Paltrow’s ex-CCO calls Goop wellness culture “toxic” while touting new cleanse

A former high-profile executive at Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle and wellbeing brand, Goop, has publicly denounced the brand's "toxic" culture, but only for the purpose of promoting a different brand.

In an Instagram post Tuesday, Goop's former chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, said that when she left the company in October 2020 she vowed to never again do another cleanse. "I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely," she wrote alongside a brief video.

Generally, cleanse are short-term diet plans that require people to follow restrictive programs in a misguided effort to reset their body and/or clear out toxic material that has accumulated in their guts. All of this is necessary to correct a person's current diet and lifestyle choices, which are most certainly noxious.

As Ars has noted previously, cleanse and detoxes are not necessary if your organs are functioning properly.

For nearly seven years, he bought into Goop. She was the second-in-command at Goop and often appeared at Gwyneth Paltrow's side. When she stepped down from the role in 2020 to write a book, Paltrow said in a statement that she was like a sister to her and she would watch as she entered this monumental stage in her professional life.

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In her post this week, she tells her followers that her time at Goop left her feeling like she was not in a healthy relationship with her body and that she had a bad take on her health. Since leaving the company, she has been eating like a teenager and enjoying it.

Eating like a teenager is toxic according to that friend. She underwent a five-day cleanse from a different brand of health food, which was actually really excellent, though she broke her post-Goop vow.

It is not clear how Paltrow feels about her former sidekick speaking out against Goop. According to an anonymous source with knowledge of the situation, she didn't resign to work on her book when she left Goop. According to the source, Goop executives had become aware of complaints that Loehnen was a toxic manager, suggesting that her departure was a type of punishing cleanse.