Looking directly at the camera with alert, empathetic eyes, Jay Shetty asks: “Do you feel like you try and eat healthy, but you’re constantly tired by 3 p.m.?  Or maybe you’re trying to cut out junk food, and you’re finding it really difficult. Or maybe you’re someone who always feels bloated.”

“Or,” he adds, “maybe you’re one of those people who’s thinking, ‘Jay, I need to get a gut test. I need to know what’s going on because I’m not feeling great,’” he says, hand gestures punctuating “not feeling great.”

Pause. “If any of those are true for you,” he says, “this episode is for you.”

The video, titled “5 Nutrition EXPERTS: The SHOCKING Healthy Foods That are Making You Fat (Food Lies HIDDEN From Us!)” is classic Shetty, exuding earnestness, promising change, and optimized for social media traction. 

Over the last few years, the 38 year old has built a wildly popular brand as a health and wellness public figure. He’s best known for his podcast, “On Purpose,” where he interviews doctors, psychologists, business leaders, motivational speakers, and A-list celebrities on their best practices for healthy living. With guests like Bill Gates, Khloe Kardashian, Casey Means, and venture capitalist-turned-immortality seeker Bryan Johnson, “On Purpose” has nearly 4.5 million subscribers on YouTube. It’s even bigger as audio, consistently listed as one of the top five health and fitness podcasts on Apple, with a reported 35 million downloads per month.

And Shetty’s influence extends far beyond the world of podcasting. He’s well-connected in Hollywood, where he’s reportedly offered spiritual guidance for celebrities like Will Smith (who Shetty has called a “dear, dear spiritual brother and friend”) and Jennifer Lopez (who had Shetty officiate her 2023 wedding to Ben Affleck and later appeared in her 2024 film “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story”). In 2023, Shetty was invited to the White House to interview President Joe Biden about his mental health.

Shetty is also the Chief Purpose Officer at the meditation app Calm, an ambiguously defined role that involves daily in-app meditations and HR webinars on self care. He’s written two books and founded the Jay Shetty Certification School life coaching program, the brand agency House of 1212, as well as the tea line Juni. He’s also spoken about mindfulness to corporate clients like Deloitte, Google, and Novo Nordisk.

Altogether, Shetty’s suite of businesses and public appearances portray him as a figure of health and spirituality for a fast-paced, modern world. But Shetty blends his message of mindfulness and healing with health guidance that’s often stripped of context, designed to prop up his own interests, or downright unsubstantiated by science.

His show has shared vague advice on how to “cancer proof” your body and misleading claims about inflammation, which one guest blamed for the high number of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. while overlooking other, more significant factors. Shetty’s guests often have no formal health training or background. And even the doctors and other licensed health professionals on the show tend to be entrepreneurs selling their own three-day cleanse kits, anti-glucose spiking supplements, or member-exclusive medical spas. Shetty did not respond to multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.

Experts told STAT that the monk entrepreneur is less of a health resource and more an example of the increasingly lucrative and poorly regulated wellness industry. Nevertheless, millions of people are listening to what Shetty has to say — a phenomenon that speaks as much to his successful branding as it does to people’s eagerness for solutions outside the current health care system.

Who is Jay Shetty? From monk to mogul

When it comes to Shetty’s origin story, there are two, periodically overlapping narratives — the one that Shetty offers up about himself and the one that has been documented by investigative reporters, former colleagues, and Shetty’s own digital paper trail.

As Shetty tells it, which he does frequently, he grew up in north London and was attending university at Bayes Business School when he heard Gauranga Das, a Hindu monk, speak. He instantly felt connected to Das’ peaceful message and confident aura.

After graduating, Shetty moved to an ashram in Mumbai for three years to meditate, study ancient scripture, and “serve with my fellow monks,” according to his 2020 book “Think Like a Monk.” Shetty eventually moved back to London after, he writes, Das told him “he believed I would be of greater value and service if I left the ashram and shared what I learned with the world.”

But before that greater value and service could be fully realized, Shetty got a job in digital marketing strategy at the consulting firm Accenture, and became fascinated with social media. 

By 2016, he left the company to begin his career as a content creator, first as a video host and producer with HuffPost and then as an independent online personality. Shetty launched “On Purpose” in 2019 with the tagline, “The place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed.”

