Almost no online food and health guidance is free of vested interest: be it click-the-link supplement powders, content marketing for a subscription app, or plain old engagement baiting.
The new Good Health by Good Food podcast is a much-needed palate cleanser for the trash-filled feeds of doomscrollers.
In each episode, former A&E doctor Dr Alex George teams up with NHS GP Dr Chintal Patel to take on zeitgeisty wellness topics with a sober, evidence-based approach followed by straightforward practical advice. And they’ve nothing to sell but their sound analysis.
The latest episode tackled supplements – more people than ever are taking them, and retailers are responding. “The whole point of supplements is to supplement,” George said. “They’re not called transformative pills.”
A 2% improvement in a given outcome measure would be “huge” for a supplement. But it’s a big mistake, George said, “expecting this thing to change your whole life”.
They put several online claims to the test. Like: more supplements mean better health. “Absolutely not,” Patel said. “Less is often more.” Or: natural supplements are always safe. “There’s this assumption that something synthetic is bad, and natural is automatically good,” George said. “We use drugs in the hospital that are obviously synthetic and created in a lab, and you’d want them to be.”
Listener questions were tackled in depth. And the episode ended with a handful of takeaways. Logical, practical, sensible – everything most online food health content isn’t.
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