I have a confession to make – I was addicted to Teen magazine as a pre-teen. Not familiar with Teen magazine? I’m sure you’ve seen something similar – a glossy magazine filled with fashion, skin care and life advice targeting young girls on the cusp of becoming teens and young adults.

From within its pages, I learned about my period, acne and growing up. But there was something else. The subtext - that women’s bodies were a constant work in progress. That we needed to improve our skin through age-appropriate skin care. That we could upgrade our looks with make-up. That our hair should be properly coifed (or crimped or curled). Sponsored advertisements blended seamlessly with articles. What appeared to be helpful tips about hair or skin care was really sponsored content, identified through the teeny, tiny, small print at the bottom of the magazine pages.

While it has been decades since I turned a page of Teen magazine, I am now immersed in a different type of content. Social media and the rise of perimenopause and menopause content, which the algorithm serves up to me on the daily. This content feels vaguely reminiscent of my time reading beauty mags. But this time, there is a sense that my body should be optimized, that there is an ideal version of me, attainable through lifting heavy, eating an ungodly amount of protein or taking the right combination of meds.

While on the surface, Teen magazine and social media perimenopause and menopause content are vastly different - each a bookend to an entire reproductive lifecycle - there is an eerily familiar pattern.

First, create the problem. Then, offer the solution - and ideally, a solution that is conveniently tucked into the pages of the magazine (or links in the bio).

• Are you gaining weight in midlife? Eat more protein. Let me show you how.

• You want more energy? Take these supplements. Link in bio.

• Want to feel ageless? Don’t walk – run to your doctor and ask for this.

I want to acknowledge that the menopause content on social media can:

1. Be accurate and evidence-based

2. Promote a positive message for women

3. Give voice to something that for far too long was only whispered about.

Social media offers entertainment, connection, community, sometimes education and may lead to positive outcomes.

However, there is an underbelly of content that is more problematic. Content that overly pathologizes this life phase, lumps all menopause and perimenopause experiences into a singular experience or a handful of symptoms, diminishes the individual experiences and promotes overly simplistic solutions to issues that are multifaceted and complex.

Why?

Nuance isn’t sexy. Complexity is difficult to condense into a succinct 30 second reel – and it definitely doesn’t sell. It’s easier to lump women into one bucket than discuss how culture, life experience and age at menopause lead to vastly different experiences during this life phase. Or how your own personal, family and medical histories shape your experience and risk profile.

Social media often glosses over the fact that not all women are candidates for hormone replacement threapy (HRT) or how the same symptom may be brought on or made worse by vastly different lifestyle or behavioural factors. There is nuance missing from the content found in the social media wilderness.

But how pervasive is the problem?

A few stats to sink your teeth into:

1. In 2024, the global menopause market was estimated to be worth $17.8 billion (USD), including menopause care, supplements, products and other treatment options1.

2. There are over 1.2 million posts on Instagram and over 917,000 posts on TikTok using the hashtag #menopause (according to Best Hashtag and TikTok Creative Centre). That’s over 1,000 new posts every day on Instagram using #menopause. Each menopause Instagram post averages 2,000 likes and 67 comments. On TikTok, menopause content has been viewed over 1 billion times - that’s a lot of eyeballs.

3. More than one third of women over age 40 and 25% of women over 40 in perimenopause sought out menopause information on social media2.

4. A recent study analysed 200 of the most popular menopause-related posts on TikTok and Instagram and assessed the quality of menopause content. Of the reviewed posts, the most popular intervention was supplements (51.5%), the symptom most frequently addressed was weight/metabolism (32%) and almost half of posts were misleading or inaccurate3.

While the science surrounding this life phase continues to strengthen, albeit lagging way behind, the influencers on social media have been off to the races – carrying forth their messages to the masses.

Here’s a misleading post on Threads, viewed over 77,000 times.

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What does it all mean?

If you were to only consume messaging about perimenopause and menopause from social media, the take home would be this – this life phase is characterized by a non-compliant body that should be optimized through lifting heavy, taking supplements, jumping straight to medical solutions and a diet made almost entirely from protein. Ok, that assessment may be a bit hyperbolic but it is not entirely without evidence.

A quick look at the most popular hashtags used in conjunction with #menopause shows #weightloss, #fitness, #nutrition, #selfcare, #wellness and #hormones. This framing of menopause is of a life phase that we need to optimize.

I don’t want to dismiss the true desire for women to find answers. Women do struggle with perimenopause and menopause, myself included. There are real life symptoms that impact our entire lives and we do want to find solutions, sometimes medical and sometimes lifestyle and sometimes just through connection and the support of others.

But for too long, a gap in evidence-based information has enabled a menopause gold rush - fueled by influencers and social media personalities monetising that gap.

