Did Netflix just make history with 24 Oscar nominations?

To mild sceptics, it’s another source of funny, if out-of-touch material. To long-time critics, it means exposing more people to goop’s brand of pseudoscience – a dangerous thing, given the following controversial wellness trends that goop has sparked and the trouble they caused.

‘Leanest liveable weight’ debacle

A 2018 goop interview with Traci Mann, a professor of social and health psychology at the University of Minnesota, came under fire for its underhanded promotion of thinness by introducing the phrase “leanest liveable weight,” which is “the weight at the low end of your ‘set range’, [the] genetically determined range of weight that your body generally keeps you in, despite your efforts to escape it”.

Mann admitted there’s no scientific formula for defining a person’s set weight range, but went on to promote her book Secrets From the Eating Lab where she outlines 12 strategies to help readers reach and maintain their leanest liveable weight.

9 wellness trends to try in 2020

This raised red flags for nutritionists and doctors. While the goop feature was titled “Busting Diet Myths”, the words “leanest” and “liveable” confuse the message. “For example, the idea is that I can be 140 pounds [63.5kg] or 160 pounds and be perfectly healthy, but I should really aim to be 140 pounds, even though I’m just as healthy at 160 pounds … So skinnier is better, right?” registered dietitian Abby Langer wrote on her blog. “The fact that this person says that bodies can be healthy at any size but then appears to glorify thinness is a f*cktangle of messaging that’s incredibly confusing and feels backhanded and disingenuous.”

Deadly bee-sting therapy

Paltrow sang praises about apitherapy or bee-sting therapy to The New York Times in 2016. “People use it to get rid of inflammation and scarring. It’s actually pretty incredible if you research it. But, man, it’s painful.” She echoed the same sentiment on goop in a now-deleted post, saying that she was “given ‘bee-venom therapy’ for an old injury and it disappeared”.

Two years later, a report in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology (JIACI) cited the case of a 55-year-old Spanish woman’s death after undergoing bee-sting therapy. The unnamed patient had been undergoing monthly live bee acupuncture treatments for two years before suddenly developing severe allergic reaction, which resulted in multiple organ failure. There are anecdotal reports on apitherapy’s benefits, but the JIACI report came with a warning about the “limited and scarce” published evidence of its efficacy and safety. Media reports on the case all noted how Paltrow and goop have promoted treatment.

Vaginal jade eggs 

Goop’s now-deleted 2017 Q&A post with “beauty guru/healer/inspiration/friend” Shiva Rose caused a stir with its recommendation for women to insert jade eggs into their vagina “to increase vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance and feminine energy in general”. The website even started selling its own jade egg for US$66 a pop.

Love The Crown? 5 British palaces, castles and estates to visit

Long-time goop critic, gynaecologist and author Dr Jen Gunter, immediately pushed back against this trend in her blog, citing the risk of women developing bacterial vaginosis and even toxic shock syndrome because of jade’s porosity. Watchdog group Truth in Advertising also cited the jade eggs in their complaint against goop for making unsubstantiated claims in more than 50 instances about its products, which led to a consumer protection lawsuit filed by state prosecutors representing 10 California counties. Goop settled the lawsuit in 2018 by agreeing to pay US$145,000, refunding customers who had bought the products, and removing claims of their efficacy from the website.

Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter .