Welcome to Debunker, a weekly breakdown of misleading (and sometimes flat-out wrong!) news from the worlds of science, health, and more—for Beast Inside members only.
On the day after Thanksgiving—notoriously the most gluttonous day of the year—rapper Cardi B posted an Instagram of herself in her underwear, holding a clear bottle of dark liquid.
“Hey guys, this is my body four months after giving birth, and I lost a little bit more weight than I actually wanted to lose,” she coyly said. Cardi B then thanked TeaMi, the detox tea brand, which she drank “every morning—well, some mornings” to “help curb my appetite and help my metabolism go a little bit faster.”
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“And this is how I been looking,” Cardi B said, with a swivel of her hips.
Actress Jameela Jamil of The Good Place saw the post on Saturday and immediately quoted it in a tweet, cursing celebrities like Cardi B who hawk detox teas and saying she hoped they “shit their pants in public, the way the poor women who buy this nonsense upon their recommendation do.”
Jamil followed this tweet up with what she thought was a healthier way to lose weight: eating fiber-rich greens.
So is Jamil right? Do detox teas cause horrible diarrhea—and are they a (literally) crappy way to lose weight?
“[The detox teas are] absolutely potentially dangerous,” David S. Seres, an associate professor of medicine in the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center and chair of the medical nutrition counsel of the American Society for Nutrition.
Detox teas—often referred to as “teatox”—span a wide variety of drinks that include not only TeaMi but a variety of other brands that use a liquid (often brewed with an herb or powder) to induce bowel movement.
And while the Cardi B and Jameela Jamil beef has pushed TeaMi into the spotlight, it’s not the only detox tea out there, nor is the rapper the only one making plum cash by pairing a testimonial with a pout and a pose. Kylie Jenner has posted on behalf of TeaMi. Her older half-sister Khloe Kardashian has posted about Flat Tummy Tea. Hillary Duff swears that Lyfe Tea has helped “curb [her] sweet tooth.”
No matter the name, the goal of each tea is the same: induce number two. Still, Seres said that among detox teas, there are differences in how they go about getting you to the loo.
“Some have a direct effect on the gut to cause it to move faster,” he said. “Some have a lot of minerals that bring a lot of water to flood into the gut.”
Either way, laxatives are neither an effective nor healthy way to lose weight, according to Seres.
“All of these teas and drinks function by giving you diarrhea, as if that would flush out toxins out of your body,” Seres said. “The idea of purging to get rid of toxins has been around for years and years and years. There are as many versions of this as there are people who think of these things.”
“The general concept is that diarrhea helps you get rid of toxins or lose weight,” he explained further. “But the problem is that most nutrients, most calories and proteins, are absorbed within the first 100 centimeters of the intestine.”
That’s important, because many of these detox teas operate to try to help what you eat go through (as Jenner says on her Instagram post, they’re designed to make the user feel “less bloat”). But, “even if you speed up the transit time in the upper intestine, which most of these things don’t do, there is several feet of redundancy in the bowel with the incredible capacity for absorption. So you’re not going to miss any calories or proteins by causing yourself to have diarrhea.”
Which means the effort to lose fat from using detox tea spectacularly backfires. Losing water weight and salt essentially puts the body into dehydration mode to replace the water and salt lost from the laxative.
“If you’re giving yourself diarrhea with any of these products, it’s highly unlikely you will lose actual weight,” Seres pointed out. “If you do lose weight it’s because you’re becoming so sick you get dehydrated or because you’re so sick you can’t eat.
“Diarrhea is simply a lack of water absorption and some salt in the colon. So you’re losing water and salt—and that’s about it.”
This loss of water and salt is definitely not healthy. Both are crucial to maintaining cellular activity and health. Cutting the very basis by which cells act could lead them to shut down; a domino effect could occur, putting organs at risk. “You can imagine that you can cause serious harm, electrolyte imbalance, and dehydration,” Seres said, ticking off the risks.
So, Jamil is right: Detox teas can make you shit your pants in the pursuit of a whittled waist—and they also can gravely harm you.
