Clean eating, dirty hierarchies: Wellness culture, healthism and public health

Background

Wellness culture has grown into a multibillion dollar global industry, shaping how health and food are understood outside formal health systems. Unlike evidence-based public health, wellness culture frames health as a moral obligation tied to self-optimization and skepticism toward institutional authority – an ideology termed healthism. Disseminated through lifestyle media globally, these narratives risk producing anxiety, social exclusion, and distrust of public health guidance, with equity implications for those lacking resources to conform.

Methods

We conducted a qualitative case study of The Inertia, the world’s largest digital board sport media platform, analysing 30 articles on food and nutrition selected from approximately 200. Recurring patterns were inductively coded into narrative categories, drawing on Lupton’s framework of food as identity construction, Douglas’s concepts of purity and moral order, and Crawford’s concept of healthism.

Results

Six narratives were identified: the body as machine to be optimized; DIY individualism rejecting institutional guidance; dismissal of mainstream dietary authority; moralization coding foods as “clean” or “toxic”; contradictory advice generating anxiety and commercial dependency; and food as risk management. Together these construct health as moral performance rather than social right.

Conclusions

Wellness narratives in lifestyle media reframe public health concerns as individual responsibility, marginalizing those who cannot conform. These dynamics operate across lifestyle subcultures globally and warrant greater attention from public health researchers seeking to counter healthism and reduce health inequalities.

Key messages

• Wellness media constructs health as a moral performance, creating hierarchies that exclude those unable to conform – undermining public health equity goals.

• Eat clean” culture isn’t just a trend – it moralizes food, fuels anxiety, and pushes people away from evidence-based health advice.