Nutrition Bullshit
Keep your Bullshit Detector Set To ‘High’
“Unpopular truth: You’re taking medicine for a condition caused by your food choices. Why don’t you just change your choice of food? Unless you enjoy taking medicine.”
- Eddie Abbew, 2024
Social media is rife with bullshit comments like this. On the surface, these sorts of remarks might seem to make sense. After all, the statement delivers an effortless antidote to all your health problems. The solution is simple: all you need to do is eat better. Easy!
I can think of few subjects as steeped in lies, bullshit and post-truths as nutrition – and, yes, that includes politics. Indeed, the psychologist and writer Stuart Richie describes nutrition science as “an extraordinarily hyped field” [1]. Nutrition is a complex discipline, and food is something close to our hearts, so it’s little wonder that we’re continually bombarded with so much misinformation, quackery and bullshit.
Making a commitment to always tell the truth seems like an obviously good idea in all facets of life. Yet, adhering to such a promise might be harder than it seems. No doubt many of us feel that we always tell the truth. Indeed, it may well be the case that you do seldom lie, but ask yourself: “Do I really never bullshit?” It’s a disconcerting fact that many of us might not actually tell the complete truth as often as we’d like to think we do. Bullshitting – a type of falsehood that should be distinguished from lying – is harder to dodge than we realise. So, how can it be avoided?
What Is Bullshit?
Despite the obvious link to excrement, “bullshit” should not be viewed as a swear or curse word. The term is recognised by some cognitive psychologists and philosophers as a communication where there’s little or no regard for truth, genuine evidence or knowledge, and where the lack of concern for honesty may be conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional.
“Bullshit” or “bull” seems to have originated from around 1914 when it was commonly used as an English slang alternative to “nonsense”, and as a rebuke in response to a statement deemed to be deceptive, disingenuous or unfair. Originally, the word “bull” may have evolved from the Old French word “bole” meaning “fraud; deceit”. Or it may have come about because people’s nonsense assertions “smell” of untruth. “Bullshit” came into popular use during World War II [2]. George Orwell, however, claimed that bullshit stemmed from “Bolshevik” and the word’s association with communists, which, during the first half of the 20th century, was regarded as a considerable insult [3].
A formal definition of bullshit as a type of untruth didn’t appear until 1986 in an essay titled “On Bullshit” by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (1929-2023), and was reproduced into a book by the same name in 2005 [4]. In On Bullshit, Frankfurt describes bullshit as speech that’s intended to persuade with little or no regard for the truth. This is in contrast to lies because the liar cares about truth but actively intends to deceive. Sometimes a bullshitter’s assertion may in fact turn out to be true; their motivation is merely to persuade with no care as to whether what is said is true or false. When a bullshit statement does turn out to be true, it’s more by way of accident than from genuine knowledge of facts.
Bullshit vs. Lying
Although often used interchangeably, lies and bullshit have fundamental differences that are important to highlight. The liar purposefully uses a deliberately falsified, manipulative statement with the sole intention to deceive and to subvert the truth. The bullshitter, on the other hand, has little regard for the truth. Bullshitting may be a type of lie, but not necessarily, the key difference being the lack of regard for truth. To quote Frankfurt: “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.” The liar and the truth teller have something in common: they both care about the truth. The bullshitter, however, cares little about what’s true. “Honest folk and liars are playing the same game, to convey the facts or to obscure them, but the bullshitter is playing another game entirely” [5].
A bullshitter isn’t bogged down by the same cognitive burdens as a liar, who has to remember his claims in order to avoid being noticed. The bullshitter just doesn’t care. A bullshitter may even believe his own statements to be true; he simply has no desire to harness any degree of honesty nor does he exhibit any interest in reason. A bullshitter’s life is much easier: he doesn’t get bogged down with all the hard work involved in cross-checking his claims. Nor does he care to.
The motivations behind people bullshitting are numerous. They include an intention to persuade, to fit in with others, to influence or to impress. Bullshit is more common than many people realise, and it frequently appears in casual conversation. Even honest communicators may bullshit to some degree from time to time, albeit inadvertently. In fact, some bullshit can be through well-meaning motivations, like when you’re asked for your opinion and you want to avoid looking stupid by not being able to contribute to the discussion. If you’ve ever relayed an event and elaborated on it a little, a bit of bullshit has just crept in. People might bullshit as a result of a bias by making a statement to justify why they feel a particular way about something. When compared to lying, bullshitting has less of a social consequence: people dismiss liars more readily than they do bullshitters.
Bullshit Research
John Petrocelli is a Professor of Psychology in the Bullshit Sciences Lab at Wake Forest University, North Carolina, and the author of The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit [6]. He has studied cognition both in respect of bullshitting and bullshit detection. He notes that “Individuals will bullshit about anything – a convenient reality when attempting to study bullshitting behaviours” [7].
