Mendoza had been promoting extreme eating for years: raw vegan detox diets; water fasts and other nonsense. But it's nonsense people followed – and paid – her for.
Unfortunately following her own advice was making Mendoza sick. She now claims she has been having health problems – lack of periods, digestive issues - for six years, and had resorted to eating eggs and fish to address these. Cue thousands of betrayed fans and outraged backlash from online vegans.
Whatever we think about that – and it's easy to laugh at what's been dubbed "fishgate" – this highlights something important: influencers are not experts.
Just because someone has lots and lots of followers, or just because someone lost lots of weight, does not make them an expert in anything. They may chug down supplement x and follow workout y and eat diet z. But that doesn't mean you should do that too. In fact, doing so could harm your health.
Instagram and Facebook have bred troops of pretty young things with stories to tell; or sometimes no story – just a pretty face and a bikini-friendly body. It's not hard to see how a steady diet of these in a vulnerable young woman's feed could lead to disordered eating. And the algorithms that run YouTube and social media don't help, leading us to more and more extreme content. Start with a vegetarian recipe search and it's not long before you're at raw vegan fasting. This only encourages more extreme influencer content.
After observing this for a while I'm now doing a lot of unfollowing. I recommend it for immediately reducing grumpiness. (I find myself also losing respect for companies I notice sending product to influencers, who then breathlessly and completely uncritically record every PR delivery in their stories.)
I follow a few celebrity cats now; I reckon their lifestyle advice is as good as any influencer's.
• Niki Bezzant is editor-at-large for Healthy Food Guide; www.healthyfood.co.nz
