Welcome back to Get Fit Guy. I'm Kevin Donne. This week I'm going to be looking into fearmongering in health and fitness, as well as one of the outcomes of this kind of message, the nocebo effect.

When it comes to marketing, we all know that sex sells.

This is pretty simple because continuation of the human species is the most powerful driver there is.

But by the same token, species continuation also depends on survival.

The fight or flight response, driven by fear, is one way we can survive by avoiding or escaping harmful situations.

So we can therefore also say fear cells.

And boy oh boy do health and wellness companies take advantage of fear to sell their products.

You'll all have seen advertising where some kind of

issue that could cause injury or shorten longevity is brought up. Along with the unique product,

they have to help you avoid this dreadful problem that you didn't even know you had. Some

examples of fear selling could be a car company with a recent five-star safety rating, making an advertisement

where a lesser car crashes into a wall hurtling the crash test dummy passengers through the

windshield and offset wall. Of course, the solution is you need this five-star safety-rated car

to protect you and your family. Or maybe a fire extinguisher company

who has a video of a house going up in flames seconds after a French frymaker catches a spark.

This idea isn't anything new. I was looking at an advertisement for Quaker Oates from 1899, where the whole advertisement focused on their claims that meat is bad for you, and of course the solution was to eat more oats.

This past week, I've been seeing a lot of posts about removing toxins from your home.

I'm not against this idea in theory. This recent antitoxin or perceived toxin craze is

part of the whole primal living thing. Again, something I'm not against in theory. A few claims I thought

were particularly interesting, were that tap water's harmful because it's full of pesticides from

runoff.

The all conventional non-organic laundry products are toxic and causing health issues.

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