Seed was founded in 2018 by two co-founders: Ara Katz and Raja Dhir. The two united over their interest in the microbiome. The microbiome is made up of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses which function collectively in your body to make up a large part of your immune system. The team created their first and only product named after the company: Seed, A Daily Synbiotic. The product, a combination prebiotic and probiotic in pill form seeks to optimize overall health. The company claims that improving one’s microbiome can improve digestion, skin, immunity functions, and more. 

The pills cost $49.99 per month and are delivered to your doorstep once a month. Adults take 2 pills daily with or without food. Seed recommends listening to your body and determining what makes it the happiest. The blend of biotics is custom made, researched backed, and contains one of the most diverse sets of strains on the market. The company claims the strains have a 100% survival rate through simulated digestion meaning that all of the strains are available to your body for use. 

Seed, while unique in its transparency and science forward advertising, replicates a lot of the messaging and design tools used by other wellness brands like the other 3 we studied. This reflection serves as a singular case study analysis of Seed as a brand but it is also representative of the other brands we studied and takes into account what we learned from our interviews and other ethnographic work. Using Goodnight’s spheres of argumentation, a rhetorical tool for classifying arguments and the criteria that should be applied to them to determine legitimacy, we can understand that Seed positions itself as a science centered and science forward brand (Goodnight, 2012, Whidden, 2012). The brand uses science heavy arguments and mainly aims to have consumers evaluate their product using criteria from the technical sphere. Arguments in the technical sphere are legitimized based on their reliance on epistemic knowledge and scientific method; Seed would like consumers to to see their product as being supported by the scientific method and by science in general. 

To do this, Seed centers their science research and their educational materials on the microbiome in their website design. Seed uses their web layout to communicate that their product should be evaluated using technical sphere criteria. The front page of the Seed website features 2 landing tabs dedicated to learning about the science behind the microbiome and the research behind Seed as a product. The choice to put the two tabs on the left indicates that those tabs are where Seed wants consumers to go first as typically people read from left to write. By placing the informational tabs before the shop tab, Seed is foregrounding their science research as a means of establishing legitimacy. Many of the other wellness brands examined replicated this layout. Some were keen to center their science research and others their anti-science research often embedded in founder personal narratives. The effect foregrounds the brands’ beliefs and values in a way that suggests the beliefs and values almost supersede the product in terms of importance. In aligning itself with these methods and practices, Seed is appealing to consumers who want their health products to be held to a technical level of rigor which is assumed to indicate efficacy. While the criteria used to attract a consumer was seen to vary, the foregrounding of ideals as central to the products usefulness did not.

Despite the science heavy layout, Seed does use personal sphere arguments to support their science centered synbiotic. Seed attempts to attract consumers who value the company’s unique levels of research and their prioritization of results driven work, but the wellness space is not always pro-science. This is evidenced by the common consumer aversion to heavily “scienced” products in the health and wellness space such as GMOs or even vaccines (Moldovan, 2018). This aversion is a result of a very common “appeal to nature” logical fallacy which equates nature with inherent goodness and unnaturalness (technology, human intervention) with inherent badness (Moldovan, 2018). It is also a result of the “illusory truth effect” which suggests that if someone has heard a statement before they are more likely to believe it is true (Pennycook et al., 2018). Wellness myths that are anti science gain legitimacy as a result of this effect. Our interviewees testified to the power of this effect. Some emphasized that their knowledge largely came from the idea of public sphere “consensus” and others specifically called out their preference for personal recommendation or their lack of faith in “word of mouth” or general consensus. In all cases, the illusory truth effect seemed on the interviewees mind. 

 Through leveraging their packing, web design, and language, Seed softens the technical sphere arguments to avoid seeming overly scientific and to drive home the idea that their product is in line with a natural state of health. This allows them to attract a wider audience of both pro-science and science averse consumers. While not all brands sought to attract both groups, there was a conscious choice by all of the supplement brands to connect to an audience that was science skeptical. This state of health as “natural” is a recurring theme emphasized by the brands we studied and espoused by our interviewees as a result. Being in good health was often seen as congruent with what is “natural” implying that when humans are unhealthy, they are “unnatural.” Many supplement companies, therefore, walk a fine line between promoting a health that is “natural” and selling man-made, manufactured products. Seed targets consumers who value traditional science, but as our interviews revealed, a belief in science and a scientific method does not always translate to a belief in the medical industrial complex’s idea of “health.” Many who staunchly supported science topics like climate change and the scientific method in general, felt that science often failed them in the doctor's office because doctors were not willing or able to treat them on a personalized level and were most interested in efficiency and prescription. 

