With the popularity of the microbiome and gut health absolutely exploding in recent years, a ton of different ‘gut health products’ have surfaced in the market, shocker…and lately I’ve had a lot of folks asking me about a few specific drinks, one is called Poppi and other is called Olipop…side note, I have zero affiliation with either of these companies.
These beverages are marketed as ‘healthy prebiotic sodas’ that supposedly benefit your gut health and so we’re going to dig into whether that is actually true or not, so…
Let’s start with Poppi, the ingredients are sparkling water, cane sugar, apple cider vinegar, natural flavours, agave inulin (I’ll explain what that is), lemon juice (with an asterix after it), strawberry juice (also with an asterix after it…I’ll explain why) and stevia.
As I’m sure that you’re aware, all ingredient lists no matter what food or product it is, have to list the ingredients from the most abundant to the least abundant, for example…
If you pick up an item at the grocery store and the first ingredient is sugar let’s say, that means that that product contains more sugar than anything else. If the first ingredient is flour, that means that that product contains more flour than anything else. If the last ingredient is sugar or flour, that means that that product contains less sugar or flour than anything else listed. So every product is listed from what it has the most of to the least of, so…
Poppi’s first ingredient is sparkling water and the second ingredient is cane sugar and so the majority of it is sparkling water and the second most abundant ingredient is in fact cane sugar…and that’s interesting because this product is being marketing as ‘gut healthy’ and I personally don’t know of anyone who would argue that cane sugar is necessarily beneficial for the gut...
Now to be fair, it only has 4-5ish grams of cane sugar per can depending on the flavour, however still, that may raise some eyebrows!
Next is apple cider vinegar and because it’s listed after the sugar, it means that there is less than 4-5grams total of apple cider vinegar and to put that into context, that means that there is less than one teaspoon of apple cider vinegar per can…that ain’t much. As a side note, having too much apple cider vinegar can mess with the enamel on your teeth and so ya probably don’t want to overdo it anyway.
Next up is natural flavours and that means that they heated a plant or animal material and extracted a specific flavour that they wanted and natural implies that it’s from an actual food. A ton of products have ‘natural flavours’ nowadays and I haven’t seen any research to say that they’re specifically deleterious for health.
Next, agave inulin…agave is a plant and you’ve probably heard of agave syrup, which is a fancy word for sugar. This drink contains agave inulin and inulin is a specific type of fiber and this drink contains 2 grams of agave inulin or in other words 2 grams of fiber.
Agave inulin has a prebiotic effect and you’ve probably heard about pre and pro biotics.
Prebiotics feed gut bacteria or in other words help bacteria to grow and probiotics are bacteria and so when you look at different types of yogurt, they often say that they contain ‘x’ number of probiotics…meaning they contain bacteria…the key difference is that prebiotics feed bacteria and probiotics are bacteria.
Prebiotics can be a beneficial thing for gut health in one context for one person and they can actually be a detrimental thing for gut health in another context for someone else, gut health is very specific to the individual, for example…
Agave inulin is a prebiotic like we mentioned and so it feeds bacteria and if someone has a perfectly functioning gut, this can be great…but if someone has a few gut issues at play, prebiotics can actually feed bacteria in the gut that you don’t want to grow, meaning…prebiotics can exacerbate gut issues in some folks!
A lot of prebiotics also fall under the category of something that you’ve likely heard me chat about before called FODMAP’s. FODMAP’s are specific types of carbohydrates that a decent number of folks do not digest all that well. For certain individuals they often lead to things like bloating, belching, abdominal distention, acid reflux, constipation, diarrhea or a mix of the two.
Point being, you may do well with prebiotics and/or FODMAP’s or you may not, it’s a highly personalized dealio and the same goes for fiber in general…some folks do well with tons of fiber, others do better with a moderate amount and there are people that have huge improvements in digestion when they drastically reduce their fiber intake.
Fiber is an interesting one because folks tend to think that the more that you eat the better, that is not necessarily the case at all…especially if you’re dealing with constipation, bloating, gas, abdominal distention etc. I have clients that do really well with a bunch of fiber, others that do really well with a very minimal fiber intake and anything and everything in between.
