From The Heart #5: Why Fear-Based Health Content Is Damaging Your Journey

Fear sells, but at what cost to our health? In this unscripted, heart-to-heart conversation, I address a troubling pattern I've noticed in wellness culture: the rise of fear-based health information that lacks crucial context and nuance.

When patients ask me whether chia seeds are "toxic" unless soaked, or show me how their healthy peanut butter scores poorly on wellness apps while processed diet foods receive high marks, I worry about the impact of black-and-white thinking on our relationship with food. The internet's tendency to demonize ultra-rare risks while ignoring substantial benefits creates unnecessary anxiety and potentially harmful avoidance behaviors.

Through practical examples—from the misunderstood dangers of chia seeds to the methodological limitations of the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list—I explain how "the dose makes the poison" and why counting ingredients without considering their amounts or effects leads to flawed conclusions. Food processing exists on a spectrum; protein powder is technically ultra-processed yet consistently associated with positive health outcomes. Context matters enormously.

What's most concerning is how social media algorithms reward sensationalism over substance. A 22-minute video exploring nutritional nuance won't go viral like a shirtless influencer making alarming claims about "toxic" foods in a 30-second clip. This creates an environment where our attention spans shorten (we now have an acronym—TLDR—for content deemed too long) and our anxiety about food choices grows.

The solution isn't abandoning tools like food tracking apps entirely—they can help people become more educated about what they consume. Rather, we need to approach health information with critical thinking skills and awareness of these tools' limitations. Your balance point may differ from mine, but I hope these conversations help you develop the discernment to navigate wellness information wisely, without letting fear dictate your choices.

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting  the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

Don't forget to check out my blog at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/blog 

You can also watch my educational videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpkQRXb7G-StAotV0dmahQ

Check out my upcoming live events and free eCourse, where you'll learn more about how to create delicious plant-based recipes: https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/

Go follow me on social media by visiting my Facebook page and Instagram accounts
https://www.facebook.com/plantbaseddrjules
https://www.instagram.com/plantbased_dr_jules/

Last but not least, the best way to show your support and to help me spread my message is to subscribe to my podcast and to leave a 5 star review on Apple and Spotify!
Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Section A

Speaker 1 0:00

Yo Plant-Based Buddies, welcome to a new segment of the show that I'm going to call From the Heart. Now, these bonus episodes are different no script, no plan, just me speaking openly and honestly about lessons and stories that come from real conversations, with real patience. It's raw and polished and honest, but packed with insights that matter, but packed with insights that matter. Most of the time, I simply open my phone camera, record a video and this is the audio of these conversations. So, if you're ready for something a little bit more spontaneous, this is from the heart, unplanned, unscripted, but straight to the point. Yo Plant-Based Buddies, happy Friday.

Speaker 1 1:01

Over the last week, I've actually gotten a few questions that raised some concerns for me. I know that a lot of people rely on apps or on online content to kind of manage or track their health journey, and I want to talk about some of these tools that are probably causing more harm than good or that could potentially, for some of you, cause more harm than good. Now, the internet tends to see things in a very black or white way and while it's impossible to fit nuance and context in a 30-second video, and that's why I'm here with this platform. Now, I've just recently learned that there's actually an acronym called TLDR, which means Too Long didn't read. We are now in 2025 and there's literally we actually have a name for social media posts that are too long. So people don't even have the attention span to stop to read something that's more than an average of 20 to 30 seconds long. Now I have a lot of people complaining about a lot of things on my content. A lot of people complain about the language I choose to do my videos in. People tend to complain because my content is long. My videos can be 10-15 minutes long. My posts can take 5-6 minutes to read. The fun part about the internet is that there are about a million other people that do what I do in short form, so it's really easy to find someone else that would summarize in a 10-second soundbite what I take 30 minutes sometimes to decipher about things to be aware of and how the internet uses fear to motivate change, which is not great for people's mental health. Now, over the last year, I've gotten a dozen of people talking to me or asking me about the dangers of chia seeds, and I've actually had people recently ask me that question. They asked me is it true that I absolutely need to soak my chia seeds in water before I eat them or that they could possibly be harmful for me.

Speaker 1 3:59

So, number one chia seeds can absorb anywhere from five to 12 times their weight in water and that's the gel that forms around it. It's soluble fiber that gets dissolved in water and that puffs up. It absorbs water. That's literally one of the great benefits of chia seeds, where they promote gut health. One of the great benefits of chia seeds where they promote gut health. They feed the prebiotic fiber is fermented and then feeds good gut bugs.

Speaker 1 4:35

But if you take two tablespoons of dry chia seeds and you put them in your mouth and you swallow them, what's going to happen is going to combine with mucus and with fluids in your body and with saliva and it's going to puff up super quick and there has been cases of people where they have blockages in their esophagus because they've ingested large amounts of dried chia seeds. That doesn't make chia seeds toxic. It just means drink water with them, wash them down or either soak them before Now you don't need to soak them for hours. I put chia seeds in my oatmeal every single morning and by the time I wash my berries, the chias have already started to form a gel and then I just make sure to drink water with my meal, right? So the internet has this way of demonizing ultra rare things that almost never happen and they can be easily mitigated. Now people describe chia seeds as being toxic and dangerous and you should be scared to eat them. When they're a great source of ALA, omega-3s, prebiotic fibers, chia seeds are super healthy. That's the point I'm getting at.

