The Shocking True Story of Netflix's Apple Cider Vinegar & Belle Gibson's Lies
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VOICE OVER: Emily Brayton
WRITTEN BY: Tyler Allen
Dive into the shocking true story of Belle Gibson, the wellness influencer who built an empire on lies. Explore how she manipulated her followers, fabricated a cancer story, and ultimately exposed the dangerous side of wellness culture through her fraudulent brand, The Whole Pantry. From her viral app to Netflix's upcoming series, we uncover the incredible web of deception that fooled thousands and raised serious questions about influencer accountability and health misinformation.
The Shocking True Story of Netflix’s Apple Cider Vinegar - Belle Gibson’s Lies
Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re investigating the wellness scandal that rocked the industry and inspired Netflix’s new series “Apple Cider Vinegar.”
Joining the ranks of other infamous "girlboss" CEOs to get TV adaptations, corrupt businesswoman Belle Gibson and her wellness brand, The Whole Pantry, are now taking the spotlight. With so many eyes on influencers and so much money to make, the internet has become a major hub for curating, promoting, and selling wellness content. In order to break through the feeds and make waves, Belle concocted a recipe for disaster that inevitably blew up in everyone's faces. Here’s everything you need to know about “Apple Cider Vinegar,” Belle’s bombastic web of lies, and the shocking fallout from her crumbling empire.
Superfoods, clean eating, detox––the wellness fad has been around for decades. In this day and age, where distrust of big pharma and other authoritative powers has become commonplace, the desire to turn to holistic practices is reaching an all time high. But in an era of misinformation, it has become tricker to weed through what advice can help you and what can harm you. The relative ease in which consumers are duped into trusting an online source is what makes modern wellness scams so fruitful. And so the stage was set for one of the industry's most devious conwomen to sink her teeth in.
In 2013, 21 year old Belle Gibson launched her proprietary app, The Whole Pantry, providing healthy recipes and lifestyle advice. Early success earned her a Penguin publishing book deal, and inspired Apple to offer the app a coveted pre-install for the 2015 Apple Watch. The app served as a supplement for Belle’s wellness blog, where she shared her more … politicized views on food, medicine, and health. In order to maintain public interest in her platform, she started to offer more incentives, such as a promise to donate app proceeds to a variety of charitable organizations. She also detailed a tragic brain cancer diagnosis in a plea for users to invest in the woman behind the brand. By sharing the harrowing details of her battle on her blog, Belle tugged on the heartstrings of her readers while also offering a bit of hope to those in similar circumstances. Her story had a silver lining: she was beating the prognosis, but not through conventional medicine. She did it through, in her words, “nutrition, patience, determination, and love.” It’s safe to say that these tenets alone would never be prescribed by a real doctor for a serious disease. But when these principles are splashed across flashy social media pages, blogs, and apps that feature glowing testimonials from revitalized survivors, it can become convincing to consumers who have reached a breaking point with their current situation. A series of news interviews further bolstered the believability of Belle’s claims, and soon she was a popular influencer.
Some of Belle’s most ardent fans decided to follow in her footsteps by ditching their doctors and subscribing to her strict lifestyle regimens. Belle took to her blog to encourage readers to stay strong in their fight, while also sharing news anytime her cancer returned or spread to other parts of her body. However, while she attracted a fierce base of loyal supporters, her bizarre story and shaky claims also alerted a number of skeptics. Digging into her backstory, an alarming number of inconsistencies began to surface, and Belle’s doubters cracked open a massive scandal that would undo everything the public thought they knew.
Belle had done a poor job at burying her life before The Whole Pantry, and the discovery that she’d been lying about her age kicked off a series of disturbing findings. It was revealed that she had a history of making outlandish claims regarding her health, including having supposedly died on an operating table. There were no scars, no proof that she’d ever undergone any serious procedures. Despite following her strict diet for upwards of an entire year, subscribers were not seeing the results she promised. In fact, many found their overall health on the decline. Those who’d lost loved ones to alternative medicine grabbed their pitchforks and torches too, joining the angry mob that was knocking at Belle’s door. Feeling the heat, Belle began to recant details about her cancer diagnoses and shifted her story with several posts that attempted to explain away the disparities. But the public wasn’t buying it, and this was only the first blow she’d suffer.