Through recent advancements in bullshit research, it is now known under which conditions people are more likely to bullshit. Petrocelli looked at “self-regulatory resources”: psychological assets that people use to manage and control their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours. He found that under conditions of high social accountability, people are less likely to bullshit. He also notes that bullshit is more likely when social cues make those who are more susceptible to bullshitting behaviour feel obligated to provide an opinion about something, even if the topic is something they know nothing about. He also notes that people are more likely to bullshit when they feel they’re more likely to get away with it. Petrocelli’s work has demonstrated that people are both less likely to detect and more likely to engage in bullshitting behaviour when they’re tired and cognitively fatigued [8].
In another study, subjects were presented with “senseless statements”: meaningless but syntactically correct statements containing impressive-sounding scientific, philosophical and metaphysical jargon. An example provided is: “We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself.” In the study, participants provided profundity ratings of the senseless statements that can be juxtaposed with profundity ratings of prototypically profound statements like, “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence.” Ratings of both sets of statements were combined to form general “receptivity to bullshit” and “sensitivity to bullshit” measures [9].
Another, involving over 1,600 participants, looked at pseudo-profound bullshit and found a negative correlation with perceptions of fake news accuracy and the ability to differentiate between fake and real news. The study also found that individuals who overclaim their level of knowledge also judge fake news to be more accurate, suggesting that belief in fake news may be driven, to some extent, by a general tendency to be overly accepting of weak claims [10].
As long as people are not being blatantly lied to, it appears that they’re tolerant of bullshitting behaviour. Some people might, in fact, prefer bullshit over the truth: believing a bullshit narrative can be comforting. This is particularly apparent in conspiracies and quack medicine as people often prefer information that confirms their preconceived beliefs over something based on evidence that disconfirms their prior feelings. People’s bullshit detection is especially low when what they hear is aligned with their worldviews and ideologies. Humans seem to want to believe that they’ve made the right decisions, made the right purchases, followed the right social media influencers and spent time doing the right things. We want to feel secure, and often bullshit can make us feel this way.
Bullshit, Bullshit Everywhere and Not a Drop to Doubt
Why is it that people feel obligated to talk on matters about which they know little? Frankfurt reckoned that people tend to automatically bullshit when circumstances compel someone to say something on a topic even if they have no knowledge of it. There may not even be a true obligation to speak, merely the opportunity to contribute on an issue. Bullshitters articulate their narrative in a syntactically correct manner – maybe even including correct scientific, political or philosophical jargon – and insert facts they know to be true into their bullshit making their claims more convincing. Petrocelli claims that people feel obligated to provide an opinion on almost every topic, possibly to try out what it feels like to express the opinion, and that some people are more predisposed to do this than others [11]. People tend to bullshit more if they notice that the group in which they are having a conversation appears to not be well informed on a topic and the risk of not getting away with bullshitting is low.
Bullshit is rife in marketing, sales and politics where the motivation is to increase awareness of products or services for financial gain or to impose rhetoric in order to persuade. Other professional bullshitters include faith healers, psychics, hypnotists, homeopathists and other “alternative” medicine advocates, vocations in which there’s an obvious advantage to shun facts in favour of bullshit. Although these charlatans are often pushing their orthodoxy purely for monetary gain, in many cases therapists might not actually be aware that they are a bullshitter: they lack the required critical thinking skills. Indeed, some might even be deceiving themselves in the genuine belief that they’re being honest.
Some bullshits are historically steeped in belief, so much so that they’ve become accepted as “fact”. These are exceptionally prevalent in health and nutrition. For example, vitamin C has been “known” as a remedy for the common cold for decades. When you have the sniffles, concerned friends suggest that you take vitamin C supplements. It’s highly doubtful that they will have looked at the evidence as to whether vitamin C supplementation reduces the severity or duration of the common cold, yet they casually recommend this course of treatment. In fact, the evidence that vitamin C supplementation is useful is actually very poor. This is a good example of well-meaning bullshit.
Social Media Bullshitters
The sheer quantity and frequency of bullshit in the nutriton space is arguably unrivalled. Faux fitness influencers have managed to instil their dishonest narratives into a large number of people’s food choices. For too many pseudo influencers, their principal goal is merely to create content, and any consideration of honesty falls by the wayside. In my article Nutrition Misinformation and Social Media [12], I discuss the prevalence of misinformation and its dangers, and in Messiah Syndrome In Nutrition [13], I complain how content-creators – fuelled by a desire to churn out content that panders to an adoring audience as rapidly as possible – care little about the quality, rigour and honesty of their messages.
Valuing honest communication requires the arduous job of having to adequately research your topic and to make sure any assertions you make are either supported by evidence or, at least, backed up by an argument based on reason. Quality content is time-consuming, costly to produce and involves significant cognitive load. On the other hand, the bullshit influencer’s life is easy. He simply whips out his phone, records the first thought that pops into his head, posts on various platforms and sits back to watch it go viral. The entire process takes minutes and involves zero regard for intellectual honesty. The grifter’s motivation is then further validated as he’s inundated with praise from his fans. By simply appealing to his audience’s emotions, he can build a huge social media following in next to no time, arousing even more praise from his bullshit-devouring admirers. The higher his following grows, the more likely he is to believe his own bullshit: a large following leads to perceived credibility. In the alternative and social media space, nutrition bullshitters have been able to find an audience that wants to be pandered to in such a way that it doesn’t care that what their demigod is telling them is truth-tracking. Nor do their disciples even attempt to track the truth themselves.