“On Purpose” elevated Shetty from a social media influencer into a mental health authority with his own Kenneth Cole fashion campaign and hand in multiple celebrity marriages. He has earned several fans in positions of power, such as Michelle Obama and Mehmet Oz, who leads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Earlier this summer, “On Purpose” partnered with Chase Sapphire to host a North America live podcast tour, complete with VIP packages with exclusive meditation sessions and meet-and-greets.

But controversies regarding Shetty’s monk backstory and business practices have been well-documented.

In 2019, comedian and YouTuber Nicole Arbour posted a video chronicling numerous incidents of Shetty presenting inspirational anecdotes and quotes online as his own without proper citation. Shetty later quietly added retroactive citations to his social media posts.

And in 2024, journalist John McDermott published a scathing investigation into Shetty in the Guardian, detailing issues with online plagiarism as well as conflicting details surrounding his time as a monk.

The investigation found that not only had Shetty been involved in the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (also known as Iskcon or the Hare Krishna movement) years before he claimed to have met a monk for the first time, he also seems to have exaggerated the actual amount time spent at an ashram in India. 

While Shetty does not explicitly deny his ties to Iskcon now, he’s careful to never mention the religious organization in any capacity, which is notable given how much he otherwise discusses his monk history.

Shetty’s brand merges health and spirituality

Without medical credentials or professional mental health experience, much of Shetty’s authority stems from his years as a monk. He says as much in “Think Like a Monk,” where he writes, “If you wanted to innovate, you might investigate Elon Musk; you might study Beyoncé to learn how to perform. If you want to train your mind to find peace, calm and purpose? Monks are the experts.”

And despite the inconsistencies in his backstory, Shetty has been able to build a highly visible, lucrative brand off his monk reputation. In “On Purpose,” Shetty covers a vast range of health-related topics, including depression, anxiety, finding motivation, building confidence, sleep hygiene, ADHD, dating and friendships, weight loss, gut health, cancer prevention, narcissism, manifestation, and telepathy.

Experts with varying degrees of credentials are interviewed without any disclaimers or fact-checking. In one podcast episode, Shetty interviews nutritionist and podcaster Shawn Stevenson, who claims that just by adopting a healthy diet and exercise routine, he was able to cure his degenerative bone disease and herniated discs. It’s a sweeping claim with little nuance: While eating healthy has been shown to somewhat improve spinal and bone disease symptoms, total recoveries are rare, and rely on other factors beyond diet such as genetics and disease severity.

In another interview, nutritionist and “cleanse expert” Elissa Goodman says that stage 4 cancer can be healed without “Western modalities” using a positive mindset and healthy diet. “I do believe you can heal from anything, almost,” Goodman said, also extolling detox cleanses, hypnotism, and at-home, shaman-guided psilocybin treatments.

Not everything Shetty platforms on his show is unconfirmed by science. Numerous episodes feature doctors advising listeners to reduce ultra-processed foods for a healthier diet, sleep enough to support memory retention, and other life habits that have strong scientific consensus. The problem, experts told STAT, is that this advice is muddled together with unproven theories and soundbites that aren’t backed up by clinical studies.

“Celebrities have the capacity to influence online without the domain expertise to provide health and medical advice,” said Stephanie Alice Baker, an associate professor in sociology at City St. George’s, University of London. “Their experience stands in for expertise, yet there are seldom consequences for sharing false, misleading or harmful advice.”

Shetty “does spread a skewed view of health at times,” Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor at the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University who researches the wellness industry, told STAT. For example, in an interview, surgeon, public speaker, and consultant Vonda Wright discusses the important role of sleep health in weight loss, a link that’s been demonstrated in numerous studies. A few minutes later, she tells listeners to avoid ingesting seed oils and inflammatory foods that can accelerate aging, advice that’s not fully substantiated by medical research and mentioned only in passing without additional context.

While Wellman said that she sees Shetty as “someone who is trying to do right by the public in most cases,” she separately noted that “he uses themes tied to heavy emotions, combined with the use of experts to situate himself as the ultimate authority, when in fact, he has come under fire for his confusing backstory.”