Major news broke when journalists uncovered evidence that over $300,000 Australian dollars in fundraising was never actually delivered to the intended charities. This triggered investigations by Penguin and Consumer Affairs. The cash had vanished, and it was presumed that Belle stole the profits. The ruse was up––her once devoted fans turned on her, Penguin pulled her book, and Apple removed the app along with any mention of Belle. There were far too many holes in her version of events. In response to the demand for accountability she effectively went quiet… that is, until her “60 Minutes” interview. She explained that she had been misdiagnosed and only misled her followers because she had been misled herself. But there’s no real record of the holistic doctor who supposedly misdiagnosed her. And this new version of events failed to explain her claims to have initially undergone conventional treatments. As for the unfulfilled charity donations, she claimed they just hadn’t been finalized yet due to poor accounting. Belle’s stories were too elaborate, too specific, too absurd for her to defend, and when put under pressure she played the victim.
With the truth out, it became imminently clear that a massive platform had been granted to someone who should have never been afforded it. Belle Gibson was proven to not only be a liar, but a genuinely dangerous person. Her influencer status gave her power over subscribers who followed her risky lifestyle practices in pursuit of a glossy goal that was based on a lie. On top of her purported cancer-beating expertise, Belle also promoted dangerous rhetoric like anti-vaccination and the consumption of unpasteurized milk.
Ultimately, Belle was fined $410,000 AUD in 2017 for misleading and deceptive conduct regarding her charity work. However, the fines were never paid, and her home was raided in 2020 and 2021 by authorities seeking to recoup those costs.
With a lack of true accountability, so many questions remain in Belle Gibson’s case. Why did she go to such great lengths? She’s been accused of being a sociopath, or of just being money or fame hungry. Others speculate that she has ‘Munchausen by Internet’. While the truth may lie somewhere at the crossroads of these theories, Netflix plans to further investigate the saga with the limited series “Apple Cider Vinegar.” Based on the actual rise and fall story as well as the book it inspired, “The Woman Who Fooled the World,” “Apple Cider Vinegar” owns up to only being “true-ish” in the trailers. The show introduces a rivalry between Belle, played by Kailtyn Dever, and a competitor in the wellness industry, ‘Milla Blake’, who was inspired by real-life entrepreneur Jessica Ainscough. Ainscough passed away from untreated cancer in 2015. Based on the “true-ish” label, viewers shouldn’t expect an accurate retelling of how it all went down. However, showrunner Samantha Strauss feels that the fictionalized elements illuminate pressing matters at the core of the story. Strauss told the Hollywood Reporter that, “What we’ve tried to do in this series is to show that none of these issues are entirely black and white — we wanted it to live in the grey zone.”
Wading through the muck of Belle Gibson’s lies, it’s apparent that the real cancerous threat didn’t exist in her body, but in the poison she fed her followers. Hopefully, the truth behind her deception and the “Apple Cider Vinegar” series will encourage those playing in the wellness sandbox to take careful note of exactly who is selling them a dream, and why they’re selling it.
Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re investigating the wellness scandal that rocked the industry and inspired Netflix’s new series “Apple Cider Vinegar.”
Joining the ranks of other infamous "girlboss" CEOs to get TV adaptations, corrupt businesswoman Belle Gibson and her wellness brand, The Whole Pantry, are now taking the spotlight. With so many eyes on influencers and so much money to make, the internet has become a major hub for curating, promoting, and selling wellness content. In order to break through the feeds and make waves, Belle concocted a recipe for disaster that inevitably blew up in everyone's faces. Here’s everything you need to know about “Apple Cider Vinegar,” Belle’s bombastic web of lies, and the shocking fallout from her crumbling empire.
Superfoods, clean eating, detox––the wellness fad has been around for decades. In this day and age, where distrust of big pharma and other authoritative powers has become commonplace, the desire to turn to holistic practices is reaching an all time high. But in an era of misinformation, it has become tricker to weed through what advice can help you and what can harm you. The relative ease in which consumers are duped into trusting an online source is what makes modern wellness scams so fruitful. And so the stage was set for one of the industry's most devious conwomen to sink her teeth in.
In 2013, 21 year old Belle Gibson launched her proprietary app, The Whole Pantry, providing healthy recipes and lifestyle advice. Early success earned her a Penguin publishing book deal, and inspired Apple to offer the app a coveted pre-install for the 2015 Apple Watch. The app served as a supplement for Belle’s wellness blog, where she shared her more … politicized views on food, medicine, and health. In order to maintain public interest in her platform, she started to offer more incentives, such as a promise to donate app proceeds to a variety of charitable organizations. She also detailed a tragic brain cancer diagnosis in a plea for users to invest in the woman behind the brand. By sharing the harrowing details of her battle on her blog, Belle tugged on the heartstrings of her readers while also offering a bit of hope to those in similar circumstances. Her story had a silver lining: she was beating the prognosis, but not through conventional medicine. She did it through, in her words, “nutrition, patience, determination, and love.” It’s safe to say that these tenets alone would never be prescribed by a real doctor for a serious disease. But when these principles are splashed across flashy social media pages, blogs, and apps that feature glowing testimonials from revitalized survivors, it can become convincing to consumers who have reached a breaking point with their current situation. A series of news interviews further bolstered the believability of Belle’s claims, and soon she was a popular influencer.
