General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Goop Lab

The Goop Lab (also known as The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow) is an American documentary-style reality television series released on Netflix on January 24, 2020, in which the actress and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow and her company's staff explore controversial wellness practices, including psychedelic therapy, energy healing, cold exposure, fasting for longevity, female sexual pleasure, and psychic mediumship.¹^•²^•³ The single season comprises six episodes of roughly 30 minutes each and carries a TV-MA rating.¹

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	January 24, 2020, on Netflix²
Format	1 season, 6 episodes, about 30–33 minutes each; documentary and reality TV genres¹
Hosts	Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop chief content officer Elise Loehnen²
Episode topics	Psychedelic therapy, energy healing, cold therapy (Wim Hof method), female pleasure, fasting for longevity, psychic communication³
Critical scores	Metacritic metascore 40 (mixed or average); IMDb 2.7/10 from about 3,600 users; Rotten Tomatoes 29%⁴^•¹
Disclaimer	Every episode opens with a statement that the series is "designed to entertain and inform — not provide medical advice"⁵
Follow-up	Netflix and goop followed the series with Sex, Love & goop in 2021⁶

Spoilers

Format and episodes

Each episode follows the same structure: Paltrow and Loehnen sit down with experts in a wellness-related field, discuss a health intervention, and then send Goop employees, or sometimes themselves, to test it first hand.⁷ The season opens in Jamaica, where Goop staffers drink psilocybin (hallucinogenic compound in 'magic mushrooms') tea under the supervision of three "psychedelic elders"; psilocybin mushrooms are not regulated there, which allowed the filming.³^•⁵

Named episodes include "The Healing Trip" (psychedelics), "The Energy Experience" (energy healing with practitioner John Amaral), "The Health-Span Plan" (fasting for longevity), "The Pleasure is Ours" (female sexual pleasure), and "Are You Intuit?" (psychic mediumship).¹^•⁵^•² In the pleasure episode, Paltrow interviews the sex educator Betty Dodson, who corrects her on air that the vagina is the birth canal only and that the discussion should concern the vulva.⁵ In the fasting episode, Paltrow completes a five-day fasting program, the ProLon Diet developed by a doctor at USC, which Goop sells on its website for $249.²

Several Goop staffers appear on camera as skeptics of the practices being tested, saying they do not believe in psychic mediumship or energy healing; reviewers noted, however, that Paltrow and her staff do little to fact-check the claims of the experts they host.³

Reception

Critical response was mixed to negative. The show's Metacritic metascore is 40, with 7 of 14 collected critic reviews negative, 5 mixed, and 2 positive.⁴ Audience ratings on aggregate sites are low: IMDb records 2.7/10 from about 3,600 users and Rotten Tomatoes 29%.¹

Reviewers divided over what the show actually is. Daniel D'Addario of Variety called it a "carefully structured, elegantly built, compulsively watchable show about, mainly, complete nonsense" and scored it 70.⁴ Judy Berman of Time described it as "a high-end infomercial masquerading as an investigative docuseries," arguing that the show lends authority to unproven claims through its clinical aesthetic, testimonials framed as "case studies," and citations of research papers without proper context.⁵ A WIRED review took a more sympathetic view, noting that the series offers controversial treatments to people who feel failed by conventional options and that few episodes come across as outright endorsements.³ The Australian outlet Compare TV gave it 3/5, calling it an entertaining watch for those intrigued by wellness trends but lacking rigorous analysis.⁸

Scientific criticism

Health experts and science writers criticized the series for presenting therapies with little or no supporting evidence. The ABC's health coverage concluded that, despite the "lab" in its title, the series is light on science, exaggerates what evidence exists, and relies heavily on testimonials and anecdotes, while noting that the episode on female sexual health was the one that got things right.⁷ Timothy Caulfield, who researches health law and policy at the University of Alberta, has called Goop's approach "the wellness version of fake news" and "an infomercial for the gestalt that is Goop."³

Fact-checkers examined specific claims. On the Wim Hof method of cold therapy and controlled hyperventilation featured in the first episode, Caulfield said the supposed benefits lack scientific evidence and that the method could be dangerous; one Goop employee reported panic-attack symptoms during the breathing exercise.⁹ On fasting and aging, the ABC noted that while calorie restriction improves biomarkers of aging in animals, evidence that it influences the biology of aging in humans is limited.⁷ In the energy healing episode, Amaral invoked the double-slit experiment of quantum mechanics to claim that consciousness alters physical reality; a physicist quoted in an Ars Technica analysis responded that quantum mechanics does not provide the mental power to balance energies or cure disease.⁵ Writing in The Independent, a physician described the show as unbalanced misinformation that can be dangerous.¹⁰

Context: Goop's record on health claims

The series arrived against the background of a 2018 legal settlement. In September 2018, Goop paid $145,000 in civil penalties to settle allegations by California prosecutors that it made unscientific claims about three products: the jade "yoni egg" marketed for vaginal insertion to improve sex lives, the "heart-activating" Rose Quartz Egg, and the Inner Judge Flower Essence Blend tincture. The stipulated judgment also required the company to refrain from making efficacy claims without competent and reliable scientific evidence and to offer refunds to affected California consumers.⁹^•¹¹ The consumer watchdog Truth in Advertising later complained that Goop's marketing still contained health claims lacking scientific support.¹¹

Goop itself was founded by Paltrow in 2008 as a weekly email newsletter and grew into a lifestyle and e-commerce company covering beauty, wellness, style, and culture.¹² The company's own timeline describes the Netflix collaboration as a wellness anthology show intended to cram "as much useful info as possible into each episode," followed by Sex, Love & goop in 2021.⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Factual entertainment and specialist-interest formats › Premiered 2020 to 2026

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?