In hot water? The detox tea phenomenon explored

Z-list celebs flashing chiselled abs on Instagram. Soap stars squeezing into last-minute wedding dresses. Even middle-aged ex-boxers battling back to fighting weight. All papped sipping new detox teas that controversially claim to melt fat.

Converts report bountiful energy, stubborn flab shrinking, and junk food cravings cured. “Life changing.” “Amazing.” “My body is so free of toxins and so much lighter,” gush reviews.

The proof is in the pictures. Hundreds of them. Galleries of before and after shots shared by young women showing off their shrinking waists after as little as 14 days, results that have unsurprisingly fuelled a surge in the popularity of the ‘Teatox’.

There’s a backlash brewing, though. Behind benign branding and celeb selfies lie serious concerns about the ingredients used by brands to deliver these results.

A petition calling for the removal of “dangerous laxatives” in many detox teas attracted 28,000 signatures last month, diet watchdogs have labelled the craze “unsafe”, and influential publications including Teen Vogue have warned young women to steer clear.

So who’s flogging detox teas? What is the evidence against them? And do the brands and retailers currently cashing in on detox teas have a leg to stand on, or will they get burned?

Sold as 14 day to four-month plans, the majority of detox teas claim to improve health and help users slim down with a two-step system. One daytime tea, often containing a mix of green tea, caffeinates or ‘Eastern botanicals’ to energise is drunk daily, with a nighttime tea added in every other day to ‘cleanse the colon’.

Wielding weight loss transformations online and shipping samples to Insta-icons like Kylie Jenner (who shared a snap clutching a pack of SkinnyMint with her 78 million Instagram followers), the popularity of detox tea has soared. A quick search on Google brings up 11 million hits, market leader Bootea has twice the Twitter followers (53.4k) of PG Tips. And the sales are huge. A year ago, Holland & Barrett CEO Peter Aldis told The Grocer leading brand Bootea was his favourite product after performing “very well” across the health chain’s 620 UK outlets.

Success is certainly working for Bootea’s bottom line. Charging 14 times the price of an average cuppa (42p/teabag compared with 3p), sales skyrocketed 84% last year and profits climbed 54%, though the brand refused countless tweets and emails from The Grocer to talk this through. As did many of its rivals.

That doesn’t surprise Dr Lauretta D’Honneur. Ever since the nutrition and weight loss specialist added her voice to a growing number of Teatox critics, she says UK-based Bootea has been poor at engaging over concerns they and other brands both mislead young women and put them at risk. Two cups of tea per day may “seem a very convenient approach to weight loss” she says, but there is no science to back up the claim it works at all. Despite approaching a number of leading brands for their evidence, all were “mysteriously silent” - except for Slendertox, a brand set up three years ago selling teas, shakes and capsules.

Slendertox claims its teas help “to break down the fatty deposits that adhere to the gastrointestinal tract” but only cited “500 positive reviews” as evidence of this. “This makes absolutely no sense. How is it legal for them to be making these crazy claims with absolutely no evidence?” says D’Honneur.

Scientific evidence to back up the craze simply doesn’t exist, adds British Dietetic Association (BDA) spokeswoman Sian Porter.

“How is it legal for them to be making these crazy claims with absolutely no evidence?”

Bootea has already fallen foul of the ASA in 2014. Owner Eight Twenty Ventures was ordered to remove 10 health claims from its website including ‘allows you to reach weight loss goals’, ‘cleanse and detoxify’ and ‘counteract fat storage’ after failing to provide any scientific evidence for the statements. It has since calmed down the rhetoric to ‘assisting with the overall health and wellbeing’ of its one million customers instead, who are left feeling ‘energised and motivated to reach their goals’.

Other brands free from a regulatory slap on the wrists are less cautious. Slendertox still claims its products break down fat, while Teami UK says its teas ‘aid in weight management,’ and ‘reduce bloating’.

But customers that do shed pounds only do so as a result of “the halo effect” insists Porter, as they substitute high-calorie food and drink for detox teas despite advice to eat a normal healthy diet along with exercise. And short-term effects include “pooing out everything”, as many leading detox teas contain a laxative, often senna leaf.

