Diet Alone Won't Defeat COVID-19, Despite What the Internet Might Claim

In the midst of the uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it's understandable to look for ways to regain some control over your life. You might come across the advice of self-proclaimed health 'experts' and social media influencers who often make exaggerated and misleading claims about using diet as a means to prevent serious illness from the virus and stop its spread.

Their argument boils down to this: A population of strong, healthy individuals would curb the spread of the pandemic and speed up the return to normal. They also argue that consuming the right foods and boosting your immune system (through vitamins and supplements) is enough to shield oneself from the most severe effects of COVID-19.

From a scientific standpoint, this is nonsense. Even worse, prioritizing diet over all else undermines the importance of wearing masks, practicing social distancing, and in some cases, even the effectiveness of vaccines.

This emphasis on diet is propagated by alternative health advocates, pseudo-medical professionals, social media influencers, and even a celebrity chef who once ran for president. While these individuals may acknowledge the existence of COVID and its severity, they often suggest that the fear surrounding the pandemic is exaggerated and that mainstream health authorities have intentionally overlooked the role of diet in their public health messages. According to them, the real pandemic is the long-standing prevalence of diet-related diseases in America, including diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and obesity.

You may have encountered these ideas through friends on social media, where they often spread. Alternatively, you may have witnessed the misinformation firsthand from various influencers or public figures who promote these claims online, reaching audiences in the tens of thousands.

A particularly bold tweet, lacking much context, came from UK cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, who champions diet as a near-miraculous solution in the battle against COVID.

As Nicola Guess—associate professor at the University of Westminster in the UK and Head of Nutrition at the Dasman Diabetes Institute—explains to Mytour, diet has always been crucial to maintaining good health. However, there is absolutely no evidence to support the notion that eating healthier can prevent contracting COVID or mitigate its more severe effects.

She writes in an email:

Eating a balanced diet and staying active is undeniably smart, as it helps protect us from various illnesses. However, I believe there's no evidence or reason to link healthy eating directly to COVID-19 (unless you're trying to sell something). Is it worth eating better during a pandemic if it could help shield you from severe infection? Of course, as there are no downsides to reducing sugar, junk food, and the like. But let's be clear—it won’t stop someone from contracting COVID-19 or prevent death from it—there are fit, young athletes who have tragically passed away.

Eating well, exercising, and taking vitamins when necessary are essential habits for maintaining general health, supported by over a century of scientific research. However, these practices cannot replace a sound public health approach, utilizing proven epidemiological strategies in the face of a widespread pandemic. Here’s a guide to understanding dietary zealotry and how to recognize it in its various forms.

COVID-related diet pseudoscience is simply an offshoot of regular diet pseudoscience.

In recent years, advocates of extreme diets have gained increasing influence. This movement has been fueled by celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, whose lifestyle brand Goop has promoted potentially dangerous raw food diets. Additionally, podcast host Joe Rogan has played a role in amplifying the dietary views of Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, who endorses a strictly carnivorous diet (both Peterson and his daughter, Mikhaila, claim that a red meat diet cured their long-standing bouts of depression).

A lot of the dietary extremism centers on various methods for enhancing immunity and, by extension, preventing COVID. For instance, Paul Saladino, a doctor based in Austin, Texas, recommends eating organ meats and steak. In contrast, Dr. T. Colin Campbell advocates for a whole food, plant-based diet. He wrote this year: 'I doubt there are many people who will be content with repeated masking, social distancing, and contact tracing when changing our diet could do so much more, while simultaneously protecting social norms, job security, and our economy.' UK celebrity doctor Aseem Malhotra, for his part, published a book promoting a 21-day immunity-boosting diet that claims to 'prevent, improve, and even potentially reverse' factors that contribute to or worsen COVID-19.

Supporters of this movement are not always medical professionals. Australian celebrity chef Pete Evans, for example, was fined $25,000 by the Therapeutic Goods Administration after making outrageous claims about a device he invented, called a 'Biocharger.' He charged $14,000 for the wellness platform, which he claimed was 'programmed with a thousand different recipes, including some for the Wuhan coronavirus.' These ideas spread across platforms like YouTube and Instagram, but they aren’t limited to social media influencers: former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson also got involved.

It’s simply incorrect.

David Gorski, M.D., an oncologist and editor at Science-Based Medicine, explains that the idea of diet preventing or treating illness is nothing new. 'The idea that diet can somehow magically boost the immune system to the point where we never (or almost never) get sick is an age-old alternative medicine fantasy that takes a kernel of truth and blows it way out of proportion.'

This form of dietary extremism often lacks the scientific depth that modern immunology brings, especially considering the recent emergence of COVID-19 and our constantly evolving understanding of the virus.

Dr. David Robert Grimes, a cancer researcher, physicist, and author of The Irrational Ape, elaborates on this point by saying, 'Dietary zealots often make vague claims about strengthening the immune system, but at best, that’s a cliché and at worst, it’s nonsense.' He told Mytour that this mindset 'reflects a complete misunderstanding of immunology.'

Grimes explains:

Boosting your immune system is often the last thing you want to do; just ask anyone with allergies, where their immune system attacks their own body. During the Spanish flu, young, healthy individuals were disproportionately affected because their immune systems overreacted. Diet advocates not only overestimate diet's influence on immune responses,

they fail to grasp any of the complexities involved.

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No method will make you invincible to a virus.

The appeal of healthy eating stands as an attractive solution to the uncertainty brought on by government-mandated lockdowns, school closures, and the economic devastation caused by COVID-19, compounded by the modest financial support from the federal government. After all, adjusting one's diet seems like a relatively easy task, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if a little self-discipline could make a world of difference?

Here lies an enticing possibility. It convinces those who adopt this mindset that they possess secret knowledge that the mainstream medical field is deliberately ignoring. Grimes explains that this belief 'gives [people] a sense of power and well-being: they ‘know’ the causes and cures to disease, and thus they are effectively impervious to them. This sense of control is entirely illusory, but it often flatters the believer’s ego.'

Whether intentionally or not, an underlying element of victim-blaming accompanies this individualistic perspective—that anyone who succumbs to COVID-19 must have been doing something wrong.

Gorski points out that 'there’s a definite ‘blame the victim’ vibe to these claims. They imply that it’s the victim’s fault if he dies of COVID-19 because he didn’t ‘eat right’ or ‘live right.’ Of course, that leaves out the fact that the biggest risk factors for severe COVID-19 are unalterable: being male and increasing age.'

Gorski emphasizes that making personal changes to one’s diet can, in fact, bring about significant positive improvements in metabolic health over the long term, but such lifestyle modifications often require considerable time and effort.

He shares with Mytour:

It’s possible that reducing obesity or partially reversing conditions like type II diabetes or heart disease through diet, weight loss, and exercise might lower one's risk of dying from COVID-19, but that doesn’t provide an immediate solution. These interventions take months to years, not days to weeks.

While you may not be able to singlehandedly stop the spread of misinformation (that’s an ongoing challenge for tech companies), you can arm yourself with the knowledge to spot its telltale signs: it typically offers simplistic, quick-fix solutions to complex issues, elevates individual efforts to protect oneself, promotes various lifestyle products, and often resorts to inflammatory language about the measures being used to protect people during a pandemic.