Sugar and caffeine is out, neuroberries, adaptogens, mushrooms and charcoal are in. Chris Schulz charts the rise of optimised wellness tonics.
Two years ago, Jimmy Muir decided he wanted more kick out of his morning coffee. He and his partner Ali had been necking the stuff to help cope with Covid-19 lockdowns in the Coromandel, but, as worldwide infection rates continued to rise, the pair began researching natural products that claim improved health benefits.
They sourced powdered lion’s mane, a wild mushroom that looks like icicles as it grows, and chaga, a jet black tree fungus, and began sprinkling it over their morning drinks. In turn this inspired Wyld, a canned, organic cold brew coffee also containing the fungi cordyceps, L-theanine, an amino acid that occurs in green tea, and MCT oil, a saturated fat found in coconut oil.
The pair’s debut drink sells online for $22 for a four-pack, and has been on sale for four months. Muir downs one before hitting the gym. “It’s just a great way to start the day,” he says. “You’ve got caffeine bringing you up, but L-theanine taking the edge off … lion’s mane for your brain, chaga for your body.”
He claims it improves focus and brain function, giving him the ability to effortlessly switch between the multiple businesses he runs, just like Bradley Cooper’s character in the 2011 film Limitless. “It gives you a mental clarity and it allows you to multi-task,” he says. “It gives you … an amazing adaptability.”
Wyld isn’t the only drink out there claiming remarkable health benefits. Suddenly, cafes, dairies and online stores are crammed full of lifestyle drinks spurning sugar and other nasties in favour of the kinds of things normally found in specialist vitamin bottles, from magnesium and turmeric to collagen and “secret” spice blends.
Brands like Ārepa, Little Elephant and Almighty promise everything from energy and clarity to recuperation and relaxation, as well as improved long-term health improvements, and they’re taking those claims out to the world, trying to nab a chunk of a wellness industry that’s booming during pandemic times.
How much is at stake? Billions – and it’s only getting bigger. But at least one dietitian questions whether all these drinks can do exactly what they say.
Aaron Taylor has a tonic for every mood, every vibe, every niggle, every moment of every day. As the co-founder of wellness beverage brand No Ugly, which he and his partner Jo started four years ago, Taylor offers customers a full-circle experience.
Off to work? Try “Focus”, a brain tonic activated with green tea extract and blackcurrants that will “turn your lights on”. Heading to the gym? Drink “Hydrate”, full of electrolytes, vitamins and pine bark extract. Can’t catch forty winks? Try “Sleep”, with tart cherry, lemon balm and passion flower that some say they can’t fall into slumber without.
Taylor’s even got a tonic called “Libido” that offers to improve horniness. “It’s got ashwagandha [to] relax you and get you in the mood,” he says. “Then it’s got the things that turn you on – maca root, shatavari, fenugreek, zinc.”
Even he’s been surprised by how popular Libido is, saying he was stunned when Countdown supermarkets agreed to stock it. “I thought, ‘These guys aren’t going to go for it.’ They love it.” Now, it’s in most Aotearoa supermarkets for $4 a pop, and many Australian stores too. Later this year, No Ugly’s range of eight drinks will be stocked in the UK and UAE.
Taylor is struggling to keep up with that level of growth. “We used to make 5,000 litres every two or three months. Now we’re doing 500,000 litres every month,” he says. That popularity comes from “super fans” who, Taylor says, drink two or three No Ugly beverages a day through subscription swappa crate services.
Consumers, he says, want more than what a Red Bull or V gives them. “There’s a real shift in consumer behaviour away from sugary rubbish that claims to do something but doesn’t really, to highly efficacious, researched, functional drinks,” says Taylor. “If you’re going to put something in your body, it should be good for you.”
Registered sports dietitian Conrad Goodhew says the boom in wellness tonics has been “insane”. He wrote a thesis in 2015 that covered every energy drink on the market, and almost all of them included sugar and caffeine. Now, it’s heading the other way, and he approves. “There’s been a massive shift in the last five years,” says Goodhew. “A lot of these products are lower in sugar, lower in caffeine, which is great.”
But he questions some of the claims being made in marketing of the products included in the new breed of energy drinks. “There’s so much literature and so many studies that are happening at the moment. You could find one paper that says what they need it to say,” he says. “Yes, there is potentially some science behind it. Is that science right, and is the drink reflecting what the science says?”
After two years of a pandemic, Goodhew agrees many are looking to improve their health. His advice? Do your own research. “There are some strong voices out there in the world at the moment,” he says. “It’s really easy to get caught up in that.”