Speaker 1 5:59

But people tend to fear things that are ultra-rare and I I've all. I've talked about that in the past. It's called the risk perception gap. The example I gave, I think, in a video, is probably something about the risk of hormone replacement therapy. Uh, and breast cancer. I pretty sure I talked about, um, your relative risk increase in breast cancer in people who take in women who take hormone replacement therapy is something like 15 to 20 percent, and the relative risk increased risk of breast cancer in people who are obese or is anything from 30 to 50. So we tend to fear the wrong things, right? And yesterday I got a message from someone and it's the second time in a few months that I've gotten this same inquiry. I'll talk about the first time because it's quite interesting.

Speaker 1 7:00

My wife owns Studio Di Moda with her best friend, melanie. I was literally my daughters wanted to cut my hair and shave my beard, so I let them, and what happened is that my wife I think she just kind of had a bottle of gel or mousse or whatever product she puts in my hair when she does my hair, when she cuts my hair and someone and literally people researched that product and put it in what they in something called the yuca app. Now, a lot of people here, I'm sure, know what the yuca app is. Um, and then I got a bunch of messages from people saying that they couldn't believe that a wellness educator like me would put such harmful products in my hair. Oh, my goodness, because I've recently gotten a message I think a few days ago or yesterday from someone saying I've just put certain foods in the Yuka app and it labels it as a super dangerous, toxic food that I shouldn't be eating.

Speaker 1 8:16

I'm well aware of the wellness apps and apps like Yuka, which basically give a score to food. You can scan the barcode and it gives food a score. Now, I really dislike these apps because they miss a lot of context. I'll give you an example Now. If you take a super healthy food like peanut butter and you scan it because some peanut butters have added sodium or have high levels of fat content, they tend to score very poorly. On apps like the Yoga app that are low in calories, that are filled with artificial colors and preservatives get a high score because they're considered diet-friendly or weight-loss-supporting. Now I get that these apps have use. They get a lot of things right. They can help people get more educated about what's in their foods. They help people read labels. They educate people on how to care for what they put in their body or on their body. But a lot of these apps are fear-mongering against perfectly healthy products and if certain people are avoiding a certain hair gel because of the Yuka app scoring it poorly, then I think we're focusing on the wrong issues right, and I'll give you an example from the EWG.

Speaker 1 10:17

The EWG is the Environmental Working Group. Ewg is the Environmental Working Group. Every year it publishes their Dirty Dozen or Clean 15. The Dirty Dozen is basically the most pesticide-laden foods that we have Now. Typically, strawberries come out on top because of the wide number of pesticides that are used to grow strawberries. I'd rather not have worms in my strawberry and I'd rather have as less chemical pesticides as possible. So let's get that out of the way. But the way the EWG measures pesticide residue on background will understand that it's the dose that makes the poison. If there are a hundred pesticides on my strawberry but the dose of these are super, super, super low, they are not going to be harmful for you. If there are less pesticides, I'm happy. But if there's less pesticides but their doses are higher, they're likely going to be more dangerous for your health. Now, something like the Yuka app would score the strawberry with least pesticides in terms of numbers better than the strawberry that has a lot of pesticides but at low dose. Now, if I'm mixing people up, I want to give you an example. Right, using the EWG classification for organic food like the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15, to determine whether or not a food is good or bad would be the equivalent of me saying that Tylenol is toxic.

Speaker 1 12:40

People will be like well, jules, come on, it depends on the dose. Yes, it depends on the dose. If I give you one milligram of Tylenol, it will do nothing. And if you take a milligram of Tylenol with a milligram of Advil, with a milligram of muscle relaxer and a milligram of whatever else you want, it will likely do nothing. You will feel nothing. Your body will degrade it, metabolize it, get rid of it, excrete it, and you will still be healthy after taking that one milligram of Tylenol. Now, if I give you 500 milligrams of Tylenol, you might have a little bit of better pain management, you have a little bit less fever, but if I give you 5000 mg of Tylenol, you're likely to console the ER with fulminant hepatitis and maybe even die from acute liver injury. The dose makes the poison right Not the number of compounds, but the dose. So what happens with something like the EWG is they measure good or bad depending on the ingredients and not their dose.

Speaker 1 14:05

Using the dirty dozen to demonize strawberries is the same concept as me demonizing Tylenol as being dangerous for you, when Tylenol is super useful when used at appropriate doses. So I just want people to be careful when they're reading about certain organizations like the EWG or apps like the Yuka app, because there's a lot of context missing and what people don't know is that the EWG is a marketing and lobbying organization for the organics farming industry. I'm all for organic farming. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that people pay and the EWG gets money from companies that then get their label EWG approved slapped on it, just even in the same manner as certain organizations, association or apps get payback and cash back from organizations from products that pay to have their label slapped on it, right? So, for example, let's say I want to become rich and I determine I'm going to call it the Jules-approved label. Well, and people pay me money for me to slap my Jules approved label on it. Well, I might.

