I was surprised when I first googled “wellness washing” and realised it wasn’t a common term. Pages and pages of results appeared, but they were all about “wellbeing washing” – mostly in relation to corporate mental health programmes and hollow promises about employee wellbeing. I found nothing about the phenomenon that I – as a wellness editor – spot every day, one that seems to be intensifying by the minute.
Thanks to what I’m now calling wellness washing – because it seems to be the best way to describe it – many of us are prioritising hauls of cheaply-made plastic items instead of actually improving our health outcomes. We don’t really need to be sleepmaxxing or doing the “morning shed” to be healthy.
Wellness influencers dominate our social media feeds, encouraging us all to bypass health and healing and instead, buy products using a unique discount code and take part in performative trends, instead of actually learning how we can take better care of ourselves. And companies are getting away with flooding the market with useless items that allow us to cosplay as “well”.
The specific intersection of our collective quest to feel better, the effects of hypercapitalism and the ease with which misleading marketing claims can be made has created a monster. My fear is that wellness washing will continue to undermine the authentic, helpful and often free aspects of wellness and render it an entirely useless and inauthentic concept, if we don’t learn to spot it.
Wellness is a broad church but it houses so many helpful concepts that many people struggling with mental health issues, chronic illnesses, injuries and issues like addiction have benefitted from. The problem now is that it’s hard to tell what’s authentic and credible and what’s not.
You’ve probably heard of greenwashing – the marketing sleight of hand that led consumers to believe corporations were greener, cleaner and more ethical than those that came before. In the early 2000s, greenwashing ripped through almost every industry. When the Rana Plaza disaster forced fashion into the spotlight and shocking stats about beauty and household goods surfaced, consumers got wise. Shoppers began boycotting brands, demanding better, voting with their wallets.
Corporations responded by rebranding as quickly as they could. Slapping on green packaging, skewing statistics and launching “conscious collections” and “eco-friendly” ranges, all while maintaining the same exploitative supply chains and unsustainable practices. Nothing had really changed, but consumers believed these new greener products were making the world a better place.
Neal’s Yard CEO Anabel Kindersley has seen this happening in real time. Her brand continues to set the standard for ethical production and is continually aped by businesses claiming to be just as sustainable, yet do very little to actually meet minimum standards.
“You don't have to compromise when it comes to your beauty, you can have it all,” she explains. “You can treat people fairly, use ethical sustainable practices, farm in the right way where you're not using pesticides. Make sure that you're using the best ingredients. Paying people a fair price for their farming.”
However, very few brands seem to be actually doing this work, which has given rise to more of the same. Now the global wellness industry – worth an eye-watering $6.8 trillion – is the latest space to play host to a circus of spurious claims, faux products and spokespeople with either a total lack of knowledge or integrity, or both.
Sophie Attwood, a branding expert and the head of an agency that handles PR for some of the world's largest and most well known health and wellness brands explains that, “brands evolving their language to reflect consumer priorities isn’t a problem in itself. However, when the claims drift too far from reality, or when there’s no substantiated benefit, it can not only impact consumers negatively with regards to them being effectively mis-sold, but it can also backfire hugely on a brand. Ultimately, consumers start to lose trust. Once trust is lost, it’s incredibly difficult to rebuild”.
What is wellness washing?
Wellness is a vast, slippery concept because it essentially refers to your own personal yardstick of feeling physically, mentally and spiritually well – and this looks different for everyone. Wellness comprises Pilates influencers in Lululemon leggings sipping matcha lattes, neuroscientists publishing research on the effects of meditation, biohacking bros tracking their sleep scores, menopausal cold-water swimmers seeking respite from symptoms and brand founders building products to meet their own specific health needs. The breadth of wellness and the lack of defining credentials in the space is exactly what makes it ripe for exploitation.
“The 'wellness industry' has evolved so much over the last decade or so and with the amount of consumer interest, it's perhaps unsurprising that brands attempt to bend their products to fit wellness-aligned ideas,” explains psychotherapist Eloise Skinner.
“As with any trend, though, I think there are dangers of dilution (the concept of 'wellness' becoming so broad that it loses meaning), over saturation (too many brands trying to do the same thing) and cyclical trend shifting (consumers pushing in the opposite direction, as the 'wellness era' starts to feel outdated, or tied to a particular generation).”
Wellness washing, at least in the way I’ve begun to use the term, is the use of misleading marketing messaging leading consumers to believe that a product or service is good for them – when in fact it’s probably neutral at best, harmful at worst or entirely unrelated to health and wellness. Brands and practitioners are now slipping “wellness” into anything and everything, repackaging everyday goods as wellness essentials, or creating cheap imitation products that exploit workers and the planet – behaviour that is not exactly tantamount to anyone’s wellbeing.
The dark side of wellness
Take Primark, often criticised for its trend-led fast fashion. The retail behemoth now sells “wellness” products which seem to be targeting teenagers. On one level, I admire young people wanting to take care of themselves at such pivotal stages of life, but what brands like Primark are really doing by creating these products isn’t authentic, it’s encouraging teens to cosplay as healthy. Cheap dupes of activewear, skincare and mindfulness journals likely won’t support good health. It’s also unlikely that they’ll last for years, contain safe, quality ingredients and will be made using sustainable practices or fair labour, yet, they still give buyers a dopamine hit – the illusion of having invested in their wellbeing.
It’s not just Primark. TikTok Shop and Temu are prime examples of sites where wellness washing takes place, but even mainstream retailers play host to wellness pretenders. Body washes full of phthalates and sulphates marketed as “clean beauty,” “protein” yoghurts that are mainly sugar and preservatives, jelly face masks that kill marine life and so on line the shelves of your favourite stores.