Some of Belle’s most ardent fans decided to follow in her footsteps by ditching their doctors and subscribing to her strict lifestyle regimens. Belle took to her blog to encourage readers to stay strong in their fight, while also sharing news anytime her cancer returned or spread to other parts of her body. However, while she attracted a fierce base of loyal supporters, her bizarre story and shaky claims also alerted a number of skeptics. Digging into her backstory, an alarming number of inconsistencies began to surface, and Belle’s doubters cracked open a massive scandal that would undo everything the public thought they knew.
Belle had done a poor job at burying her life before The Whole Pantry, and the discovery that she’d been lying about her age kicked off a series of disturbing findings. It was revealed that she had a history of making outlandish claims regarding her health, including having supposedly died on an operating table. There were no scars, no proof that she’d ever undergone any serious procedures. Despite following her strict diet for upwards of an entire year, subscribers were not seeing the results she promised. In fact, many found their overall health on the decline. Those who’d lost loved ones to alternative medicine grabbed their pitchforks and torches too, joining the angry mob that was knocking at Belle’s door. Feeling the heat, Belle began to recant details about her cancer diagnoses and shifted her story with several posts that attempted to explain away the disparities. But the public wasn’t buying it, and this was only the first blow she’d suffer.
Major news broke when journalists uncovered evidence that over $300,000 Australian dollars in fundraising was never actually delivered to the intended charities. This triggered investigations by Penguin and Consumer Affairs. The cash had vanished, and it was presumed that Belle stole the profits. The ruse was up––her once devoted fans turned on her, Penguin pulled her book, and Apple removed the app along with any mention of Belle. There were far too many holes in her version of events. In response to the demand for accountability she effectively went quiet… that is, until her “60 Minutes” interview. She explained that she had been misdiagnosed and only misled her followers because she had been misled herself. But there’s no real record of the holistic doctor who supposedly misdiagnosed her. And this new version of events failed to explain her claims to have initially undergone conventional treatments. As for the unfulfilled charity donations, she claimed they just hadn’t been finalized yet due to poor accounting. Belle’s stories were too elaborate, too specific, too absurd for her to defend, and when put under pressure she played the victim.
With the truth out, it became imminently clear that a massive platform had been granted to someone who should have never been afforded it. Belle Gibson was proven to not only be a liar, but a genuinely dangerous person. Her influencer status gave her power over subscribers who followed her risky lifestyle practices in pursuit of a glossy goal that was based on a lie. On top of her purported cancer-beating expertise, Belle also promoted dangerous rhetoric like anti-vaccination and the consumption of unpasteurized milk.
Ultimately, Belle was fined $410,000 AUD in 2017 for misleading and deceptive conduct regarding her charity work. However, the fines were never paid, and her home was raided in 2020 and 2021 by authorities seeking to recoup those costs.
With a lack of true accountability, so many questions remain in Belle Gibson’s case. Why did she go to such great lengths? She’s been accused of being a sociopath, or of just being money or fame hungry. Others speculate that she has ‘Munchausen by Internet’. While the truth may lie somewhere at the crossroads of these theories, Netflix plans to further investigate the saga with the limited series “Apple Cider Vinegar.” Based on the actual rise and fall story as well as the book it inspired, “The Woman Who Fooled the World,” “Apple Cider Vinegar” owns up to only being “true-ish” in the trailers. The show introduces a rivalry between Belle, played by Kailtyn Dever, and a competitor in the wellness industry, ‘Milla Blake’, who was inspired by real-life entrepreneur Jessica Ainscough. Ainscough passed away from untreated cancer in 2015. Based on the “true-ish” label, viewers shouldn’t expect an accurate retelling of how it all went down. However, showrunner Samantha Strauss feels that the fictionalized elements illuminate pressing matters at the core of the story. Strauss told the Hollywood Reporter that, “What we’ve tried to do in this series is to show that none of these issues are entirely black and white — we wanted it to live in the grey zone.”
Wading through the muck of Belle Gibson’s lies, it’s apparent that the real cancerous threat didn’t exist in her body, but in the poison she fed her followers. Hopefully, the truth behind her deception and the “Apple Cider Vinegar” series will encourage those playing in the wellness sandbox to take careful note of exactly who is selling them a dream, and why they’re selling it.
