Serialously with Annie Elise
247: Exposing The Truth About Belle Gibson & Netflix’s ‘Apple Cider Vinegar’
Mon, 03 Mar 2025
Belle Gibson wasn’t just another influencer - she was the face of the early Instagram wellness movement, the poster child for clean eating, alternative healing, & most shockingly, the idea that nutrition alone had cured her terminal cancer. But behind the scenes Belle was hiding some sinister secrets… Join our True Crime Club for access to BTS, Bonus Content, Our Private Group Chat, Giveaways and More! Shop Our True Crime Merch Follow the podcast on: IG, Facebook and TikTok For Business Inquiries: [email protected] About Annie Today’s Sponsors: Ollie - Head to https://ollie.com/ae and use code AE to get 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! SonoBello: Schedule your free consultation now at https://sonobello.com/ae Better Help: Visit https://betterhelp.com/ae today to get 10% off your first month Hiya: Get 50% off when you go to https://hiyahealth.com/ae Episode Sources: BBC Daily Mail The Times News 9 The Guardian Elle.com People.com Business Insider Cosmopolitan
Chapter 1: What is the podcast 'Serialistly' about?
Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise. I hope you guys are having a good start to your day because we have got a lot to talk about today. I have been like reeling wanting to talk about this case with you guys. I've been researching ad nauseum, so many details and there's so much to talk about.
Before we get into that, if you are a brand new listener and you have never checked out this podcast, you know, and this is your first time listening, let me give you a little breakdown of what it is we do here. My name is Annie.
I like to consider myself like a true crime bestie of yours trying to break down these cases with you as though I'm talking with my best friend or my sister over a cocktail or coffee and just talk through these things together. Do deep dives, talk about the rabbit holes, talk about what's on social media, theories, all of those different things, and just break it down in less of a clinical way
than other podcasts do or other documentaries do or shows to where it really feels digestible and like you're talking with a friend. So if this is your first time listening to an episode and you enjoy it by the end of this, please follow the podcast so that you don't miss future episodes. And thank you for joining in any event and listening to today's episode.
Now, as I said, ever since I watched this show on Netflix, I have been wanting to do the deep dive. I've talked about it a little bit, so you might know where I'm going with it. But it's apple cider vinegar and all things Belle Gibson.
Belle, Belle, Belle, please. I mean, either you're interested in getting to the bottom of this and presenting the facts as they are the facts, or you're not.
Yes, Val was very convincing in her conviction of being sick and having an illness.
Stay strong in your identity and your safu. Look to your community and make decisions like that which Gada have taught us. Look to the Jasa to lead us forward.
Just every answer she was giving me was just confirming my gut instinct that She was lying.
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Chapter 2: Who is Belle Gibson and why is she controversial?
And I don't know, for whatever reason it is, documentaries sometimes, whether it's for legal reasons or because they have to fit a lot in in a short amount of time, they don't go into all of the details. And if you're anything like me, anytime I'm watching a dateline, a documentary, a series, I'm on my phone. I'm Googling it. I'm looking on Reddit.
I'm looking at their social medias because I want to know everything. Everything below the line. And I swear, after all this research, I feel like I know Belle Gibson better than she probably knows herself, okay? I feel like I just am in her head, and I don't know. It's probably not healthy. I'm probably not well. But I just like to know every single detail.
So as I said, some of it was covered in apple cider vinegar. There also has been a new documentary that came out that was called The Search for Instagram's Worst Con Artist. That touched on it a little bit, but it mostly included the infamous 60 Minutes interview with her and kind of regurgitated certain details. It really didn't do a deep dive. So I'm here to do the deep dive.
I'm here to go over all of it, also to go through what's fact, what's fiction, what got left out, and... The biggest question, who the hell is the real Belle Gibson? Will the real Belle Gibson please stand up? Belle wasn't just another influencer. She was the face of the early Instagram wellness movement.
She was the poster child for clean eating, for alternative healing, and most shockingly, the idea that nutrition alone had cured her terminal cancer. So at the height of her fame, Belle Gibson was like everywhere. She was praised as this wellness guru, this best-selling author. She was a living testament to the power of clean eating. But then, as it so often does, it all came crashing down.
This woman who claimed to have healed herself through diet and lifestyle had in fact fabricated everything. The whole thing was a lie. There was no cancer. There was no miraculous recovery. It was just a huge web of lies. and lies that were inspired by the truth, but somebody else's truth.
So before Belle became the face of the wellness movement, before the cookbook deals, before the social media fame, she was just Annabelle Natalie Gibson. She was born on October 8, 1991, in Lawceston, Tasmania, Australia. Now Belle's childhood, I gotta be honest, it's somewhat of a mystery, and a lot of details do still remain unknown. and her early years largely are undocumented as well.
What we do know comes mostly from her own words, but what we know about that and from her own words, it paints kind of this picture of just instability and constant chaos. Belle grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and she claimed that her father was absent for most of her life, leaving her mother Natalie to really shoulder the weight of their family's challenges, which there were a lot of them.
And Belle has described a childhood where she herself really acted as a caretaker from a remarkably young age, starting at just five years old. In Belle's version of events, she was the one who was holding everything together, the glue of the family, helping care for her mother, who suffered from MS. She cared for her younger brother, who was autistic. She was the matriarch of the family.
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Chapter 3: How did Belle Gibson build her wellness empire?
She declared she didn't even trust modern medicine anymore. She didn't trust the conventional ways, and she wanted to heal herself through alternative therapies.
So she committed to a whole food, mostly plant-based diet, and she fully embraced the Gerson therapy, which is a very controversial regimen that claimed to detoxify the body and restore health through very strict diet changes, such as juicing, nutritional supplements, even frequent coffee enemas, which, you heard that right, shoving coffee up your butt and giving yourself an enema.