Moving on, lemon juice and strawberry juice are next and like I mentioned, they have an asterix next to both of them and then at the end of the ingredient list there is a corresponding asterix that says ‘concentrate’ meaning, there is lemon juice concentrate and strawberry juice concentrate in these products and concentrate tends to have a negative association with it because it often means that they add sugar…
In this product specifically, we don’t know for certain whether they added sugar…only the people formulating the product do however, it’s kind of iffy labeling because why not just put lemon juice concentrate and strawberry juice concentrate vs. with the asterix and then concentrate at the end of the ingredient list? This looks to be a little bit suspect.
Finally, the last ingredient is stevia and stevia is a plant that’s used to sweeten things and fortunately it is calorie-free and doesn’t seem to have issues with it in moderate amounts for most people.
Poppi is not calorie-free as a whole, it contains about 25 calories per can and while that’s not a lot, if someone was having a couple of cans per day, that’s 350 calories per week or 1400 for the month…again, not a ton, but it’s not nothing either!
Olipop is another fairly popular quote unquote ‘prebiotic soda’ and it’s decently similar to Poppi, however it has a lot more fiber, a little bit of caffeine, a few more calories and more ingredients in total.
I’m not going to go through each ingredient in Olipop because I think that that would be kinda boring and I’m sure that you get the idea here! What I will say is that the fiber content is very high in Olipop and so if you know that you don’t do well with fiber and/or you drink this stuff and experience undesirable digestive distress…it’s a hard pass.
The most important question is, are these drinks going to improve your gut health? It’s highly unlikely…and for certain individuals like I mentioned, it can actually make things worse!
If you want to improve your gut health and digestion, adding Poppi, Olipop or any product like it is almost certainly not going to be the answer because…
The biggest factor by far is what you are actually eating on a daily basis and like I mentioned before, gut health is HIGHLY individual and everyone truly is different in terms of what foods they digest well, what foods they are sensitive to and what foods are full blown allergies, meaning…
If you are still consuming foods that you don’t digest well and you just toss one of these sodas on top of that, the input that is disrupting your gut is still there and in some cases it could actually be adding fuel to the fire.
It’s a lot like eating a poor diet that’s low in nutrients, popping a multivitamin and then thinking that that multi is going to fill in all of the gaps perfectly and make you healthy.
If your gut health or digestion is impaired, I would recommend looking at your current diet and getting to the root of the issue vs. just throwing something like one of these sodas into the mix.
The first whistle stop is heavily processed food, start to cut back on that stuff first and foremost because it ain’t good for the gut and then you can potentially look at things like gluten, dairy, fiber, lectins, oxalates, FODMAP’s etc. and again, this stuff is very specific to the individual, for example…
I have clients that have amazing digestion with tons of vegetables in their diets and I have other clients that do really poorly with too much vegg. I have clients that are sensitive to gluten and others that aren’t, I have clients that don’t tolerate dairy and others that tolerate it perfectly well.
Some folks do well with high FODMAP foods like onion and garlic and for others that stuff bloats them up like a balloon. Some people have perfect digestion with plenty of fiber and others experience abdominal distention, gas and constipation with too much. There is no one size fits all in terms of gut health and so you really do have to trial and error this stuff for yourself and/or work with someone to help you do so.
What about food sensitivity testing? It is not accurate in the slightest, the research doesn’t back it up at all and unfortunately, folks are still doing these tests on a regular basis and including or excluding foods from their diets based on these faulty results.
How about microbiome testing? Same deal…this stuff is in its infancy, it’s outrageously priced and it’s just not gonna tell ya much. Right now, gut health is one of those things that we just need to trial and error the good ol’ fashioned way via practical real world experimentation. Will testing be more accurate and advanced in the future? Probably, but we’re not there yet.
If you’re keen on learning more about how to improve your gut health, I would highly recommend listening to episode 219 of the podcast titled ‘the biggest gut health myths and misconceptions.’
So, are these prebiotic sodas going to really move the needle in terms of improving your gut?
Almost certainly not and like I mentioned, for certain individuals they may even cause further issues.
Also, they do contain calories…not a ton, but not none either.
If you are someone that does well with prebiotics, there are tons of whole foods that contain prebiotics that also come along with all sorts of great nutrients that these sodas don’t, for example…
Asparagus, broccoli, bananas, beans and leeks to name a few…having said that, even if you do do well with these foods, more isn’t necessarily better and the same goes for fiber…and just about everything. Just because something is beneficial, doesn’t mean that more of it is more beneficial…
It’s like sun exposure, the sun is incredibly healthy for us, however if you overdo it and burn yourself to a crisp…it’s not so healthy anymore.