Speaker 1 15:46

I might bend the rules and loosen the criteria, right? So, uh, I'm not saying these things are good or bad. That's not what I'm saying, because I know a lot of people will kind of respond negatively to this. I just want you to have a little bit more critical thinking, right? So super healthy foods that then have added sodium score very poorly on the app, where super processed, unhealthy foods that have low saturated fat and low sodium and low added sugar but are still ultra processed will score better. And this is where people need to be careful. And this is where people need to be careful. Now it all comes back to that example where I got people responding to hair gel that my wife put on my head that is literally not absorbed in my body and people saying I can't believe that you would use something like that in your hair because the Yuka app rates it poorly. Now the Yuka app used the number of ingredients as a marker of health. I've spoken about this a lot.

Speaker 1 17:10

Something being processed doesn't automatically make it bad, automatically make it bad. Processing exists on a spectrum, from physical modification to chemical modification, and you can modify something physically and still not change the nutritional content much in the same way as you can modify something chemically and make it healthier or make it less healthy, it depends. You can add things and call it chemically processed, and you can remove things and call it chemically processed. And if you add good things, aka fortification, no one argues that adding iodine to sodium is good, that adding B12, calcium and vitamin D to soy milk is good, but it's still a processed food. That doesn't make it inherently bad. That being said, you can take 3.25% milk and process it by creating skim milk, and this actually reduces the amount of saturated fat in the milk and therefore makes it healthier and less calorie dense. So chemically altering something is processing it, but it doesn't automatically make it good or bad. It depends, right. But as soon as something is processed, a lot of these apps, like the Yuka app, will automatically demonize it, and you need to be careful when you are not well versed in the type of processing, the amount of processing, whether it's physical or chemical.

Speaker 1 19:01

A lot of processed foods can be super healthy for you and are associated with positive health outcomes. Not just because it's called process doesn't mean that it's bad right. Process doesn't mean that it's bad right. I prefer you eating 80% of your foods from whole foods that grow in the ground, from a plant, from a tree, in their status close to the way Mother Nature created them. I think that's reasonable, but never would I think that just because it's processed this bad. I consume protein powders, um an ultra processed food, but protein powders are regularly associated with positive health outcomes in terms of lean body mass and metabolic parameters. So even that would be a great example of an ultra-processed food that is associated with positive health outcomes.

Speaker 1 20:02

So what I'm saying here is just be careful, because a lot of the information you see online is fueled on fear. There is no need to fear chia seeds, but if you take a heap of chia seeds in a dry mouth, it might absorb water in your throat or in your esophagus and it will puff up. It will blow up or expand and that might cause issues. And if you go on the Yuka app and you scan the barcode of a natural peanut butter that contains a little bit of added oils or added sodium, it'll score very poorly, while you may scan that low-fat granola bar, that may score great. So the Yuka app is good in terms of helping people or encouraging people to get educated about what they put in their mouth and I'm all for that. But the issue we're seeing is that people are scared. They're scared of eating produce that's not organic because of the pesticides. Or they're scared of eating peanut butter because the yuca app says it was. Here goes fluffy gagging on the couch again. You, you, good, fluffy, um.

Speaker 1 21:29

Anyways, where I'm going with this is that I don't know where I'm going with this. It it's difficult. I mean, what I'm trying to do here is educate people on the nuances and on the pros and cons and then trying to help you make your own decision. But I do understand how influencers nowadays are extremely convincing, right? And people that speak with authority and don't wear a shirt and have a six pack and speak loudly and are standing like that instead of slouch like me, they will gain more traction according to the algorithms online. So I get that and I get that a 22 minute video about nuances of food tracking is not going to go viral, right?

Speaker 1 22:23

But this group has grown now to over 3,000 people people, I hope and I believe, actually care about understanding nuance. So there are pros and there are cons to things like the EWG or Yuka apps or wellness apps. There are pros and cons of tracking calories or tracking macros and the pros for me may be cons for other people which is basically an obsession with being healthy and adopting help-promoting behavior to a point where people forget to live their lives and people are avoiding going at the restaurant because of fear of ingredients that would be unhealthy there. So it's all about balance. Everyone has a different balance. My balance is different than yours. It may not work for everyone, but I do hope that people here, by watching my videos, continue understanding that my goal is to help you reflect, to help you develop critical thinking skills, not to believe everything you see online, including content that I post, and understand that it's almost impossible to have a balanced and nuanced view of any subject, even in a 23-minute video, right?

Speaker 2 24:02

Hey everyone, go check out my website plantbaseddoctorjulescom to find free downloadable resources and remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr Jules Cormier, and on YouTube at Plant-Based Dr Jules.