Talk:Lifestyle guru

I am certainly no sociologist or authority on lifestyle gurus, but I have started this page on lifestyle gurus because I think they are one of the biggest cons of our time and I'd like to stimulate discussion on them so that they can be exposed as a con.

Please contribute in any way you can to the refining of this article. My article on the issue is certainly nowhere near perfect, but I hope it will stimulate further discussion on the subject.

Gaphillips (talk) 10:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Unclear sentence
Lifestyle gurus have received criticism for preaching unscientific ideas and thus influencing public opinion. One example was Andrew Lansley criticising Jamie Oliver for interfering too much in what British children eat, ultimately undermining efforts to persuade children to eat healthily.

Who is being criticized here as the guru out of school? Lansley or Oliver? Let's not presume. Be more explicit.

On a side note, I would have personally voted to rename this page "lifestyle coach" with a prominent section on "lifestyle guru". I don't really like the present state of affairs where coaching serves as the main page for various manners of "lifestyle coaching". &mdash; MaxEnt 17:51, 25 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Apparently Jamie Oliver is the lifestyle guru (see also, e.g., a 2011 article on Celebrity Lifestyle Gurus from Slate), and Andrew Lansley is a politician who criticized Oliver. I find the meaning of the second sentence to be clear enough, although the grammar could be made more precise, e.g.: "One example was when British politician Andrew Lansley criticised celebrity chef Jamie Oliver for interfering too much in what British children eat, which Lansley claimed undermined efforts to persuade children to eat healthily." However, I have deleted the sentence because it's not clear that Lansley's criticism was fair; in fact, the cited source mentions a professor of public health who opined the opposite: "Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, suggested the health secretary's comments about the TV chef's campaign were unfair." Regarding your side note, I would oppose renaming this page to "lifestyle coach" and I don't see how coaching serves as the main page for various manners of "lifestyle coaching" as you claim, but I think that "life coaching" is a prominent enough occupation that it deserves its own article and not a redirect to coaching, but first someone would need to take time to write a "life coaching" stub with enough sources to establish the subject's notability (which would be easy to do, I think). Biogeographist (talk) 12:29, 26 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree with everything you've said here. Thank you for your comment. However, "I find the meaning of the second sentence to be clear enough" is a suspect standard where half the world's English speakers are ESL. Neither of these characters were introduced with any kind of flag as to hat colour. They just suddenly showed up, and complex roles needed to be resolved on first instance. Concerning the present division between "coaching" (an amorphous bag) and "lifestyle guru" (a loaded gun), I'd back almost any refactor, from a fairly superficial TOC perspective while zooming past. &mdash; MaxEnt 18:22, 26 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reminder about ESL readers. The other problem with the deleted sentence is that it wasn't an example of the "criticism for preaching unscientific ideas" mentioned in the previous sentence, since Lansley's criticism of Oliver didn't appear to have anything to do with science. Taking another look at the article history now, I am to blame for that disconnect: in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lifestyle_guru&diff=720089562&oldid=719860183 my only substantial contribution to the article] (which mainly consisted of adding citation templates and citation-needed templates) I changed the first sentence that you quoted to its present form; its original form was more relevant to the second sentence: "Also, lifestyle gurus have received criticism for regularly telling the public how to live their lives and thus influencing public opinion. One example was [...]". I changed the first sentence because it was unsourced, and I added a source to the changed version, but in retrospect I see that my change invalidated the second sentence as an example of the first. Biogeographist (talk) 00:48, 27 August 2017 (UTC)