Leveling Down: Levels Health, CGMs and the False Promises of Data-Driven Health with Selena Salfen and Meghan Cichy

Would you ever add chia seeds to your latte? Levels Health, a health-tech startup co-founded by presumptive Surgeon General Casey Means, is a deeply unserious company and provides both hilarious and irresponsible guidance on its app.

Public health dietitians Selena Salfen and Meghan Cichy return to the show to discuss our 30 days of using a CGM paired with the Levels app.

Jessica didn't find what she was looking for in her CGM data and laughed at the app's inaccuracies.

Meghan thought she was working harder than Levels, and found both more helpful and nicer CGM feedback with ChatGPT.

Selena shared her history with health anxiety and her longer term use of a Stelo CGM. She shares how her experience was impacted when Levels provided her with incorrect data and biometric analyses.

The three get into whether we should be using CGMs and if so, under what conditions.

The three also discuss the most recent Levels podcast #280 and how it seems to answer a lot of concerns Selena and Jessica had in the CGM intro episode. The episode also discussed a lack of research to back up claims made by Levels and Casey Means herself. Host Ben Grynol and guest Dom D'Agostino, PhD took an unexpected turn and veered into the closed off "adult" section of Blockbuster; could there be a tie to food choices and curiosity?

Imprecision Nutrition? Intraindividual Variability of Glucose Responses to Duplicate Presented Meals in Adults Without Diabetes

Casey's Instagram post with her food scores

Like this episode? You can rate, review, subscribe, follow, share and comment!

Questions about the show? Guest pitches? Email makingitawkwardpod@gmail.com

You can buy awkward merch!

You can become a Patreon member!

You can watch this episode at https://www.youtube.com/@MakingItAwkwardPod

Follow Jessica Wilson on Instagram @jessicawilson.msrd and TikTok @byjessicawilson

Jessica Wilson's book: It's Always Been Ours; Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(131)

Tradwives, Motherhood and Traditional Values; Book Club: Yesteryear Part 1

No spoilers! Meghan Cichy, trad wife Leslie Voorhies Means, Selena Salfen and Alison Pill are back on the show for Part 1 of a conversation about Yesteryear, a novel about a tradwife and her curated ...

28 Mai 50min

Re-release! Pronatalism, Eugenics, Fertility and Climate Justice with Dr. Eoin Flaherty

Dr. Oz has made up a new description of American women: under-babied. So it was a good time to return to this conversation with Dr. Eoin Flaherty. The Trump administration has talked about using awa...

21 Mai 1h 17min

Anti-Hunger Policy and MAHA's Creep into Public Health with Meghan Cichy, MPH. RD.

People are hungry in America, in a country of billionaires, where food should be a human right, and the administration will no longer collect data on food insecurity in the US saying that it is "redu...

14 Mai 1h 7min

The People vs Poison Rally RoundUp with Trampus Harmon

Jessica attended the People vs Poison rally that was held in Washington DC on April 27th and Trampus Harmon comes back to the show to hear all about it. She shares her conversation with a Bernie Sande...

7 Mai 59min

Re-release: The Ultra-Processed Food Hysteria to Trad Wife Pipeline with Lindsay Lee Wallace

Jessica's UPF experiment has been in the news again! She invited journalist Lindsay Lee Wallace back to the show to see if the two could answer some questions: How has the ultra-processed food hysteri...

30 Apr 39min

Glyphosate & the People vs Poison Rally: Fear vs Facts

How much should we fear glyphosate? We get drastically different answers depending on who you ask. Trampus Harmon, Making it Awkward's farmer in residence, returns to the show to provide us the facts...

23 Apr 55min

Food Fearmongering at the Center for Science in the Public Interest with Sherene Chou, MS RD

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is the original nutrition influencer. It has used the same alarmist language that gets traction currently used on social media for over 50 years. Sherene...

16 Apr 1h 2min

Having Grown Up with Jillian Michaels, Gen Z is Healing

Today's ep is to wrap up the conversation about Jillian Michaels, phew! And will provide some brief initial feedback received on last week's episode with MAHA Mom Leslie Voorhees Means. Today you'll h...

9 Apr 29min