential oils, dietary supplements and specific clothes.

“It's not enough to be healthy anymore. [Wellness] is sold as something additional to health, something aspirational, something that you must have,” he explained. 

“These are being used to sell lifestyles, and things that people don't actually need... and it lends itself into a lot of disinformation about health as well."

"Pure marketing"

While commercialising wellbeing doesn’t seem like something that can be done easily, Mr Grimes said the “vague sense of wellbeing” has been used by the wellness. 

“It's a little bit of a con,” he said. “It's the idea that you need more than just being healthy or mentally and physically well - you need this extra to be complete. 

“That is pure marketing - there is no medical or scientific reason for that claim. Yet, if you go on to Instagram or TikTok, you will see people selling you a lifestyle.” 

"Don't throw it away"

Newstalk’s Alive and Kicking Host Clare McKenna told Lunchtime Live we should not “throw the entire wellness industry away” as a con. 

“Even the World Health Organization describes health as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease,” she said. 

“That's what I view wellness to be - I do understand that there's a lot of people making a lot of money out of making people feel like they're not doing life right. "

“But I do think that people are going to sometimes need an assessment of where they're at in their life - that could mean going on a retreat, that could mean working with a breathwork technician to find the ways to bring down their stress.” 

Claire said health and wellness are connected, and people need to focus on the more complex parts of themselves to improve simple physical wellbeing. 

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