The commercialisation of menopause

My fear is that social media midlife content is following in the footsteps of beauty and fashion marketing who came before. Rather than treating midlife like any other distinct life phase, we have instead opened it up for commercialization – products, specialty skin care, coaching, supplements, optimization and improvement.

However in this version of commercialisation, we are relying on influencers to disclose affiliate content or brand deals. What looks like relatable content may subtly be influencing you, selling you an ideal version of your midlife self, and then monetizing that ideal. All of this without declaring a clear conflict and with many promoting misleading or inaccurate claims about midlife or the benefits of the products they are hocking. (Findings from an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) 2023 investigation found that 81% of influencer posts were deceptive, misleading or did not disclose endorsements or sponsored content.)

Unlike advertising from our childhood and young adulthood, this new type of advertising is algorithmically reinforced. If you like, or even pause on, a piece of content, you will be served up more and more similar content, reinforcing a view of midlife which may be skewed, misleading or inaccurate.

The shaky foundation upon which menopause misinformation is built upon

I suppose my biggest bugbear about all of this is that we are building demand on shaky foundations.

• At a time when less than 4% of middle age adults in Australia are meeting the recommended serves of vegetables and fruits - should we be pushing supplements first4?

• When only 1% of middle-aged women are meeting the recommendations for dairy and alternatives, should we be pushing extreme diets (not that extreme diets are ever recommended)5?

• When only about 20% of women are meeting the exercise guidelines, should we be promoting lifting heavy6? Really, lifting anything is better than nothing at all.

• When the cost of food is through the roof, should we be promoting the most expensive calories (protein) as the single best nutrient in midlife?

We need a strong foundation before we build upwards.

But the building upwards is the sellable part.

How to decide who to listen to in an increasingly crowded space?

I want to acknowledge the amazing professionals with strong voices sharing evidence-based information on social media. There are doctors, OBGYN’s, exercise physiologists, psychologists, dietitians and other health professionals who are offering up honest, evidence-based health information on social media.

Like it or hate it, social media is the new public square. It’s the place where people go to share, connect and learn something new. We need more experts online offering a counterbalance to misleading or inaccurate content. We should encourage expert voices and not shame professionals for taking up space on social media.

If you are wading through content on social media - check credentials. Really dig into the credentials.

Before chasing solutions, check your foundations. Are you meeting the guidelines for fruits and vegetables? Are you active on most days? Are there improvements you can tweak first before making expensive, extreme or controversial changes?

Understand what is being sold. Do you smell bullshit? Check declared interests, links or bios - what is the person or profile selling? Does the product change the message being pushed?

Also, check in with how the message lands with you. Do you feel guilt, shame, FOMO or any other emotion when you view the content? Identify that emotion and then ask yourself, is this content attempting to create demand for a problem where one likely doesn’t exist?

If you are struggling with how content makes you feel, there is nothing better than a social media palate cleanse. Sometimes, the best solution is to take a break, switch off the phone and touch some grass.

Full transparency, I am dietitian who also has an online presence through Simply Midlife Dietitian and I offer individual, tailored nutrition consultations for women in midlife. I am passionate about supporting women in this life phase and offering evidence-based information to counter the noise of misinformation.

Simply Midlife Dietitian

I love a good diet review and today I am breaking down the evidence on the Mediterranean diet, the 2025 Mediterranean diet pyramid and how to put it into practice and make it work for you - with plans and guidance to implement a Mediterranean diet.

The Mediterranean diet is like the superfood of diets - and unless you have been living under rock, you may have heard a thing or two about it.

This diet, linked to increased health and longevity, has been extensively researched with a highlights reel boasting: improved blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol, reduced inflammation, weight management, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease1 , type 2 diabetes2 and improved blood glucose (sugar) control for people with type 2 diabetes3.

Those are all pretty impressive benefits on their own.

Why the Mediterranean diet in midlife?

The Mediterranean diet provides additional benefits for women in perimenopause or going through the menopause transition. According to a European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) Position Statement, benefits of the diet for midlife women include:4

• Reducing central obesity (weight gain around the midsection)

• Improved cognition and prevention of cognitive decline (brain support)

• Improved mood and reduced risk of depression

• Improved bone health for women with osteoporosis and maintenance of bone mineral density (strength of the bones)

• Reduced risk of breast cancer

• Reduced vasomotor symptoms, including hot flushes/flashes and night sweats

Why does this matter in midlife?

