I am a Type 1 diabetic and I have an enemy: the blood sugar influencer, Glucose Goddess, Jessie Inchauspé.

Inchauspé trades in tips on managing a metric people may not have worried about before: their blood sugar. Grifters like her encourage people to self-optimise but only so we can at once be exploited and participate in exploitation.

Turning our energy towards such technologically mediated, neoliberal self-management enacts a worldview divorced from understanding people as interconnected with other people, animals, and land. As Ajay Singh Chaudhary writes in The Exhausted of the Earth, the Western middle-class worker is fed by “resource-intensive industrial agriculture, which leaves the world both malnourished and obese while increasing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions,” alongside the dispossession of people working outside of this mode.

As a biochemist, Inchauspé would surely be aware of the importance of presenting data clearly. According to the scant labelling on Glucose Goddess’ graphs, a blood sugar ‘spike’ is an increase of 30mg/dL (or 1.66mmol if you are not using the American style). These spikes are made to seem responsible for everything from mental illness to psoriasis. Deep in the red zone of her graph is +60mg/dL, or 3.33mmol. In one example, made to illustrate the impact of carbohydrates at different times of day, twelve sushi rolls lead to a spike of around +3.33mmol whether eaten at noon or 10 pm, though the blood sugar stays elevated for a longer period with the later meal. But what is this number being added to? It’s simply called the “baseline”, which is not a value. In any case, Inchauspé’s baseline appears to be somewhere around 4 to 5 mmol, which makes an increase of 3 mmol simply not that interesting. That is, until it is made visually significant, placed in the red zone of a graph.

Diabetes Australia puts it that

or a person without diabetes, throughout the day blood glucose levels (BGLs) will generally range between 4.0 — 7.8 millimoles of glucose per litre of blood (mmol/L) regardless of how they eat or exercise, or what stress they’re under.

Inchauspé uses the data of fluctuation in blood sugar to create a problem (spikes) and saleable solutions — cookbooks, “anti-spike” pills, media appearances. Further, she strikes a curious balance between not asking people to change at all — her methods are about how you eat your food, not complete abstention from treats — and using shaming language around food, such as: “we don’t need to eat sugars. They are there for taste and pleasure.”

In her example of eating a croissant before bed after attending some kind of medical industry convention, the croissant spike is red. It looks alarming. It is — on closer inspection — peaking at about 7.7mmol, within that expected range for normal blood sugar. Inchauspé has a functioning pancreas, which produces insulin in response to eating, allowing the energy from glucose to enter her cells, and keeping blood sugar at an appropriate level. Without any intervention, the line returns to where it began. It doesn’t matter if the graph exists or not, because everything is working well.

This is a pathological level of interest in one’s own blood sugar for someone who does not need to be so mindful. Measuring blood sugar can be done with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). This is an extremely useful tool for insulin-dependent diabetics, for whom the monitors are subsidised in Australia. CGMs produce in about real time the same kind of graphs Inchauspé is using, allowing trends to be identified. As any type-1 diabetic could tell you, treating a blood sugar of 4 mmol trending down is very different to 4 mmol trending up.

The older-fashioned and more widely available reader is a glucometer, which measures blood sugar from a fingerprick in that instant: one fragment of data only. Neither are cheap, even when subsidised as they are in Australia. It is unlikely that the average person would purchase either, even if interested in Inchauspe’s “hacks” — a shot of vinegar before meals, salad before a carbohydrate, and so on. This means that the self-assessment of people following Glucose Goddess’ methods is largely vibes-based. For insulin-dependent diabetics, who use CGM and insulin to do the work of a pancreas, there can be an overlap in managing this condition and developing a disordered relationship with food.

Glucose Goddess describes herself as “post-CGM”, yet her Instagram is mainly pictures of these CGM-like graphs. This is a grift born from industry. Inchauspé is not herself a diabetic but was introduced to CGMs while working at 23adMe, the now-bankrupt US company she used to work for as a product manager. 23adMe conducted genetic testing and has naturally been subject to scrutiny regarding privacy and the possible misuse of sensitive health data. For a price, customers could have a report generated on their ancestry or subscribe to an AI-informed diabetes prevention program based on their genetic data. 23adMe partnered with GlaxoSmithKline to develop new medications using user data. This is the background of the glucose revolution: the interior made visible without context, for profit.

Food and eating are integral to health. They cannot be separated from how capitalism works in this world. Regular old bits of diet advice like eating salad can be made anew when presented by an attractive French biochemist armed with graphs and supplements. But there is a brutal cynicism behind it all. Glucose Goddess’ manner of communication presents health as purely a matter of personal decision-making. It completely individualises responsibility for ill health, and steers clear of asking any questions about why people eat the way they do. Her books are bestsellers. At the same time, global incidences of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are increasing as populations suffer the extraction and deprivations of colonial capitalism. Nutrition is an internal expression of external power — as in who has access to food, what kinds of food are available, whether they have the time to prepare and eat it, and in violence internalised as disease prevalence.

Glucose Goddess’ approach is enticing because it appears to put power in the individual’s hands, so long as they are happy to have a shot of vinegar before a meal. However, rather than being individually empowering, it leads us away from good food and good health as something that we must pursue together, and is currently unequally accessible. Life escapes data.