What the Research Describes

Most consumer health information is wrong.

That sentence sounds like an opinion. It is not. It is one of the most replicated findings in the science-of-science literature. Systematic reviews of consumer health content across major platforms have consistently found that 25-50% of what readers encounter is misleading, exaggerated, or unsupported by evidence. The supplement market alone is over $170 billion globally, most of it sold against claims the underlying research doesn't support. Press releases routinely overstate findings; news coverage inherits the overstatement; social posts strip the qualifications. By the time a claim reaches a consumer, the methodological detail that made the original research meaningful is gone.

This is the gap Proco was founded to occupy.

The system as it exists

In 2026, the consumer health information ecosystem looks roughly like this:

Researchers publish findings. Methods are described in detail. Effect sizes are reported. Limitations are acknowledged. Confidence intervals appear in the data. The published paper is honest about what it found and what it didn't.

Press offices interpret findings. Press releases describe the work to journalists. Internal pressure to make findings sound important produces overstatement — a 2014 BMJ study found that 33-40% of university press releases contained claims more confident than the underlying papers.

News coverage inherits the overstatement. When press releases exaggerate, news coverage almost always inherits the exaggeration. When press releases are careful, news coverage tends to remain careful.

Influencers and content creators amplify. The most-engaging health content — the kind that performs on platforms — tends to be the most confident, most simplified, and most emotionally provocative. Nuance loses to certainty.

Brands and marketers monetise. Supplement companies, wellness brands, and DTC health companies build products against the simplified versions. The original research recedes further.

Consumers receive the result. What lands in front of a person looking up "what should I take for sleep" or "is X supplement worth it" is several steps removed from what the published research actually says.

Each step in this chain is occupied by people doing reasonable things from their own incentives. No single actor is malicious. The aggregate result is still a system that produces overstated, decontextualised health claims at scale.

What we're building

Proco is an editorial layer in this system, plus a product that surfaces editorial information at the moment of consumer decision.

The editorial work. Our team publishes research-based content across sleep, longevity, performance, nutrition, AI in health, and methodology. The defining feature isn't the topics — it's the voice. We describe what trials and studies measured. We don't tell readers what to do. The distinction is the difference between information and prescription, and it is the foundation of everything we publish.

This is harder than it sounds. The instinct to write "you should" or "try this dose" or "the best protocol for sleep is" is strong, partly because that's how almost all consumer health content reads, partly because it makes content feel useful and complete. Resisting that instinct — at the sentence level, every sentence — is the editorial discipline that distinguishes Proco's content from the consumer health space we operate in.

The product layer. Proco Scanner reads any supplement label and surfaces what the published research describes for each ingredient. The app does not diagnose, recommend treatment, or claim therapeutic effects. It does the cross-referencing work between the bottle and the literature; the consumer gets an honest description of what's known. Scanner is in late-stage development for iOS, and supplements are the starting category. Other product tools will follow as we expand into different health verticals.

The compliance discipline. Every piece of Proco content follows internal Content Compliance Standards: information vs. advice distinction enforced at the sentence level, mandatory vulnerable-population warnings, citation density on every health claim, independence from supplement-industry funding. Marina, our co-founder and editorial owner, runs a four-step pre-publication checklist on every piece. Content that fails any step doesn't ship until rewritten.

The framework is designed to remain compliant with EU Medical Devices Regulation 2017/745, Health Claims Regulation EC 1924/2006, Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC, and Irish Advertising Standards. The compliance position is also our editorial position — we think the framing constraints exist for good reasons, and operating within them produces better information for readers.

What we believe

Several positions guide what we do:

Information has more value than advice. Confident advice from a non-clinician based on partial evidence isn't useful regardless of the credentials of the person giving it. Describing what research actually shows — and pointing readers to qualified professionals where personal application is warranted — is more useful in the long run than the alternative.

Citation density is editorial discipline. Every health claim should link to primary research. Readers should be able to verify what we say. This is uncomfortable for content writers because it surfaces uncertainty that simpler writing would hide. We think the discomfort is worth it.

Independence matters. We don't accept supplement-industry funding for editorial content. We don't run affiliate marketing. We don't take payment to feature specific products. Scanner is a paid app; that is our business model. The constraints this places on revenue are real and chosen.

Trust compounds. Health content is high-trust content. Readers come to Proco because they want substance — what the science actually shows, not what an influencer or supplement brand wants them to believe. The discipline of saying "research shows X" instead of "you should do X" is what separates Proco from the wellness-content economy. Done consistently over time, that discipline compounds into a position the rest of the market can't easily replicate.

Scope of competence matters. We're an information company, not a medical service. We don't diagnose conditions, prescribe treatments, or claim therapeutic effects. The boundary between information and clinical practice exists for good reasons, and we operate carefully within it.

What this isn't

A few things Proco is not, in case any are unclear:

It's not a recommendation engine. We don't tell users which supplements to take, which sleep protocols to follow, which exercises to do, or which diets to adopt. We describe what trials measured. Personal application requires personal context we can't address.

It's not a personalisation play. We're skeptical of consumer health personalisation that promises specific recommendations based on quizzes, biomarker panels, or AI inference. The evidence base for personalised supplement or behavioural recommendations is much weaker than the marketing suggests.

It's not an affiliate marketing operation. The closer health-information content gets to product-sales revenue, the more compromised the information tends to become. We've chosen a business model that keeps the two separate.

It's not a thought-leadership content farm. We publish slowly compared with most health-content producers. Each piece takes substantial research, careful writing, compliance review, and citation checking. The result is fewer pieces of higher integrity rather than the reverse.

It's not a venture-backed growth story. We're bootstrapped. We're not actively raising. We're building toward sustainability through a paid Scanner subscription, not through scaling content production to attract acquisition.

What success would look like

The honest answer is that success would look like Proco occupying a position in the consumer health information space that doesn't currently exist with consistency. A source consumers can navigate to for genuine research-based information rather than research-flavoured marketing. A product that helps people understand what's in front of them at the moment of decision, without telling them what to do.

If, in five years, "Proco" is shorthand among informed consumers for "the place that takes the research seriously," that's the goal. If our editorial standards influence how some other health content gets produced — through example or through readers expecting more — that's the broader systemic outcome.

The team is small. The early audience is small. The category is large and the existing players are well-funded. We're aware. We think the position is worth occupying anyway.

Free reading: research briefs

We publish citation-dense research briefs on each topic hub. They describe what trials measured — no advice, no marketing claims. Below: the Sleep brief is the first one to read.

The Performance brief is here too if you'd rather start with training research:

Both are fair samples of how we work.

How to engage with us

Read the content. Our editorial coverage lives at the topic hubs: sleep, longevity, performance, nutrition, AI in health, research methodology, and the wellness industry landscape.

Join the Scanner waitlist. Coming to iOS. Request early access.

Email if you find errors. Editorial fact-checking is welcomed. hello@procohq.com (subject: EDITORIAL).

Cover us if you're a journalist. Press resources at /press.

Share content you find useful. Our reach grows by reader recommendation, not by paid acquisition. If a Proco piece helped you think about something more clearly, sharing it with someone who'd benefit is the most useful thing you can do.

— Johnny Meagher, on behalf of the Proco team Dublin, Ireland May 2026