There’s no shortage of podcasters and social media influencers who readily enthuse about the myriad of health benefits and the ease of starting an intermittent fasting (IF) diet. They are supported by various studies that have definitively shown there are health benefits associated with IF such as weight loss, counteraction of various diseases, delay of cognitive impairment, and extension of lifespan. However, what may raise skepticism is the sheer amount of social media content describing IF as a kind of catch-all miracle cure for a wide range of health issues, a description that extended beyond scientific support. In addition, this content tended to show smiling women gushing about transforming their old, wrinkled, and ugly body into a new, thin, beautiful one, ultimately promoting a harmful view of weight and aging. My first impression of IF was that it’s depiction in the media capitalized on fears of weight gain and aging to falsely lure individuals—especially older women—into beginning a diet that was not entirely substantiated.
Americans are constantly searching for ways to lose weight. Issues surrounding poor body image have sharply risen since the proliferation of social media. According to one review, digital platforms have recently led to “increased dissatisfaction and psychological distress due to constant exposure to idealized images and a culture of social comparison.” In addition, obesity has steadily grown to become a more prevalent issue, with at least 20% of American adults in every state living with obesity. One prominent method of mitigating weight gain is intermittent fasting, which has gained an impressive amount of traction in American media. According to the International Food Information Council, 13% of Americans followed a diet of IF in 2024.
The biggest reason why IF has seen this popularity is the endorsement of social media figures. Social media apps reward the production of content that produces the most engagement (i.e. likes and comments), which means influencers must make attention-grabbing content. Therefore, many proponents of fasting on social media sensationalize the benefits of intermittent fasting and fail to acknowledge that fasting may not be ideal for every listener. For example, podcaster Joe Rogan, a very vocal advocate of IF with a massive platform, claimed that fasting will “change the dimension of life that you operate in” and openly ridiculed individuals who struggle to fast as long as he does. Furthermore, it’s rare for an influencer to encourage individuals to consult a medical professional before beginning to fast—in fact, many explicitly tout the ease of simply beginning to cut out meals.
IF has many dangers that influencers fail to acknowledge. Doctors generally encourage some demographics not to fast at all, including people who are under 25, pregnant, take insulin, or have a seizure disorder. Even for people who don’t fall into these categories, it can have negative side effects. A study found that skipping breakfast makes one more likely to develop gallstones. Most alarmingly, IF has been linked to a 91% higher risk of death due to cardiovascular disease. These potential life-threatening side effects are incredibly dangerous but often overlooked in promotions of IF online. That’s not to say that IF is unhealthy; there’s evidence that it can lead to “extended longevity, weight loss and counteracting various disease conditions.” However, there’s much more nuance in the value of IF than American media would lead one to believe, and consultation of a medical professional is a key step to reducing the damage that misinformation can have on Americans’ dietary health.
It’s not just influencers that encourage a rose-tinted view of IF; apps meant to help individuals on their IF journey ignore the potential drawbacks of IF. Apps for IF tracking generate profit through downloads and in-app purchases, meaning advertisements for these apps product the most attention by preying on desire to lose weight and look younger. For example, in an advertisement for one such app, Fastic, an actress boasts “I can get into jeans I haven’t worn in ages,” demonstrating how Fastic preys on the societal pressure to look younger and thinner. An actress in an advertisement for the IF tracking app Simple begins the video with “I’m down a pant size,” which again targets widespread desire to lose weight. In addition, the comments sections of these advertisements tend to compound the harmful message underlying–and sometimes overtly displayed in–these videos. Under a Fastic advertisement, the comments are filled with body-shaming of the actor in the ad, adding to the shame already employed by the marketers. Finally, the advertisements typically end with an appeal to download the app “right now!” as in this advertisement for the app Reverse Health. They do not account for the difficulty, side effects, or genuine danger of IF; they do not mention the importance of discussing dietary changes with a medical professional. These vague promises, built on fears of aging and weight gain, ignore the nuances that make IF unideal for some demographics. Ultimately, this promotes an exaggeratedly positive view of IF by the general American public that could prove dangerous.
Both these ads and general portrayals of IF tend to focus on marketing towards women in their middle age, a very purposeful strategy to capitalize on prevalent fears regarding aging and weight gain A study found that US and UK media contain 8 times more negative descriptions of older people than positive ones, reflecting and contributing to the widespread fear of aging. Likewise, another study found that there are significantly negative stigmatizations of overweight and obese individuals in American media. In addition, overweight women experience more maltreatment in real life than both overweight men and non-overweight women. In a culture that associates beauty with youth and thinness while condemning women who don’t conform to these standards, it’s not surprising that older women are casting about for what they see as a solution in IF. In the interest of profit, intermittent fasting’s portrayal in the media capitalizes on this rather than confronting or helping resolve these prejudices.
While IF may have been initially seen as a fad, America has maintained an overwhelmingly positive view of IF since 2012, when Michael Mosley's book The Fast Diet popularized the 5:2 method, where individuals eat freely for 5 days and restrict or eliminate eating on 2 days of every week. One possible reason for the continued popularity of IF is a presumption that the difficulty of a diet is linked to its effectiveness; according to dietary anthropologist Janet Chrzan, “the extra excessive they are, the extra they’re perceived to be extraordinarily efficacious”. Intermittent fasting’s difficulty may be the very characteristic that makes it so popular; while this logic may not be supported by science, IF does decisively have proven health benefits. Another characteristic contributing to the popularity of IF is the simplicity of beginning to fast. While other diets may require extensive meal preparation, be costly, and generally inconvenient, part of fasting’s appeal lies in how any person could simply decide to begin fasting. This, of course, is also what makes IF so dangerous, as it’s not generally advisable for every person to spontaneously make such a drastic (and potentially harmful) change in their diet based on videos they saw online.
To the best of our current knowledge, the efficacy that IF may have for an individual depends on their particular health history. The problem, though, is that American media shows only the beneficial impacts, especially for the demographic of older women, using fatphobia and ageism to shame people into a potentially dangerous dietary change. The key to eliminating this danger lies in resolving these prejudices to make individuals less susceptible to this degrading advertising as well as encouraging individuals to fact-check the IF information they’re absorbing from social media. These would have beneficial impacts reaching far beyond just IF, creating an American public with greater media literacy and accuracy regarding a wide range of topics and a healthier dialogue surrounding body image.