Students grapple with celebrity health advice
“[I tried] diets, supplements, and exercise programs. Honestly, body image is important and I should love me for how I look, no matter what changes my body goes through. I don’t think any of those methods helped me to lose weight…Going through all those things helped me realize, whether I lose weight or not, I’m beautiful.”
—Second-year undergraduate, Lakehead University, Ontario
“I tend to disregard celebrity recommendations… I’ve seen meta-analyses of various diets which have found that the content of the diet usually doesn’t matter … What [matters] is whether or not the diet is maintained�something celebrities and the like can hire people for and devote large periods of time to [that] most people cannot.”
—Second-year undergraduate, Queen’s University, Ontario
“I would advise talking to a health professional before implementing any sort of lifestyle changes based on some culturally-relevant individual. Most celebrities are not trained health professionals and have no basis in claiming any health-related regime or technique. For the few cultural icons with professional health training, I would also caution against taking their advice as they can be biased (e.g., pushing quack health care products for money) … Dr. Oz has been heavily criticized for recommending products that are not empirically proven to be effective for health-related problems.”
—Fifth-year undergraduate, University of Manitoba
What’s wrong with the “detox” concept
“I have tried [the actor] Mike Chang's high intensity training workout. High intensity training is designed to give minimal breaks between exercises/reps to maximize energy burn. I tried it because it takes not much time out of one’s day. I loved and still love doing the exercise routine. It’s a tough 5–10 minutes but it is worth it!”
—Second-year undergraduate, University of Wisconsin, Marathon County
“P90X. I saw [personal trainer and author] Tony Horton on an infomercial and the program made sense … It was a great way to bond with my partner, by completing and motivating each other to do the exercises.”
—Graduate student, University of Wisconsin-Madison