The Gospel of Wellness Quotes

“Employers can dangle workplace wellness initiatives to offset the stress they create in part because we’ve accepted the concept en masse: it’s our job to fix what’s “wrong” with us. Consequently, employers are always suggesting more ways to get well, yet never offering less work or more substantial help.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“Stress exists for a reason: it’s a mental state informing us that something is wrong. And yet we’re constantly told this is something we should bury away. When women furiously pedal away on a Peloton to “silence their mind,” you begin to ask: Why should we silence our mind?”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“Wellness has both empowered and enslaved women.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“So much of the current messaging serves to control women’s time and role in society. Our health becomes a catalyst for investment, one demanding negotiations, sacrifice, and performance. We need to purge our figures of excess fat, rid our minds of angry thoughts, cleanse our organs of “toxins,” and fix whatever is “wrong” with us.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“Even the word “wellness” has become an ambiguous, amorphous term—untethered to anything concrete, with more and more products shoved under its umbrella every day. It’s dulling our bullshit detectors.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“So many times an ingredient is actually not banned in Europe, it’s just called something different,”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“One stat you won’t see on a peppy social media post: of the approximately 2.5 million IVF cycles performed annually, a staggering 2 million do not succeed, which puts the global IVF cycle failure rate at nearly 80 percent.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“It’s pretty clear that supplement use has no benefit for the general population,” noted Fang Fang Zhang, the study’s senior author and an associate professor at the Tufts University School of Nutrition Science and Policy. “Supplements are not a substitute for a healthy balanced diet.”67”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“There is a strong general consensus among nutritional science experts I spoke to: that consuming organic food has no considerable health benefit. Even the USDA pauses before staking a claim to benefits.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“The EWG cannot even be described as an impartial party, as it has a lobbying arm and receives heavy financial backing from the organic food industry, corporate brands, and “clean” beauty, including Beautycounter.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care

“Our illogical deference to Earth’s bounty has become so widespread that researchers had to give it a name: the “appeal to nature fallacy,” which occurs when we automatically assume something is better just because it’s natural, and likewise, worse if it’s not.”
― Rina Raphael, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care