Green Powders, Lead Poisoning and the Illusion of Variety

And how some actually useful green things stack up.

I believe we live in an ever intellectually regressing society, and I feel one horseman of that apocalypse is the need to simplify complex spectrums into A or B absolutes. This is likely due to the collectively degrading attention span, chipped at constantly by apps built like slot machines and the constant pressure to deliver a message as quickly as possible. Our interactions with one another have dissolved into post modern telegrams, and there’s something true about the media being a mirror to the state of things. These days, if you google something, a summary appears to save you the impossible labor of I don’t know, fucking reading for ten minutes? Doing independent research? Critical thinking?

I find that the questions my clients ask me most often start out with “what should I -”, “what’s the best-”, “is _____ bad?”, and the like. On a daily basis, I am asked by folks who have a lot of financial access to preventative medicine to answer questions about their health based on anecdotes. This is powerful. Googling, reading, and watching have lost their place as informational kingpins - if you can’t verify, you can’t believe.

This doesn’t seem to have the same ring on avenues like TikTok, where creators yap incessantly about supplements that they coincidentally partner with, and it doesn’t fit into the current module for discussing catch-all health issues: the omnipresent gut health. Personally, I must have missed when all the same cringey Mumford and Sons people on the internet went from selling pyramid scheme vitamins to being gut health e-book authors - but they sure have cornered the intellectual market when you go looking for information.Whether you google, Instagram, TikTok, X, or Reddit, the term “gut health” is an outrageous funnel into which useless product recommendations and psuedoscience readily tumbles - right into whatever bottle you are convinced to buy, right into your gullet. Sorry - your gut.

Of the most offensive simplified spectrums, referring to any and all issues of the digestive system as “gut health” has been an irresponsibly weaponized tool to force many irrelevant and some potentially harmful substances into the shopping carts of many of you. This phrase has somehow flown over very real diagnoses, examinations, elimination diets and healing substances - I would love to read a think piece comparing the amount of things that are good vs. bad for the “gut” - according to the internet, of course.

Anyway, there are a couple of products being thrown in our collective, blue-lit faces - that I’d like to help you navigate. Today we’ll start with green powders. We’ve all seen the infamous rise and fall of Bloom - the mysterious healthified koolaid mix that literally every influencer on the internet seemed to have partnered with over the last year or so. We’ve also seen Athletic Greens, and I’d like you to note the marketing involved with both. Bloom has positioned itself in a very smart, influencer-based strategy incorporating Bloom and its friendly, frilly packaging as a lifestyle brand, seen on the quartzite countertops and makeup tables of TikTok gurus and sensations. AG1, on the other hand, went the “this is a serious greens brand” route - marketing more like a Nike ad than a nutritional product. Bloom is selling you a chiseled 6 pack in Lululemon, and AG1 is selling you a deadlift PR and an Aura ring. Do you follow?

Let me make this very clear: I am biased as hell. I hate these brands. If these brands have no haters, I am dead, and if they have on hater in ten universes, it’s me. The reality is, these products will not get you a six pack, they will not heal you, and they will definitely not save your life - but they will prey on your (our, societal) desire to buy an entire lifestyle in a quickly consumable powder that you don’t have to think about.

Let me be real with you. I work with professional athletes, specifically with active players in the NFL. Not one single one of my players takes anything other than protein or collagen in powdered form. I know we aren’t all professional athletes, but if they can train how they train without a little green jar full of bullshit, so can you - the key word here is train. So let’s get into why green powders do not need to be a part of your supplement roster - and if you get offended at some point in the next few paragraphs, I encourage you to sit in a cross legged position near the ground and ask yourself how many hours spent scrolling on the internet could’ve been used for eating fresh food. Come back to me after that and I’ll still probably tell you to kick rocks, but with more love.

• You do not need a prebiotic. Unless a stool test and GI exam confirms that you have a non functional digestive system, you do not need to buy or consume a prebiotic. The fresh food that you eat throughout the day is ALL you need to support a healthy, happy balance in your belly.

• If you drink alcohol, give up on your gut health. Alcohol is poison. This is not a morality take, this is scientifically proven time and time again. Every time you drink, you cause mass cellular death throughout your entire body, and you massacre the bacteria just doing its best in your stomach. There is no powder on planet earth that can offset the toxic damage that alcohol does to your body. You can be mad, but it’s true.

• Fiber is required for digestion, bacterial balance and regeneration of digestive tissues. You must consume fiber from fresh (*or fresh frozen) fruits and vegetables. You must also consume insoluble fiber throughout the day from grains or nuts. There’s a reason that fiber is added back into green powders - it’s because when the produce is dehydrated, a huge chunk of its nutritional value goes away - fiber, minerals, and kind of an important one - water - all of which you’d get in full from just eating fruit.

• There is not enough of literally anything in a green powder to make it worth buying. You need to eat between 500-600g of fresh produce per day (the FDA will say less, but they also think seed oils and man made butter are good, so fuck them, too) to satisfy the very basic nutritional requirements of the category. The majority of green powders give you a serving of 5-10g, maybe 20g, and due to a complete lack of regulation in the supplement industry, proprietary blend ingredient labels do not tell you how much of that is tapioca, cellulose, or some other (benign) filler or binder. You can, instead, eat one apple, a cup of snap peas, a cup of berries, and I don’t know, vegetables with every meal? Like you should be doing anyway? You can easily fit 500g of fresh (*or fresh frozen) fruits and vegetables into one smoothie. These companies want to paint you a picture that a smiling hippie with an armful of vegetables is working diligently to dehydrate dozens of apples, papayas and wheatgrass baskets to support your health. That’s not true.

• A lot of supplements use algae as a chlorophyll component. Spirulina or chlorella, both incredible easy to grow at a huge scale, both incredibly unregulated, both often coming from horrific growing practices and riddled with lead. This recent Consumer Labs test ranked AG1 as one of the highest-in-lead testing green powders - and before you start yapping about it being a small amount anyway - this is a product designed to literally replace meals and servings of fresh food. This is a really big fucking deal. There are good sources of chlorella (I find it better across the board in terms of minerals / benefits for the body than spirulina) - and if you are lacking in the appropriate micronutrients, then you should take it. If not, stick to a couple celery sticks. You’ll be ok.

• Anything you heard on TikTok about chlorophyll water is complete and utter bullshit. Drinking mysteriously sourced green water is not going to help you. Do not confuse this with chlorophyll not being good - it is - but for fuck’s sake, eat some broccoli! Some spinach! Parsley! LITERALLY ANYTHING GREEN!

• The variety of fruits and vegetables listed on the label does not equal huge mineral gains. Please understand that your post-Bloom diarrhea is not “cleansing”, it’s your digestive system wondering why the fuck it just ate kiwis, collard greens, seaweed and asparagus in one sitting.

• The cost of these powders is outrageous and quite frankly criminal. I just saved you $35-85/month, so I don’t know, maybe subscribe to this newsletter.

I sincerely hope this article makes you reconsider your next greens purchase - there is not a single reason on earth to buy one. You do have time to buy fruits and veggies once a week, wash them, prep them, and put them in baggies or containers in your fridge. You do have time to cook vegetables. You do have time to add diversity and intention to your diet, because all of the time you gain from cutting corners now will be shaved off from the end of your life. You deserve health and vitality, as long as the knowledge to achieve it yourself - you do not need the supplement industry. I love you.

In Health,
Anna