Now, Gerson therapy was developed in the 1920s by a German physician named Max Gerson. It promoted the idea that chronic illnesses and chronic diseases, including cancer, could all be reversed by flooding the body with nutrients. Nutrients that come from organic fruits, from vegetables, while you're also simultaneously eliminating toxins through relentless detoxification methods.
one of the most infamous being those coffee enemas. And again, those are just as it sounds, so look it up at your own risk. But anyway, advocates of this approach believe that cancer is a symptom of a quote, disease of the whole body, and that detoxifying through diet really can reverse the illness.
So Belle said online that this alternative regimen was working wonders, that her cancer was rapidly disappearing. And her story really became this testament to the power of natural healing, just drawing in all of these different supporters who saw her as living proof that doing an alternative path to recovery, it was not only possible, but it also worked.
But there was something strange about how Belle handled her illness. While she poured her heart out online, detailing every supposed struggle, she rarely, if ever, spoke about it with her close friends and family. In her personal life, cancer was not a frequent topic of conversation. She wasn't seeking support from those around her, nor did she even appear physically ill.
Yet on the internet, it was a completely different story. And Bell didn't just talk about her health online, she built an entire online identity around it. She even launched a blog and a public Facebook page, sharing every intimate and painful detail of her battle with cancer. She chronicled the ups, the downs, the struggles of single motherhood, her commitment to holistic healing.
And I gotta say, it was a very compelling narrative. It truly was. Here was this young, beautiful, single mother fighting back against terminal brain cancer with nothing but just her sheer will and willpower and natural remedies, juicing, eating healthy. It was unbelievable. She wasn't just surviving either. She was thriving in all of this.
I mean, it's no wonder that her story resonated so deeply with her audience, which at this point was just snowballing and growing. I mean, the amount of followers that she was getting from sharing her story, it was massive. Now, amidst all of this, Belle also attempted to launch an organic baby clothing line.
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Chapter 4: What were the inconsistencies in Belle Gibson's story?
Extraordinary lies. And if you lie about that and you go to those extraordinary lengths to create the story around that lie, how can we believe anything you say now?
Tara, I have lost everything and I'm not here to regain it. But when you hit rock bottom, there is only an opportunity to be honest and to heal and to apologize. And I'm here to do that. There is no reason for me to lie, and it's not something I want to be doing either. So I didn't know whether I was getting worse. I didn't know if I was getting better. I didn't know if it was the same.
I thought that it was important to go and seek a scan and be confident in where I stood.
I don't mean to be crass about it, but it was also the fact that despite being given a four-month deadline, you were still alive.
Yeah.
Was that an indicator to you that you didn't have brain cancer?
It wasn't an indicator. I went to the Alfred Hospital and I contacted Mark and I said to him, I'm not sure where things are at, so I want to go and get a brain scan. He had me sign paperwork which enlisted him as my medical professional where the scan from the Alfred would be then passed on to him so we could also consult on it. Right. So what did the brain scan show?
He brought in scans and it showed a brain tumour. But that wasn't my scan, because most recently I went back to the Alfred and I got my full portfolio from them. And I did get that brain scan, but there is no brain tumour there. Okay, so what date was that, Bill? When did you go to the Alfred? I will be able to give you this information.
Well, we've already asked for background information. We've asked for all your medical records and your medical history. You haven't given us any dates. You haven't given us any brain scans. You haven't given us any MRIs. You haven't given us any tissue tests. You haven't given us anything.
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Chapter 5: How did Belle's friends and the public uncover the truth?
Initially, the group's leader had assumed that Belle might simply be a girlfriend or a relative of one of the members. But then, as time went on, Belle's behavior raised even more red flags, because she started asking community members questions about their personal financial situations.
So these questions, combined with the warnings from outsiders, convinced this Ethiopian community that something just was not right here with Belle. So in a move to protect their group, the leaders expelled Belle. They barred her from any future events. They were like, no, get out of here, good riddance.
Soon after that, her relationship with Clive also started to unravel, though the full details, they remain a little bit unknown. Clive has been by her side through all of the ups and downs, living with her, supporting her, even raising her son, their son, Oliver, together.
Some people theorized that he was well aware of the inconsistencies in Belle's story, but that he chose to overlook them, just happy to ride the coattails of all of her success. while others believe that his deep bond that he shares with Oliver is what led him to suppress his doubts, all in order to maintain stability for the family and for Oliver, who he treats as his own son.
Now, even as the layers of her personal life and her lies and everything she did, the deception, even as those layers are peeled back, the true motivations behind Belle's elaborate web of lies, it's still a mystery, right? What did she do this for? Why did she lie? I personally think it was for attention,
And then when she started realizing she could get even more attention with a book, with this and that, and started to see the influx of money, I think then it became more financially motivated. But I don't think that it stems from that. I don't think the root was for money. I think it truly was for attention and maybe even acceptance, which is kind of sad, but...
Also kind of desperado and like certainly not a good enough excuse to do what she had done. Now some people believe that her entire act was an attempt to emulate another Australian wellness creator named Jess.
Jess had already made a name for herself by documenting her own battle with cancer and also by, you know, speaking out in support of alternative therapies like Gerson therapy and coffee enemas and all of that. Now, although it wasn't brain cancer, unlike Belle, Jess actually faced a rare aggressive form of skin cancer, which even led doctors to recommend amputating her arm.
But Jess chose to fight back with alternative treatments, and she shared every raw detail of her journey online, even announcing that her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and was following the same treatment plan as she was. It's in therapy, but it's a
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