Outside of “On Purpose,” Shetty’s other entrepreneurial projects also rely on messaging that promises a healthier life. His tea brand Juni (short for “Just You And I”) features the slogan “where happiness meets function” and claims its adaptogen ingredients such as ashwagandha and reishi mushroom can protect brain health, improve memory, and reduce fatigue. Can a 12-ounce can of carbonated yuzu pineapple tea deliver on this promise? Not really, experts said.

Adaptogens are a broad term used to describe any plant-based ingredient that helps your body adapt to stress, explained Rashmi Mullur, a clinical professor of medicine and director of Integrative Medicine Education at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Although some adaptogens have been studied in research trials and Mullur herself has suggested some patients take adaptogens tailored to their needs, she pointed out that products sold as supplements can advertise such ingredients as generally healthy irrespective of the actual science or quality of the product.

“The only rule in the United States is that they cannot be a pharmacologic drug and can’t be thought of as a medication,” Mullur said. “If you’re looking for a trial on the benefits of drinking this tea, or any product with adaptogens that’s sold on the market, you will never find one. That is just not something the wellness industry participates in.”

Shetty did not respond to requests for an interview with STAT, but has previously commented on criticisms about his paradoxical status as a monk and social media figure. “They want me to not be who I truly am,” Shetty said of his critics in a 2023 interview. “And they want to find that angle on me constantly, because they don’t want to accept that someone who is trying to be good at heart, is doing good at the work, and winning is okay.”

For $7,400, a Shetty credential

In his business efforts, Shetty’s career has been buoyed by people who empathize with his calls for healthier, happier living. Nowhere is that dynamic more evident than in his life coaching program, the Jay Shetty Certification School.

Composed of online group classes, practice coaching sessions, and self-study, the school program costs up to $7,400 to enroll in and is accredited by the Association for Coaching. (Prior to the Guardian investigation, the JSCS website falsely claimed accreditations from other institutions as well.) Life coaches, who are not licensed therapists or medical practitioners, lead most of the program, and Shetty himself only appears periodically for group sessions or in pre-recorded videos.

Andrea Borges first discovered Shetty from “On Purpose” and quickly became a fan. Burnt out from her managerial role at work, she decided to enroll in the Jay Shetty Certification School, saying she “resonated deeply with a lot of the messaging.” Two years after graduating and now working as a mindset and healing coach, Borges remains grateful for the lessons and relationships she gained regardless of Shetty’s controversies.

“This to me is an important lesson not to put any one person on a pedestal,” she said. Borges told STAT that she was not aware of Shetty’s controversies until after she graduated from JSCS, and had an “overall very positive” experience with the program.

Veronica Caulfield, another JSCS graduate and life coach, feels similarly. After completing the certification program last April, Caulfield, 43, founded her own life coaching practice and left her career in operations management. “It’s been a year of transformation … and it’s amazing,” Caulfield said.

Caulfield also credits JSCS — which she first learned about through social media ads — with helping improve her relationships with friends and family members.

She views her journey as separate from any messy details involving Shetty. JSCS encouraged her to “explore my authentic self, and I got to work with other coaches and be coached,” she said. “That’s what I want to see more of in the world.”

What Shetty’s popularity says about health institutions

Borges’ and Caulfield’s experiences speak to a critical aspect of Shetty’s popularity and influence: His message to take mental health and physical wellbeing seriously is compelling to millions worldwide, misinformation and controversies be damned.

“People aren’t getting duped by the wellness industry because they can’t figure out something better,” Mullur said. “They’re desperate for help and they’re desperate for information.”

The rise of wellness influencers like Shetty also coincides with a period of unique health stressors and a loss of trust in the medical mainstream, experts said. “Insurance rates are going up for many, costs in general are increasing, and the relationship with medical professionals is strained as we rely more heavily on technology like telehealth and chatbots to connect with medical staff,” Wellman noted. “People are willing to try anything to secure their wellbeing, including purchasing products and participating in trends they find online.”

Irrespective of Shetty’s problematic record in delivering health information, his growing influence speaks to health institutions’ failure to meet the need for trustworthy medical insights. 

“I don’t know any of my patients who are not struggling with the weight of the world right now,” Mullur said. “But I think it gives us an opportunity in medicine to broaden our conversation around how psychosocial and traumatic stress influence and impact our health outside of just the conventional medical model.”