As the TeaMi dust-up shows, Instagram has become a fertile ground for celebrities looking to advertise dietary supplements with or without the Federal Trade Commission’s encouraged hashtags of #spon or #ad to help differentiate posts from sponcon. (Cardi B’s introductory post for TeaMi lacked these signifiers.)
TeaMi’s current celebrity spokeswomen have the potential to reach and influence women who are uniquely vulnerable to eating disorders from overusing laxatives. Kylie Jenner’s pinup shape has been lauded and idolized; her familial connection to the Kardashians and Instagram reach of 120 million followers—most of whom are teenage girls or young women—make her advertising gold. Cardi B taps into yet another vulnerable demographic: women of color who might be uncomfortable with their body type, and postpartum women who feel pressure to return to their “pre-baby” shape and size as fast as possible.
What’s helped detox teas gain ground among vulnerable dieters is not only their popularity among celebrities, but also the euphemistic name, which nods to the wellness movement’s focus on using “natural products” as a way to improve health. Tea, after all, is considered an innocent drink in most circles, even healthy—an antioxidant-rich way to soothe the stomach. What could go wrong with downing a brewed herbal drink that will naturally wring out the shit that literally holds you back from being your ultimate, best self?
To women looking for a quick diet fix, a way to make themselves feel better about the reflection they see in the mirror, drinking an innocuous tea endorsed by their celebrity seems safe, fast, even healthy.
After all, the ingredient list of detox teas is composed almost entirely of herbs, with many containing yerba mate, lotus leaf, ginger root, and rhubarb root, among other things. TeaMi’s more weight loss-oriented teas—like its Skinny Tea or Colon Cleanse Tea—also include senna leaf and root, which instigate bowel movement.
The problem, though, is that the herbs that make up these detox teas could affect the body in dangerous ways, far beyond inducing diarrhea. Seres said that green tea contains substances that could interfere with the absorption of fat (which the body needs to function), but that some companies cram so much green tea into pill form that it actually exceeds levels the human body can withstand. Patients exposed to these toxic levels might get so sick that they need liver transplants, Seres said. Garcinia cambogia and valerian root can also have similar liver-damaging effects. These herbs can also interfere with medications a user is already taking, causing clotting or issues with antidepressants and anxiety medications.
Additionally, what makes detox teas like TeaMi especially problematic is what Seres calls “the Wild West” of regulations.
“If you pick up a box of cereal or a packet of crackers, you’re going to see a nutrition label,” said Deborah Kotz, a press officer with the Food and Drug Administration. That means they qualify as a food. On the other hand, “if you pick up vitamins, they have a supplement label”—which means they are not regulated as drugs and cannot make medical claims, or “something that would prevent or treat disease.”
So the mug of chamomile tea you might settle down with at night is considered a food—you’re likely going to find a nutrition facts label on its box, maybe something that cites the tea’s caffeine content. But some detox teas don’t have nutrition labels. So does that make them a drug? An unregulated product?
Detox teas are often careful to not advertise directly that they promote weight loss. In the case of Kylie Jenner’s post for TeaMi, her caption cites bloat. Other images of TeaMi’s nutrition labels offer vague promises of boosting energy levels or cleansing the body.
Cardi B’s video post, however, continuously mentions her weight loss intentions, and her attempt to get her “stripper body” back. The back of TeaMi’s Skinny Tea shows a nutrition label paired with legalese noting that its statements haven’t been reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.
That doesn’t mean that TeaMi is outright breaking the law. As Kotz notes, “Teas can be either one [a food or supplement]—the company can choose how they market it.”
Seres says products like TeaMi can slip past regulations because of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which defined what products were to be regulated by the FDA. Seres pointed to an ad of Mel Gibson that aired at that time that showed the actor getting arrested by a SWAT team for taking vitamins, or “drugs.”
“That ad got more letters [to Congress] than the entire Vietnam War,” Seres said. “As long as [detox teas] are not making a direct claim of treatment or cure, they can promote anything they want.”
“Whether or not they cause diarrhea is not the issue,” Seres said. “It’s the Wild West out there [with detox teas]. There are no health benefits.”