“It can make you feel like you’re losing weight, you’re slimmer and cleansed,” explains D’Honneur, but the negative side effects prompted her and the BDA to speak publicly on the potential danger of many detox tea programmes, launching a petition that called for the removal of the ingredient, attracting 28,000 signatures in a little under two months.

“I had the worst cramps of my life and it lasted two days,” she says of her own experience with a detox tea. “I’ve never had that when I’ve taken a single tablet of senna.”

She isn’t alone. Reviews report “sharp pains” capable of waking them in the night and “rushing to the loo” to relieve themselves. “From the petition I got so many emails, comments and tweets saying: I had no idea, I just thought it was a cup of tea,” she adds. “I had two girls who said they brewed it for a long time as they thought the stronger it was, the more cleansing, and then had no idea why they were so ill.”

Use of a laxative can be far more dangerous than a few unwanted cramps, she adds. In the shorter term loss of fluids and electrolytes can lead to dehydration, while prolonged use can contribute to muscle damage, heart arrhythmia and a lazy bowel dependent on laxatives. “You’ve got side effects that aren’t overly pleasant and people aren’t aware of it because of the way they’ve been marketed as something totally benign.”

Embarrassing situations

But the brands behind the trend refute the allegations. “We don’t have any concerns about senna as an ingredient,” says Shannon Bruce, spokeswoman at Slendertox. “It’s FDA approved and used quite frequently in other teas. It’s a gentle laxative and we only included it in our ‘sleeptoxes’, which are supposed to be taken every two days.”

And yet brands do warn customers of unpleasant side effects. SkinnyMint says customers “may feel a churning tummy and visit the bathroom more often”, while Bootea recommends customers begin a plan either on a weekend or day off so they “can go to the toilet when necessary” and avoid “embarrassing situations”.

Both advise products should be taken only for the recommended period of time, with SkinnyMint specifying a six-week break between packs.

Yet Bootea appears to run roughshod over its own advice by offering savings for those who sign up to repeat subscription packages delivering new tea programmes monthly, and several published reviews refer to continued use, including a 15-year-old “seeing results” from her second consecutive Teatox.

The trouble lies largely in this young, female demographic, say critics. “Endorsed by celebrities like the Kardashians, these brands shamelessly plug their products to a very susceptible audience, particularly teenage girls and young women,” says Porter. “Often people say, where’s the harm? But in something like this, there is a lot of harm.”

“These brands shamelessly plug their products to a very susceptible audience”

“It’s the maturity level of knowing when something is off or not,” adds D’Honneur. “I spoke to a 15-year-old who took it for two months and she tweeted me to say ‘I’m having these pains and feeling dizzy, might it be the tea?’ It didn’t occur to her, she just wanted to be thin so she powered on through the cramps and the illness.”

Some brands are already backing away from laxatives. Though insisting it’s had “no complaints” about the senna in its nighttime teas, Slendertoxtea says it will strip the ingredient from future products. “There was such controversy around it, we didn’t want to be involved in anything that could cause health issues or sell things people were concerned about,” says Bruce.

And brands that purposely position themselves as an antidote to the laxative trend have begun to emerge.

“Since our launch we’ve become slightly wary of being on the ‘skinny tea’ bandwagon,” says the Skinny Tea Co. “The majority of skinny teas come nicely packaged but only contain senna, which has then been blended with various other herbs and additives of dubious value. All of our teas are 100% laxative-free.”

But with “cash rolling in week in and week out”, according to Slendertoxtea head of buying Andrew Watt, are market leaders such as Bootea and SkinnyMint likely to make the same change?

Quietly it seems they already are. The brand has recently amended its packaging to clarify the inclusion of senna, according to Holland & Barrett, while the retailer has begun selling a laxative-free version in stores “for those customers who would prefer this.”

Along with Ocado and Amazon, the high street retailer should continue to keep a close eye on developments or risk being swept up in controversy going forward, suggests branding expert Allyson Stewart-Allen.

They could “consider delisting as or when more authorities prove the product is dangerous” she adds. “Alternatively, these retailers could take a stand now to delist these products, which would enhance their reputations among their target market segments.”

That might rob them of the fruits of the detox tea trend in the short term. But it might also win them plaudits when, and if, the backlash against teatox reaches boiling point.