We've known for 245 years.
The film makes some uncomfortable claims. It didn't get there on a hunch. This is the research behind them.
The film makes some uncomfortable claims. It didn't get there on a hunch. This is the research behind them.
The evidence that conventional footwear damages the foot isn't new. It started with the first anatomical warning in 1781, and the studies have kept coming ever since.
The damage shoes do shows up in the body as musculoskeletal disease: the bones, joints, muscles and connective tissue, from the feet up through the knees, hips and back. Bunions, fallen arches, knee and hip pain: the conditions the film is about all fall under this heading. In Switzerland it is one of the costliest health problems there is.
The annual cost of musculoskeletal disease in Switzerland. More than double what cancer costs.
View the data ↗Source: Swiss Health Observatory (Obsan) & FOPH — MonAM, Costs of NCDs (2022); Stucki, M. et al. (2025).
If shoes are shaped wrong, part of the answer is in how designers are taught. The foot, the thing the shoe is built around, is largely absent from footwear design training.
of footwear training programmes don't mention the foot at all.
* Between finishing the film and compiling this data, one programme updated its curriculum to include the foot, bringing this figure from 79% to 76%.
Source: Stupid Shoes research, 2026 — a survey of 42 footwear design, last-making & shoemaking programmes worldwide.
The figures and findings on this page are drawn from published research and the expert interviews conducted for the documentary Stupid Shoes. They are presented to show the evidence behind the film, not as medical advice. Sources are linked throughout; where a number comes from our own survey it is labelled as such. Classifications reflect publicly available information at the time of review and may not capture every detail. If you spot something that needs updating, we'd like to hear about it.