“Wellness and sustainability are intrinsically linked. A brand can’t credibly position itself as wellness-led if, behind the scenes, it’s cutting corners on labour or the environment,” says Attwood. “Consumers today are far more aware and connected than they’ve ever been and sooner or later, the truth always comes out. Authentic wellness branding, as with any branding I suppose, has to extend beyond the product and encompass the full story, which includes the supply chain, the ethics, and the impact.”
Read more: The 2025 wellness trends you need to know about, according to experts
So why might we be happy to believe that something is good for us, despite there being signs that it isn’t or that the messaging might not be accurate? “I think there are a number of reasons this could happen, depending on the person and the type of messaging,” explains Skinner.
“One example could be an authority bias, where we assume that a brand has some type of authority (for example, a supplement that is marketed as having medical benefits) we might be more likely to believe claims made surrounding the product. This could also extend to products that are marketed in similar ways to authority-related products, such as a wellness product that uses medical-style branding and marketing. Another factor could be confirmation bias – where we already want to believe a product will help us in some way, we might look for evidence to back up that claim.
“Other factors could include the placebo effect (where we think a product will have a certain effect, we might actually feel some kind of benefit, reinforcing our original beliefs), or marketing fatigue (where it's too difficult or time-consuming to research and investigate every claim, so we begin to take things at face value). There's a social value associated with it as well, and so it could draw on themes of belonging, connection and social ties,” she adds.
We’re also witnessing a boom in influencers and professionals leveraging the term “wellness” to sell products and services. Many influencers have pivoted into wellness content yet make their living selling weight loss shakes and beauty products that contain harmful ingredients that might actually damage health, rather than support it.
Consumers often mimic the lifestyles of influencers, often at great personal cost, so it stands to reason that if offered a discount code for a wellness washed product or a cheap dupe of an expensive product, a person might purchase it in order to emulate their favourite influencer’s lifestyle.
The consumer’s dilemma
Most wellness products aren’t considered medical products or food and therefore don’t undergo rigorous testing, accreditation or approval as these two categories of product. They slip neatly into a grey area where pseudoscience and marketing jargon flourishes. Consumers are left exposed and become easy to manipulate, particularly if they’re keen to upgrade their lifestyles, mimic influencers or are desperately seeking health solutions.
A lack of scientific data is also a wider problem in wellness. More robust studies and objective clinical trials are needed across the entire industry to corroborate health claims and anecdotal evidence.
I receive emails every single day from brands with a “new wellness launch.” More often than not, it’s the same old product in new packaging, stamped with the word “wellness”. It’s easy for someone like me to see through this kind of play, but for many customers, the appeal is strong.
Of course, I am by no means saying that affordable products or new iterations of existing products can’t be decent. Wellness shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for those with disposable incomes, nor should any brand be criticised for improving an existing formula. However, brands, influencers and retailers should be held accountable for pretending to care about consumer wellbeing while actively eroding it through their practices.
“For many people, it might be a simple economic decision – perhaps expensive products are unavailable. The influence of consumerist culture could also play a role, since so many things are disposable, and easily replaced, we might pick a cheaper option with the knowledge that it might end up discarded,” says Skinner.
There's also a big cultural push towards trying different options as short-term experiments (for example, in 'get ready with me' videos, where a content creator might experiment with a new product), so it might feel more financially viable to pick cheaper options for use in the short-term, rather than trying to find a singular (more expensive) long-term solution.”
Read more: Is drinking tap water bad for you? Wellness influencers say yes, but here’s what the experts think
How to spot wellness washing
The wellness industry has become one of the most insidious gatekeepers of quality products. It offers accessibility while prioritising profit, dangling self-care like a carrot at the end of a very long stick. However, this is all occurring against a backdrop of rising profit margins and inflation, whilst influencers promote luxury lifestyles as being accessible and normal while the average UK wage remains low. So we’re seeing dupe culture and sly marketing play out across industries like fashion, beauty and home goods too.
Though Attwood explains that wellness itself has definitely become shorthand for aspirational living. “At scale, this is happening because consumers have redefined what luxury means. It’s no longer purely material, luxury is now linked to feeling good and being healthy, and brands have tried to adapt to this cultural shift,” she says.
“Ultimately, you’re looking for proof points or trust markers, as I often like to call them. Does the brand back up its claims with research, expertise, or transparency about its processes? Or is it just adopting the visual language of wellness without any substance? Look for brands who communicate consistently, who are willing to acknowledge limitations as well as benefits, and who invest in long-term practices rather than short-term buzz.” she adds.
Kindersley explains that real discernment takes a lot of Googling. “It takes a lot of looking, but there are experts you can look to who know their stuff and there are brands that you can trust as well. I think it's a minefield and we all do have to help each other.
“Look for third party certification, that's a really good start, because the rigour from that certification is pretty stringent and it’s all the way down to the packaging and how you're treating people. Look for the soil association or cosmos logo on the product too. Education, truth, honesty and transparency is really critical and key in this.”
Ultimately it’s down to consumers to think critically about what wellness really means. At this point we should be encouraging consumers, especially young ones, to be discerning, to read labels and to question product health claims. Wellness, at its heart, is about feeling better in your body, mind and spirit – not filling your bathroom shelves with plastic that will outlive you in landfill.
Wellness washing isn’t just a phenomenon propped up by offensive marketing, it’s a long con. And if we don’t call it out now, it’s going to eventually make us all sicker than before – not a promising prospect for those who wish to be well.
Read more: Sleepmaxxing: Is the pursuit of the perfect night’s rest making us more anxious?