To navigate the complexities established in our interviews and brand analysis, Seed taps into this idea of “nature as good”  which is an argument that is firmly personal because of its removal from any kind of definition or epistemic knowledge. It relies on the consumer’s definition of nature and their feelings of wellbeing. The best example of these appeals are in the slogans used throughout Seed’s site. Health related terms of encouragement like “You are a rainforest,” ”It Takes a Brainforest,” and comparisons to humans as “superorganisms, walking talking ecosystems” appear in prominent places throughout the site (Seed, 2020). This choice of language is indicative of Seed’s decision to foreground technical arguments that are reinforced through personal appeals to nature. 

The first quote, “You are a rainforest,” takes the well known ecosystem of a rainforest and compares it to the human body. The slogans reinforce nature as the originator of science by comparing the microbiome in the body to the rainforest. The rainforest is a well beloved ecosystem popular in school curriculum and ad campaigns due to the prominence of the Save the Rainforest campaigns in the ‘80’s and 90’s (Nosowitz, 2019). It is the preferred ecosystem according to Kiley, Ainsworth, van Dongen & Weston (2017). The use of the term “rainforest” alone is an attempt to tap into the adoration held for the grandeur of the ecosystem of the rainforest instilled in many. Seed is suggesting one should revere and protect the ecosystem of the microbiome in the same way. The cultural focus on keeping the rainforest untouched by man also works to suggest that the ecosystem should be as close to natural as possible. The idea that one is like a rainforest brings the human closer to a form nature that should be untouched by man and away from modern perspectives of humanity which are often enmeshed in technology and “scienced” human interventions like a synbiotic. These metaphors work to redirect the attention of those consumers who are apprehensive about overly “scienced” products by connecting the results of their product, an improved internal ecosystem, to a sense of goodness instilled through the comparison to the natural ecosystem of a rainforest by relying on the “nature as good fallacy” evident in our work. 

The addition of the term “brainforest” extends the ecosystem metaphor to science research suggesting that good science research is natural and synergistic, perpetuating a view where science is seen as being inevitable and “revealing” nature's work as opposed to being a result of human intervention. This appeal is not based in fact but in emotion. It speaks to a consumer’s desire to be closer to nature by indicating that the science in Seed’s work is natural. Seed is using these metaphors and slogans to suggest that using their product to improve the microbiome moves one closer to the ideal synergy of the rainforest. While their product is man made, it brings one closer to the natural state of a flourishing rainforest positing the outcome of a product as being natural as more important than whether or not science established a need for the product or the legitimacy of it.  

In combining these technical and personal arguments Seed is appealing to a new demographic of consumers we witnessed in our ethnographic work. These consumers are notably pro-science and are often passionate about veganism or climate change. Despite their pro-science views, the medical industrial complex is often viewed by these consumers as problematic. Often doctors are framed as insensitive or ignorant to female health in specific. Many have had their experiences invalidated by medical professionals and have turned to more “natural” remedies or supplements to address problems doctors offer little sympathy for. Seed offers a product for this audience. An audience that is health and science forward but has been neglected by the current medical establishment. 

Natural remedies are often all that is available without a diagnosis. Seed presents their synbiotic as a middle ground. Somewhere between a product with little research and heavy branding, and a prescription medication. This is where Care Of attempts to land too though they are notably less overtly science laden in their branding. While Outdoor Voices is not a supplement company, their ethos attempts to subvert some of the science defined versions of “health” that Seed and Care Of seem more closely aligned with. Our interviewees associated this traditional view of “health” with brands like Nike which emphasizes calorie burning and sweating. Moon Juice stands far from the other three brands in its alignment with alternative medicine and branding that Seed seems to be consciously pushing back against in their science heavy approach. Seed taps into the pro science ideologies of their consumer by foregrounding their research, their board of advisors, and their sustainability endeavors but they carefully couch these claims in natural appeals using language aesthetics such as those found in the crisp, clean, green packaging of its titular product. Seed is for the modern woman who cares for her health and who both embraces science and questions the medical establishments.