Writing About Celery Juice is Risky Business

Writing about celery, it turns out, is incredibly risky.

The whole celery juice craze seems totally baffling to an outsider, and every healthcare professional and health writer I know has received endless requests asking ‘what’s the deal with celery juice’?

To give a brief overview: there is a man who calls himself the Medical Medium. He says that drinking celery juice can cure you of all manner of health conditions. He has no medical or health qualifications whatsoever, and received these nuggets of wisdom from a spirit. It’s unclear whether the spirit has a medical degree. It would be easy to scoff at this and ignore it, but he has millions of followers, bestselling books, and endless celebrity endorsements. And of course he writes for Goop. Of course.

There is currently no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the use of celery juice as a therapeutic treatment. There are no studies that conclude its efficacy. But voicing this fact (note, not opinion) publicly leaves you at the mercy of a torrent of abuse.

I recently decided to post about the celery juice craze, mainly because I was sick of receiving daily DMs asking me about it, and wanted something I could direct people to without having to answer everyone individually. In the 24 hours after posting, a number of comment themes emerged:

1. I’m a closed-minded idiot
2. All doctors are money-grabbing and evil, therefore celery juice is the answer (?!?!)
3. As a nutritionist I should be trying everything out on my own body first before debunking it
4. I’m an angry, vicious, aggressive human being with mental health issues

Let’s unpack that…

1.Closed-mindedness. In matters of pseudoscience (which this is), the phrase “you’re closed-minded” can be translated into “I’m offended my anecdote wasn’t powerful enough to sway your world view”. Food is so closely tied to our identity (we say ‘I am vegan’, not ‘I eat vegan’), that anything that looks like an attack on that becomes personal. We want to know that our personal story matters. And of course it matters. But it doesn’t negate the total body (or complete absence) of evidence. It cannot and should not. Because if anecdotes are more powerful than randomised control trials we need to bring back exorcism, blood-letting, and all manner of traditional Chinese medicine. All these things have individual stories to support them, yet we’re happy to dismiss those. Why don’t we have the same standard with celery juice? Is it because it’s food? I haven’t found the answer to that yet.

2. I may not be a doctor, but I know damn well that NHS doctors are massively underpaid and overworked. They are not in the pocket of ‘Big Pharma’ – they prescribe the generic names for drugs not brand names – and do an incredible job at saving lives. To suggest otherwise is incredibly insulting, especially as I know the people behind these comments will still happily take themselves to A&E when something really is seriously wrong with them.

3. I don’t need to jump out of a plane without a parachute to know that’s an incredibly stupid idea. I don’t need to try the carnivore diet to know it flies in the face of decades of robust research on the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables. And I don’t need to try drinking celery juice to know that there’s a lack of studies suggesting it works. I studied 3 years of biochemistry, I welcome the notion of a biochemical mechanism to support the claims of celery juice, yet when I asked for one I was promptly blocked from the Medical Medium Instagram page. Huh.
You wouldn’t ask a surgeon to operate on themselves before they cut you open. You wouldn’t ask a doctor to take the drugs you’re being prescribed. Why should I, as a nutritionist, be asked to spend my money on things that (a) taste disgusting, and (b) have no proven benefit, just to prove a point?

4. When someone’s resorting to ad homien attacks instead of arguing the point, you know they got nothing. If something as small and simple as celery juice can incite such a vitriolic response in you that you feel the need to hurl abuse at someone online, I feel for you. If my simple post has the power to make you feel that insecure about yourself that you can’t refute my claims, you have to call me a horrible human being instead, you have problems that run deeper than green juice. That is not an appropriate or reasonable response.

At the risk of sounding arrogant: my opinion here is worth more than the opinion of someone who has no qualifications or experience in the field of nutrition. I’ve earned that right, and I don’t take that lightly.

I’ve been on the side of wellness and pseudoscience, I spent 2 years in that space believing and promoting all sorts of shit, so I know what it’s like, and I have a lot of understanding. I try and make sure that’s reflected in my words. So I will be open-minded, but I will also be sceptical, because the two are not mutually exclusive. After all, I don’t want to be so open-minded my brain falls out.