These 10 Gut Health Trends Will Do Nothing for Your Gut Health
“Skinny” is such an outdated concept; too diet culture for 2025. “Flat belly” sounds better, but we’re tired of that too. What should a trend-driven culture of online influencers do? Enter “gut health,” the current euphemism for a small waist—this time with the added baggage of health. It sounds like it’s about a science-based path to better nutrition, but it’s actually complete nonsense. So let’s look at the most questionable gut health tips. Grab a towel, because it’s time for an inner shower!
Acceptance of the “inner soul”
The Inner Shower is designed to cleanse you from the inside out. This metaphor does more than just relieve constipation and implies that your bowels are dirty and need to be cleaned to a shine. That’s not how gut health works – things have to go on, of course, but there’s no need to completely cleanse everything unless you’re preparing for a colonoscopy (which has its own protocol).
While the “inner shower” sounds fancy, it’s actually just a drink containing two full tablespoons of chia seeds and a squeeze of lemon. Chia seeds swell in water to form a clumpy, gel-like texture. (This is what makes them good at making pudding, and what allows them to stick with the terracotta flower pots of Chia Pet fame.)
So why drink them? Well, they are high in fiber and you also get to drink a glass of water. In other words, it’s a fancier version of Metamucil. Be careful: suddenly increasing the amount of fiber in your diet may cause bloating and diarrhea if you’re not used to it, but otherwise it’s unlikely to be harmful.
Avoiding cheese
It’s true that a varied diet with plenty of plant foods is probably better for your gut than a crappy diet, but not for any game-changing, gut-specific reason. Your gut is healthy when your body is healthy, and a varied diet that includes fiber and other nutrients is good for your gut microbes and for all of you. This means “eat your vegetables” and is thus not an exciting viral tip.
Gut health advice will often give you a list of foods you shouldn’t eat or demonize certain foods. There are no common foods that are particularly damaging to gut health—we’re designed to handle just about anything—but influencers often target processed foods and dairy. This means that cheese has become a mythical problem food, when in fact it is probably good, and some research suggests it may even be particularly healthy.
Taking L-glutamine
The quest for “gut health” has led to influencers telling you that you need to go out and buy some L-glutamine (available in the supplement section of any store) to treat or prevent leaky gut syndrome. Some of these videos contain real scientific facts about what glutamine does in the body. But that in itself should raise alarm bells: when someone talks about the mechanics of how something should work without providing data about whether it actually works to achieve the desired result, you’re probably on the wrong track.
L-glutamine is an amino acid that our body can usually produce on its own. There is evidence that supplementation is beneficial for people with serious bowel disease, sepsis, trauma such as major burns, and immune disorders. The Canadian Society for Intestinal Research notes that you should consult your doctor if you think you have a medical condition serious enough that it may affect your body’s ability to produce enough glutamine.
Something called “elixir”
There are an incredible number of “gut health elixir” recipes available on TikTok and other platforms. There are elixirs for gut health with aloe juice and coconut water , with olive oil and lemon , with hibiscus and kombucha , with turmeric and ashwagandha . What do they have in common? Gut health, of course. What a stupid question.
Fruit washing (for gut health)
Washing fruit is normal. Believing that unwashed fruit is the only thing standing between you and a ripped out stomach, and that I can’t get behind. The idea is that fresh produce contains pesticides, and these pesticides kill beneficial gut bacteria.
Rinsing fruit before eating is a good idea, but there’s no link between barely detectable traces of pesticides in fruit and gut health or waist size. This is not gut health advice, it’s just smart cooking.
Pilates (for gut health)
Pilates is a low-key strength workout. It can be good for you, like almost any exercise, but it won’t work miracles. I’ve already talked about the trend of TikTok influencers making up supposed benefits of Pilates , but “gut health” is an exaggeration. Influencers claim (as in this video ) that the breathwork and twisting movements of Pilates “massage” your intestines to cure constipation, sometimes also citing the complete myth that we have pounds of “stuck” feces inside our intestines.
Eating 30 plants a day
I really like this way to add variety to your diet: count the number of types of plants you eat each week and try to get more than you currently have. Lettuce and tomato on your sandwich? Add the wheat from the bun and you have three. This idea got its start in research from the American Gut Project , which found that people who eat a more varied diet have a more diverse gut microbiome, although there is no specific link to health, and scientists still haven’t found a way to define what a “healthy” microbiome looks like.
But all this has changed a little on social networks. In one clip I watched, the narrator tells us that the difference between her before and after photos is not due to “cardio training and restrictive dieting.” But she has clearly lost weight. Gut health is just the new code word for fat loss. Almost every one of the videos I’ve highlighted here starts with someone’s soft and then toned tummy before and after. If we were really talking about “bloat,” you would see the same abs in both photos.
Every morning I go for a walk
Walking is good! Morning routines are good! And it’s true that your gut has its own “clock” that tells you what time it is. However, some influencers take it the other way when they suggest using morning light to set your body clock. In fact, the gut sets its own clock depending on when you feed it . If you want to set your gut clock in the morning, try eating breakfast. Like a full breakfast, not a glass of water with lemon .
Walking can help your digestion—that’s the whole idea behind a fart walk—a post-dinner walk that can relieve the feeling of bloating and also help your body control its glucose levels. Feel free to take one after breakfast rather than waiting until dinner.
Oil pulling
This old thing? (I need to stop being surprised when old health trends make a comeback.) Oil pulling is when you swish coconut oil in your mouth, sometimes for 20 minutes, in addition to (or instead of) brushing your teeth. It’s not particularly good at this job , and there’s no reason to believe it will do anything for your gut or abs health .
Chewing
Another archaic option that keeps popping up. The idea of chewing food always reminds me of that scene in The Road to Wellville where the cafeteria bursts out in chorus: “Chew, chew, chew, that’s the thing to do / Chew, chew, chew, good food is good for you.”
Yes, your mouth produces salivary amylase, which helps break down food. But the small intestine also contains a lot of amylase. Research has shown the potential, subtle effects of prolonged chewing on satiety (how hungry you are), but the idea that you’ll get a TikTok flat stomach if you spend more time chewing isn’t supported.