We’ve been here before, haven’t we? The products change, the packaging gets a makeover, and the scientific vocabulary becomes more sophisticated. Yet the promise remains remarkably familiar: a little help to make us thinner, fitter, calmer, more energetic, or somehow a better version of ourselves.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, the fitness boom brought exercise into our living rooms. Jane Fonda and her contemporaries made home workouts fashionable, while steppers, exercise machines, diet shakes and slimming programmes offered complementary routes to the body we thought we ought to have. A wedding, a holiday or simply the desire to fit into a particular dress could provide the deadline.
SlimFast offered a convenient way to control portions, while home exercise equipment promised to help reshape the body. Combining the two created an appealing formula: a defined routine, a tangible product and a goal that appeared within reach. The appeal was easy to understand, particularly when the desired transformation had a deadline.
Over the following decades, high-protein diets such as Dukan and South Beach attracted followers with their rules, phases and promises of weight loss. Protein powders, once associated primarily with bodybuilding and sports nutrition, gradually found a wider audience. Protein-enriched foods and drinks became convenient options for people interested in satiety, muscle maintenance, recovery and healthy ageing.
There is sound nutritional reasoning behind some of these uses. Protein is essential, and supplementation can be useful when ordinary food doesn’t meet someone’s needs. The growing popularity of protein also illustrates how a legitimate nutritional benefit can become a much broader marketing proposition. Today’s wellness powders take that evolution a step further, combining several ingredients in the hope of delivering multiple benefits in a single serving.
One scoop, several promises
Modern functional powders may contain protein, caffeine, mushrooms, adaptogens, vitamins or other ingredients associated with energy, concentration, stress management and general wellbeing. The precise formulation varies, but the appeal is often similar: why buy several products, or change several habits, when one daily drink appears to offer so much?
Consider mushroom-and-adaptogen blends such as Spacegoods Rainbow Dust. Its published formulation includes lion’s mane, cordyceps, chaga, ashwagandha, maca root, caffeine and vitamin B5. The company markets the product for focus, energy and calm, highlighting its combination of coffee, mushrooms and other plant ingredients. Caffeine has an established effect on alertness, while some ashwagandha preparations have shown promising results in research on stress. Evidence for other proposed benefits, including cognitive enhancement from lion’s mane, remains limited. Spacegoods’ product information and the US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health’s ashwagandha research summary provide useful starting points.
These are legitimate reasons to investigate the ingredients, but they don’t establish that the finished product delivers every benefit suggested by its marketing. Evidence about an individual ingredient cannot automatically be transferred to a complete blend, and a plausible biological mechanism is not the same as a demonstrated result.
The distinction becomes particularly important when the marketing extends beyond energy or focus and encourages expectations about body composition, metabolism or weight.
When the body becomes the problem to solve
A recent Instagram advertisement for a mushroom-based drink caught my attention for a different reason: the way it presented women’s bodies.
The imagery drew attention to abdominal fat, upper arms and thighs, while the accompanying narrative invoked cortisol, stress and the prospect of transformation. The product appeared within a broader story about the body and its supposed obstacles.
This raises an interesting question: what happens when an advertisement does more than promote a product and instead encourages us to reinterpret ordinary physical characteristics as evidence of something that needs fixing?
Cortisol is a real hormone, and chronic stress can influence sleep, appetite and behaviour. However, the appearance of someone’s abdomen, arms or thighs cannot, by itself, establish that cortisol is elevated or that a hormonal problem needs correcting. The presence of mushrooms or adaptogens does not establish that a drink will reduce body fat, either.
The imagery and scientific language work together to create a narrative. One draws attention to a perceived problem; the other offers an explanation that sounds plausible. The product then enters the picture as a convenient response.
We cannot know what every viewer thinks or feels, nor can we establish the intentions behind an advertisement from its presentation alone. We can, however, examine the difference between what a product contains, what research supports and what its marketing may encourage viewers to expect.
Read the fine print
A product marketed to support focus and energy is not the same as a product proven to promote weight loss. The two ideas may appear together in an advertisement, but they represent different claims requiring different evidence.
Rainbow Dust contains caffeine, which can improve alertness, alongside mushrooms and other ingredients that have attracted research interest for various potential benefits. This gives us legitimate reasons to examine the formulation. It does not establish that the finished product produces every benefit suggested by its marketing.
The distinction becomes more interesting when an advertisement places a focus-and-energy product alongside imagery of abdominal fat, soft upper arms or thighs that touch, or introduces a narrative about cortisol and the body’s response to stress. Even without an explicit promise of weight loss, this combination may encourage viewers to connect the product with body transformation.
That connection deserves scrutiny. A product’s ability to support alertness does not establish that it burns fat, reduces abdominal measurements, suppresses appetite or changes body composition. Similarly, a customer’s personal experience, an ingredient study or a plausible biological explanation cannot, on its own, prove that the finished product will deliver a particular outcome to everyone who uses it.
The broader principle is reflected in consumer-protection guidance. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission advises that health-product advertising must be assessed as a whole, including implied claims conveyed through images and testimonials. In the European Union, nutrition and health claims made about foods are subject to specific rules governing which claims are permitted and under what conditions. FTC health-products guidance and the EU Register of Health Claims offer further information.
These principles provide a useful framework for examining advertising without assuming that a product is ineffective or that its manufacturer has acted improperly. The question is whether the expectations created by the presentation are proportionate to the available evidence.
A question of expectations
Wellness products are not inherently useless, and supplements can have a legitimate place in a person’s routine. Convenience, taste and individual experience all matter. The challenge is distinguishing those practical benefits from broader promises that may not be adequately supported.
A few questions can help: What is the product actually designed to do? Are its ingredients present in meaningful quantities? Is there research on the finished formulation, or only on individual components? Does the advertising suggest benefits that the evidence can reasonably support? How does the cost compare with simpler alternatives?
Perhaps the most revealing question is whether we are buying something to address a need we have identified for ourselves, or responding to a need the advertising has encouraged us to perceive.
Wellness trends will continue to evolve. Tomorrow’s miracle ingredient may be today’s familiar pantry staple, repackaged with a new name and a more compelling explanation. Some products will prove useful; others may disappoint. The challenge is to distinguish between them without dismissing everything new or accepting every polished promise at face value.
Curiosity, a healthy degree of scepticism and a willingness to read beyond the label can help us make more informed decisions.
The next time a powder promises to do a little bit of everything, perhaps the most useful question isn’t whether it sounds miraculous, but what, precisely, we have good reason to expect from it.