Examples abound in the online nutrition space. One glaring example of a fitness bullshitter is Eddie Abbew, a former professional bodybuilder who’s managed to amass a social media following in excess of 5 million. Abbew encourages people to shun foods that, he says, are “not meant for the human body” and instead promotes an animal-protein-rich diet. A central theme of his narrative is to use compelling phrases like “eat real food”. Yet a deeper look reveals that this is not what he means at all – he claims that natural foods like oats, rice and fruits are “toxic”. Abbew is a classic bullshit artist whose goal is to spread his ideological food beliefs, acquire as large an audience as possible, to be revered and to garner acclaim and recognition. He cares nothing for evidence to support his claims – he even admits this – as demonstrated when he eschews requests to show the research behind his claims.
A much more subtle nutrition bullshitter is Jessie Inchauspé, aka “The Glucose Goddess”. Despite being a biochemist, Inchauspé displays no notion of scientific rigour. While she acknowledges science, her misrepresentation of research findings in order to purport her assertions seem to be solely for glory and financial gain. She fearmongers her audience into being scared of things like trivial rises in postprandial blood glucose: an otherwise normal physiological process. Debating people like Abbew and Inchauspé will likely be fruitless because they’re so motivated by their misleading narrative. In the words of Jonathan Swift, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into” [4]. It’s the simplicity behind their bullshit that makes them so convincing.
Keep Your Bullshit Detector Set to “High”
We might feel that we can readily detect bullshit, but we probably don’t manage to anywhere near as often as we think. Bullshit is everywhere; it doesn’t just stem from faith healers, crackpots, conspiracists and quacks. Bullshit is present in casual conversation.
While you won’t avoid bullshit, you can increase your ability to spot it. Question everything. Sure, we have to accept certain things to be true, but the best defence against being blindsided by bullshit is to seek out evidence when possible. Does the statement really seem plausible? How likely is the statement, really? Is the person making it credible? Does the person making the claim have an agenda? If the individual has a track record of making stuff up, be cautious.
Don’t be afraid to call bullshit, but do so politely and respectfully. Challenge the claim rather than the person. Ask the suspect how they arrived at their idea rather than attempting to embarrass them and calling them out, especially in front of others. When someone is able to back up what they’re saying, it’s less likely that they’re bullshitting.
We’re all susceptible to bullshitting behaviour: that means you, me and everyone else! Acknowledging this will help keep your biases in check. It might be that we’re hard-wired for bullshitting behaviour and that it had social and cultural evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. Bullshitting behaviour might not always be malevolent, but it certainly is undesirable. The best we can do is to have our bullshit detector set to “high”, both for spotting bullshit from others, and for recognising that it might come from ourselves. To minimise the prevalence of bullshit in the nutrition space, we must all be accountable. And we need to hold others to account. Keep your bullshit rejection detector on at all times, aim it at others and aim it at yourself.
References:
1. Richie, S. (2020) Science Fictions, London: The Bodley Head, p169.
2. (a) Online Etymology Dictionary (n.d.) Bull (n.3). Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/bull#etymonline_v_46839 (Accessed 9 November 2024); (b) Online Etymology Dictionary (n.d.) Bullshit (n.). Available at: https://www.etymonline.com/word/bullshit (Accessed 9 November 2024).
3. Orwell, G. (1933). Down and Out in Paris and London. Victor Gollancz.
4. (a) Frankfurt, H. ‘On Bullshit’, Raritan Quarterly Review 6(2): 81-100. (1986); (b) Frankfurt, H. (2005) On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.
5. ibid (b), p55.
6. Petrocelli, J. (2021) The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit. St. Martin's Press.
7. Petrocelli, J. (2020) ‘Bullshit and its Detection’, Skeptic, 25(2), 50-5.
8. Pennycook, G. et al. (2015) ‘On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit’, Judgement and Decision Making, 10(6), 549-63.
9. Pennycook, G. and Rand, D.G. (2019) ‘Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking’, Journal of Personality, 88, 185-200.
10. Petrocelli, J. et al. (2020) ‘Self-regulatory aspects of bullshitting and bullshit detection’, Social Psychology, 51(4), 1-15.
11. ibid (7).
12. Collier, J. (2024) ‘Nutrition Misinformation and Social Media’, Thought For Food, 19 March. Available at: https://jamescollier.substack.com/p/nutrition-misinformation-and-social (Accessed: 22 November 2024).
13. Collier, J. (2023) ‘Messiah Syndrome In Nutrition’, Thought For Food, 26 September. Available at: https://jamescollier.substack.com/p/messiah-syndrome-in-nutrition (Accessed: 22 November 2024).