Head online, and you can find many companies jumping on this trend. Pre-Covid, Grier Govorko was living in Bali with his partner Courtenay Rickey while operating a coconut water business. There, Govork tasted jamu, a traditional Indonesian drink containing turmeric, ginger, black pepper and oils.
The former Red Hot Chili Peppers stage designer returned to Aotearoa and developed Little Elephant, a range of three 100ml tonic shots, one of which, “Recover”, closely resembles the recipe for jamu. It’s packed full of turmeric, which is, Govork says, a natural anti-inflammatory.
He drinks Recover, which costs $24 for a six-pack, to help stop old motorbike injuries from flaring up, and says anyone suffering from arthritis should do the same. “A lot of them say, ‘This has been really helpful, it eases the pain I’m dealing with.'”
Despite supply issues during the pandemic, Govork says business is growing. He doesn’t see the trend heading under the bridge any time soon. “People said the same thing about coconut water,” he says. Now, it’s a mainstay. “This isn’t a fad.”
Almighty founder Ben Lenart agrees. He began selling juice blends several years ago, but things really took off when he added flavoured sparkling water, using natural ingredients like yuzu, lime, passionfruit, charcoal and blood orange, to his range. They cost $14 for a six-pack, and he says they’re flying out the door.
It’s booming, he believes, because customers have been underserved for years. “There are a whole lot of people that used to drink energy drinks, but don’t any more,” he says. “Health, artificial ingredients, they’ve grown out of those drinks. We want to provide the same function, in a different, healthier, modern format.”
While those health benefits can be debated – one nutritionist spoken to by The Spinoff said the industry was too new to comment on without serious research – the market share cannot. The global trend towards health and wellness is booming, with yoga, mindfulness, organic food and meditation options everywhere you look.
Wellness tonics are just one part of that, and thanks to his advertising background, Taylor keeps a keen eye on the industry. He has a target for No Ugly to hit. “The category of functional beverages is [worth] $38 billion across five western markets. We want to grow to $100 million in five years.”
That’s just a small percentage of market share, but to do that, he’ll need to get high on his own supply and knock back a few of his own drinks. “We have to be focused and astute, so we can take it around the world.”
Much of this sounds like woo-woo, branded drinks to be seen sucking back while carting your yoga mat along Ponsonby Road after nailing pigeon pose in your Lululemon pants. When I mentioned this story to a workmate, she shook her head and repeated a common refrain often aimed at the vitamin industry: “They’re just pissing it down the toilet … Just eat a carrot and drink some water.”
Consumers have a right to be sceptical, according to Goodhew, the sports dietician, who says health benefits should always be backed by scientific research. “They can make these claims, but are they listing the papers where those claims came from?” he says. “There’s no hard evidence for a lot of this stuff to say, ‘Yes, this is great, we should all use it.'”
Ārepa founder Angus Brown is someone who did spend time and money on scientific research to back up his brand’s core claim: that its blackcurrant drink really can improve brain function, relieve cognitive stress and even help recovery from concussion. He spent a year creating a mock drink just like Ārepa but with none of the benefits which is being used as a placebo in clinical trials, now underway at the University of Auckland.
The company has a full-time team of 12 and is stocked nationwide, and across Australia, Singapore and China. Ārepa even has celebrity fans: Brown says All Blacks players knock his drink back during test matches, basketballer Steven Adams has been known to imbibe, and Taika Waititi’s been buying it for his Thor cast mates to help them perform at their peak.
Brown has even bigger dreams, declaring that he wants to be “bigger than V” within three years. “We’re a young company, we’re not going anywhere, we’ve got nothing else to do,” he says. “We’re made in New Zealand by a New Zealand company with New Zealand ingredients. Why shouldn’t New Zealand be doing that?”
But competition is growing, and Brown keeps a watchful eye on other brands. He’s prepared to issue patent infringements to those that get too close to his protected Ārepa formula. “We’re putting our documentation together to say ‘Hey, you’re infringing. Please take this particular product off the shelf and redevelop it.'”
He’s got another reason to chase his dream of topping V. Brown began his career by selling the beverage into supermarkets, and he watched in horror when a young girl picked up a 700ml can that he’d just placed on the shelf and took it to the checkout.
“I’d lost a friend to mental health, I’d lost a grandparent to cognitive decline,” he says. “I had this epiphany, ‘Am I doing any good here?’ It was a dark night of the soul.”
Now, every time he sells a $6.99 bottle of Ārepa, which he says could top three million this year, he feels like he’s reversing any of the damage he may have caused back then. “I’m making up for all the karma from selling energy drinks in my previous career.”