In midlife, the goal isn’t just eating healthy. You are navigating:

• an increased risk of chronic disease

• body changes, including weight gain in the midsection

• changes in brain-function, like brain fog

• changes in mood and an increased risk of anxiety and depression

• hormone shifts which may lead to hot flushes and night sweats

• rapid decline in bone density, with about half of total bone loss occurring in the first 10 years after menopause

This all sounds like doom and gloom - I promise, not my intention. With proper medical care and lifestyle tweaks you can set yourself up for health in midlife and as you continue to age. One option is the Mediterranean diet, which has good evidence supporting its health benefits for midlife women.

But here’s the problem - how do you apply this diet in practice?

You may have experienced this yourself. You decide to implement the Mediterranean diet because you read about its health benefits. A commendable start!

But when you try to apply it, you realise the diet is merely a framework. There are no clear serving sizes and the guidance is general:

• Use olive oil

• Eat more vegetables

• Incldue fish

The Mediterranean diet is designed to be flexible - a flexible framework and not a prescriptive plan. And this is why implementing the diet could be more of a struggle than you planned.

What is the Mediterranean diet?

Let’s step back for a moment. What is the Mediterranean diet?

The Mediterranean diet is influenced by the cuisines of countries located near the Mediterranean basin, including Greece, Italy and Turkey, among others. The diet is based on the foods found in these regions, including olive oil, grains, fish, seafood and fruits and vegetables. Oh yea - traditionally, also wine.

While rooted in thousands of years of cultural tradition, the diet came to broader awareness for its health benefits in 1958 when Ancel Keys, an American physiologist, hypothesised that the diet was responsible for the lower rates of cardiovascular disease seen in these regions5. Through the famous Seven Countries Study, Keys was able to demonstrate the cardio-protective benefits of the Mediterranean diet. Further outcomes published in 1986 demonstrated that higher intakes of monounsaturated fats (like those found in olive oil) were inversely correlated with coronary heart disease and death6. Simply put, diets higher in olive oil and lower in red meat helped reduce the risk of heart disease and death.

While evidence was stacking up for the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet, it wasn’t until the late 1980s that experts began to look at the composition of the diet (instead of individual nutrients, like monounsaturated fats). We eat foods - not nutrients. To support the public’s understanding of the diet, a Mediterranean diet pyramid was first developed in 1995 and just recently, an updated pyramid was published in 2025 in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases.

The Mediterranean diet pyramid

Just a quick editorial note to say the updated pyramid has some cool new additions (which we can talk about later)!

A pyramid is helpful in defining the types of foods that are included in a Mediterranean diet although it is not a plan - it doesn’t explicitly state what you should be eating.

The 2025 Mediterranean diet pyramid

The image above is re-created from the 2025 SINU Mediterranean diet pyramid7.

What is included in the 2025 Mediterranean diet pyramid8:

• At the base of the pyramid are the core elements of the Mediterranean diet, foods to be eaten daily, including: fruits and vegetables and extra virgin olive oil (this is notable, as previous versions of the pyramid just referenced olive oil, and not extra virgin olive oil).

• Just above the base are other foods to eat daily, including: grains and cereals, nuts and seeds, whole grain breads, rice, pasta, yoghurt and milk.

• The middle of the pyramid are foods to eat weekly, which is also broken into two parts. The bottom of the weekly section includes legumes and beans, fish, seafood and soft cheese (like ricotta and mozzarella). It is recommended that small, local fish are selected instead of fish higher on the food chain (like swordfish or shark) to preserve the ocean ecosystem and avoid excess mercury.

• In the upper-middle section are other foods to eat weekly, including potato, chicken and poultry, hard cheese and eggs.

• The top of the pyramid includes red and processed meat and sweet treats. These foods are to be eaten occasionally, for example, as special treats.

• Alcohol and salt are placed outside of the pyramid with a recommendation to minimise both. This is another notable change in the 2025 pyramid. In response to WHO guidance (no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health), the SINU working group recommend that wine and beer are preferred alcohol options due to lower alcohol content, that alcohol is consumed with a meal and not on an empty stomach and to avoid high levels of alcohol in one go.

• Coffee and tea also sit outside of the pyramid. Both are generally safe for healthy adults although the guidance is to exercise caution for young people, older adults, pregnant women, people with anxiety, hypertension or for people who experience sleep disturbance.

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Putting Mediterranean diet principles into practice

So here’s where the rubber meets the road - the stuff dietitians love to do. Translate the science into everyday eating patterns.

A general disclaimer before we proceed. The information below is general in nature and based on the Mediterranean diet and healthy eating guidelines and specifically adapted for women in midlife. If you would like a plan tailored to you, speak to a dietitian - or contact me at Simply Midlife Dietitian.

Daily anchors

Let’s start by identifying the foods to include every day. These are the foods at the base of the pyramid. For our purposes, I have referred to these as daily anchors. Below is a table that outlines the daily anchors with serve size guidelines.

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None of it shows up in workforce policy.

And yet, without it, the economy would collapse.

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