Pop quiz! How do you make sure to keep in shape year-round and remain as healthy as you can possibly be? Many people would typically refer you to eating your vegetables and maintaining exercise. In fact, the National Institute of Health says: “Watching what you put into your body, how much activity you get, and your weight are important for keeping your body working properly. Positive physical health habits can help decrease your stress, lower your risk of disease, and increase your energy.” Influencers on social media say to try jaw surgery for sharper features and the practice of eating raw liver for a healthy midday snack! This is just a synopsis of the many quirky ways that people have resorted to unusual medical practices to achieve their dream of becoming good-looking, maintaining physical health, and curing disease or sickness. 

Whether it be running 4 miles daily or deciding to eat raw chicken and goat liver, it seems methods to become healthy and a sight-for-sore-eyes are limitless. Some enjoy simply eating well, meaning eating just the right balance between vegetables, fruits, grains, and raw animal meat. Others chose to upkeep their body by exercising and injecting strong medication for that built figure, either including or not including the prior method. Some prefer to go for simpler, natural, easy-going methods like cosmetic surgical procedures. 

Of course, when we all want to be healthy, the first thing that comes to mind is food. We want to count the calories of each meal we intake, watch the portion size of the preferred food, and so on. To solve this, we could eat a variety of foods. When we think of organizing our meals, we commonly like to picture school plate divisions, also known as the National School Lunch Program Meal Pattern. It’s organized by different sections, including: fruits, vegetables, grains, meats, and milk. Nowadays, it’s a long, extensive list of things you should be trying to stay healthy. And most commonly, we find food brands that are claimed to be healthy for you. Try this new vegan-friendly, gluten-friendly, sugar-free, no artificial sweetener— does it ever end? 

Even then, there is no break from people telling you what you should or shouldn’t eat. There are people online advising on what is healthy, which turns into a popular food trend. Back in late 2024, on the social media app TikTok, a viral trend was started by user @Logagm. This user recommended that people eat cucumbers every day. Now that is a pretty positive recommendation and is non-negotiable. You should be eating vegetables every day, but then it gets stranger. Some people online will refer you to a dozen foods you should try that improve your health. Apparently, chicken feet are healthy for joint health and skin elasticity. But the most prominent advice given in social circles— advice given by a popular influencer, @Sv3rige— is that you should eat raw meat. You may find a quote online where he states, “You never wanted chocolate; what you did actually want is raw liver.” Now, this raises alarms, but he claims from his website on Sv3rige.com, “I have healed people from all kinds of health issues, including candida, tumors, infertility, mental health problems, IBS, Crohn’s disease, eczema, acne, gout, weight problems, lack of muscle, headaches, and so on.” Whether or not this influencer has successfully healed people is unknown. But from Poison Control, an organization dedicated to preventing poison-related health issues, they state that eating raw meat contains harmful bacteria, which can cause food poisoning such as E. Coli, Listeria, Salmonella, and Campylobacter. 

Many people want to eat foods with little to no processing for a healthier lifestyle. It seems this is the founding idea for those online who are actually consuming or promoting eating raw animal meat. While they have good intent, wanting to eat foods that aren’t completely artificial, it seems people who encourage this are misunderstood. While, yes, we shouldn’t be eating products that on the back of the label say words we can’t even pronounce, it might be a bit drastic to decide to eat foods that are meant to be cooked or altered for safety reasons. Eating raw foods can actually cause disease and impact your body drastically, believe it or not. 

So then it leads to the same dinner platter with variations of types of food, along with grocery products made with the intent to support your health. Well, it seems childish, right? To eat healthy, I have to consume all these things along with these products that are allegedly claimed to be healthy for me? If I do that, will I magically become healthy? The typical answer would be maybe. But others outright disagree, roughhouse you for it, and throw alternative dietary methods for health improvement. It could be your gym-bro, your mother, a random online company that claims their product should absolutely be in your diet, or even your grandma. But one way or another, somebody has a recommendation for a specific food to eat and an opinion if you don’t do it. 

