A few months ago I watched a TikTok that made a bold health claim: that eating breakfast is the cause for serious health ailments, and it was made by a supposed health coach, and this video had almost 60 thousand views. It wasn't the video that stopped me scrolling, though.
It was the comment section. Some people were saying they would stop eating breakfast, another said that is why she has stopped eating breakfast for more than 6 months, some were even tagging their family members to the video, and only a few were pushing back on the claim.
I want to be clear about something before we go further: none of those people are foolish. I say this to my community all the time, and I mean it every time that falling for health misinformation isn't about intelligence. It's about how these platforms are built, and honestly, about history too.
Here's what's actually going on:
Researchers have found that health misinformation spreads fastest through the exact things that make us feel closest to home like group chats, community pages, videos from people who talk like us. A Harvard study looking at diaspora communities found that private, trusted spaces like WhatsApp and encrypted apps are where misinformation moves quickest, precisely because they feel personal and safe. Video is even harder to catch than text because a confident voice on camera just feels more believable than a forwarded message, even when it's completely wrong.
And there's a deeper reason some of us are quicker to trust a random video than a doctor: many of our communities have real, solid reasons to be wary of "official" medical advice. Researchers who study medical mistrust point to a long history of being experimented on, dismissed, or spoken to in ways that made healthcare feel unsafe rather than helpful. That distrust didn't come from nowhere. So when a stranger online sounds more like family and less like an institution, it's not hard to see why people lean toward believing them.
On top of that, a lot of health information out there simply isn't written in a way that's easy to understand especially for anyone navigating it in a second language or without a medical background. Studies show that when health information is hard to understand, people are far more likely to end up with poor health outcomes, not because they don't care, but because nobody explained it to them properly in the first place.
So what can we actually do about it?
The same research that explains the problem also points to the fix, and it's simpler than you'd think: the same tight community bonds that let misinformation spread fast are also our biggest strength against it. A correction from someone inside your community, speaking your language, in a tone you trust will definitely land a hundred times better than a government press release ever could.
If someone in your family forwards health videos without checking them, send them this email. Let's make good information the thing that gets forwarded.
That's genuinely the whole reason Nourish with Cassie exists. Not to talk down to anyone for believing something false, but to be the trusted voice inside the group chat, not the outside one.
Before you go: what's a health claim you've seen spread fast in your own community; TikTok, WhatsApp, wherever? Hit reply and tell me. I read every single one, and I might feature it (anonymously) in a future newsletter.
See you in the next letter!
Yours truly
Cassie
For HMC.
References
Coulibaly, S. (2023). Exploring health misinformation on WhatsApp within the African migrant and refugee community in Southeast Queensland (SEQ). Media International Australia, 189(1), 8–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X231177836
Sharma AE, Khosla K, Potharaju K, Mukherjea A, Sarkar U
COVID-19–Associated Misinformation Across the South Asian Diaspora: Qualitative Study of WhatsApp Messages, JMIR Infodemiology 2023;3:e38607 doi: 10.2196/38607PMID: 37113380PMCID: 10013129
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division; Policy and Global Affairs; Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine; Laurencin CT, Morgan RC Jr., Bright CM, editors. Leveraging Trust to Advance Science, Engineering, and Medicine in the Black Community: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2025 Jan 21. 3, Historical Roots of Medical Mistrust. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK611595/
Arsenault, M., Côté, D. Immigrant and Mistrust in the Healthcare Setting: A Thematic Review. J Immigrant Minority Health 28, 1015–1027 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-025-01787-7
Vázquez E, Juturu P, Burroughs M, McMullin J, Cheney AM. Continuum of Trauma: Fear and Mistrust of Institutions in Communities of Color During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Cult Med Psychiatry. 2024 Jun;48(2):290–309. doi: 10.1007/s11013–023–09835–3. Epub 2023 Sep 30. PMID: 37776491; PMCID: PMC11217119.
Sentell, T., & Braun, K. L. (2012). Low Health Literacy, Limited English Proficiency, and Health Status in Asians, Latinos, and Other Racial/Ethnic Groups in California. Journal of Health Communication, 17(sup3), 82–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2012.712621