2023-07-28 17:28:27
Forget your grandmother’s cookbook. If it assured you a pleasure for the taste buds, the grimoire of food influencers promises you health and longevity. Much more than the recipes of the digital food popes, it is their promises that are enticing. But does physical, mental and even spiritual well-being really reside in raw radish juice? In any case, this is what the videos of Thierry Casasnovas. This influencer, indicted last March for “abuse of weakness, illegal practice of medicine and deceptive commercial practice”, published a host of recipes on social networks.
In a rural setting, the forty-something boasts of his calm voice tinged with a southern accent the benefits of raw food on health. The juice that “can save your life”, “cured” or “to hydrate, lose weight and reduce inflammation”. On social media, the miraculous keys to a happy life come in various diets and food-related practices. With nearly 600,000 followers on YouTube, Thierry Casasnovas is one of the most fashionable, nicknamed the pope or the local guru. “It can be very dangerous”, warns the anthropologist and sociologist Marie-Pierre Julien who has worked on dietary practices and remembers a “woman, followed by a naturopath, who wanted to cure her breast cancer by fasting in full mountain”.
From funny preaching to death
“Food, like health, has always been at the heart of sectarian groups”, warns Pascale Duval. The director and spokesperson of the National Union of Associations for the Defense of Families and Individual Victims of Sects (I trust) remembers in particular two little girls aged 4 and 6, indoctrinated by their mother, who did “imposition of hands over yogurts to remove their bad energies” and had not taken “a gram in two years” . The father, separated, had not immediately worried about the “weird beliefs” of his ex-partner who spoke of gnomes and a return to nature. Food excesses may seem innocuous, even grotesque. “When you crave gluten […] what you really want is your father’s energy, ”promises content creator Mariya on TikTok to her nearly 80,000 subscribers. On the contrary, being attracted to milk-based foods would be linked to the mother’s energy. And the camembert-baguette association, parenthood, perhaps? The analyzes of this influencer may make you smile, but they are aimed at people who are already convinced.
“Sectarian movements first evoke health before linking it with spirituality. It’s always gradual and that’s why the victims are not suspicious, ”recalls Pascale Duval. Thus, fasting courses, which have multiplied in recent years, are based on the belief that stopping eating would allow the body to regenerate. “Whatever its source of inspiration, the practice of fasting is risky,” warns Ghislain Grodard-Humbert, president of the French Association of Dietitian Nutritionists (AFDN). These fasting courses “are based on very strong detoxification beliefs that are mystical. And entirely false: detoxification is done by the organs daily, there is no need to starve yourself, ”he recalls. Food gurus cause amusement when they extol the supernatural powers of a superfood. Thus masking, behind a debonair mask of return to the sources, a sometimes mortal danger. Miviludes warns in particular about respiriationism, according to which human beings can feed on air and light. Recently, more than 400 bodies of followers of a cult encouraging extreme fasting were discovered in Kenya.
The staircase of indoctrination
“It’s like a staircase where each step, each new belief, brings you closer to the sectarian trap”, explains Pascale Duval. “The shift is sometimes gentle but the indoctrination through food is very effective. In France, food is highly valued socially. By drastically restricting your diet, you cut yourself off from others, which gives these gurus incredible power,” explains Marie-Pierre Julien. Each march is different in its approach and its dangerousness but they all have a mechanism in common. “Gurus and naturopaths sell magical thinking” when dieticians “are food re-educators”, explains Ghislain Grodard-Humbert.
“Proposing miracle cures is their lever. We are all vulnerable at some point in our lives and they know how to take advantage of it, ”says the nutritionist dietician indignantly. “With your current level of DNA, you can live to be 120 years old. No DNA changes are necessary. But [pour y parvenir] it starts with food,” says content creator Mariya, for example. “The nutritionist tells you: ‘I’m going to rebalance your diet’, not ‘I’m going to change your life’. Health, well-being, happiness, fulfillment… These magical methods promise you much more than traditional medicine. It’s tempting,” emphasizes Pascale Duval.
Better supervision to better protect
The trap is all the more effective when the legal framework is incomplete. Anyone can claim to be a nutritionist in France. “Food and nutritional advice should be reserved only for competent doctors and dieticians because there is a health risk. In addition, it would be necessary to create an illegal exercise of nutrition or dietetics. Today, there is only the illegal practice of medicine, so you have to prove a medical activity and an influence on health,” explains Ghislain Grodard-Humbert.
However, the consequences are not always immediate, explains the food expert. “Beta-carotene dietary supplements promote lung cancer in smokers and former smokers. The health professional knows this but the naturopath does not”, he illustrates. A commission has been created at the Ministry of Health to look into these health-related excesses, including in food. “A law will pass so that encouraging people to give up treatment becomes a crime”, welcomes the director of Unafdi. Because if dangerous food practices are well anchored in the past – Diane de Poitiers was indeed killed by gold poisoningtheir supervision remains a question of the future.
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