Some people also choose to follow the prior diet method, but also like to exercise. It’s a good combination. Exercising is important for you because your body is going to need to be in tip-top shape when you get older, and we all want to be healthy too. The only way this can go extreme is when you push your body to the max. What I am mentioning here is about taking medications and injections. People like to look fit and beyond it, want to look buff. Sometimes the body just cannot get to that extent of buff as is wanted, which is perfectly normal for the body not to be extremely muscular. You shouldn’t have to think that you look like a twig when you don’t. And you shouldn’t have to think you have to look like a Greek god. But of course, people want to accomplish this. So what better, quicker, and totally safer way is there to do this than taking steroids? We are all compelled to look like the next best Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I suppose I’d better dump ten scoops of protein powder in my mouth for breakfast because I’m not impressively built. 

On the same side of the coin, there’s cosmetic surgery. For a little clarification, medication cosmetics are products focused on the improvement of skin health and appearance. They are products that help to clean your skin, smooth your skin, or to get rid of facial imperfections like acne, whereas surgical procedures are focused on actually moving parts of the skin or parts of the body and are done extremely more complexly. Surgical procedures are categorized into areas of the body. A list of these cosmetic procedure categories includes face, breast, body contouring, and skin/hair. These types of non-medical surgeries are the kinds that are more expected and more common, but are nonetheless drastic and extreme. The sibling of cosmetic surgery is a little different. This is called body modification. Body modifications are more commonly known by their usual operations, such as tattoos and piercings. Cosmetic surgery and body modifications are considerably similar, with its sharing trait being done for non-medical purposes. But they diverge when it comes down to their application and its reasons for doing so. Body modifications, when it comes to non-medical procedures, are the most extreme of their kind. 

Commonly, we see people of higher and wealthier status doing cosmetic surgeries. Whether it be a content creator, a TV star, or a well-known figure, many people in the entertainment industry have undergone cosmetic surgeries. It seems that it comes down to a bandwagon. One celebrity decides to undergo surgery, and so does the next. It’s a beauty competition. Well, you may be thinking that it doesn’t affect me. These people could go on doing cosmetic surgery and injecting themselves with as much Botox as they want, and there’s no way it could impact me, right? You’d be wrong. Because these well-known celebrities and figures are physically altering their face for cosmetic purposes, it gets everyone scared about what they should do about the microscopic blemish on their left ear. Everyone gets insecure about themselves because the celebrities, who are already popular and rich, are raising the standards even higher. But most of the time, it’s not even their fault. Society as a whole has raised the bar so high that people’s appearances are now categorized into tiers. A popular trend across many social media platforms is the act of looking good or becoming good-looking following the guide of attractiveness called “Looksmaxxing.” According to this guide, there are seven types of caricatures that are meant to group people by looks. The most beautiful a person can get according to these tiers is a True Eve or a True Adam. They are unnatural and ultimately impossible goals to set for people, yet people are going to follow society’s impossible standards and conduct surgery anyway. Oh no! I found a wrinkle because I’m naturally growing older! Guess I have to get five surgical procedures to fix it! 

You may think that these people only live in your tiny device and never really do all the things they say they do, but you would be wrong. Many people really do drink these strange concoctions in hopes of becoming immune to something they don’t even know they should be immune to, unless somebody says it online. Many people really do inhale energy drinks and protein powder to go to the gym for five hours at 3:00 A.M. Many people really do go to the doctor to remove part of the ribcage in hopes of a smaller waist. Or at least, many people are considering all-of-the-above because the bar of beauty standards is so high. 

All in all, there’s nothing wrong with eating the foods you want, no matter how strange or weird they are. If you want to eat chicken feet, go ahead. If you want to eat raw liver—  don’t because that could kill you— but do whatever you think works. There’s really no shame in synthetically getting buff; you just have to stay safe and remember that you should be cautious in what exactly you are doing. And there’s no shame in getting cosmetic surgery, either. If you want to look a certain way and the only way to achieve it is by doing surgery, go ahead. You just shouldn’t have to feel compelled to do surgery because you are insecure and because the standards are so impossibly high: you should want to do it because it’s something that you want to do and because it will make you happy. 

All in all, we as a society have to remember that being healthy is up to us. We all learn what it is our body needs, and what we do with that information is up to you. Do you need to eat raw food and buy a bunch of foods claimed to be healthy? Do you need to bodybuild and take steroids? Do you need to get cosmetic surgery? Well, you should feel obligated to do what you will because, at the end of the day, it’s you who you need to take care of mentally and physically. The only recommendation I have is for you to remember that some choices online are not safe, and that you should do research before deciding to enact any health plan.