Your $79 Greens Powder Might Be Doing Less Than The Ads Say. Here Are 10 Reasons, And What To Take Instead

The front of the tub is proud of the number. Seventy-five vitamins, minerals and plant powders in one scoop. It sounds like a lot of cover, and that is the pitch: you never have to think about it again.

Now try to name what one of those seventy-five is doing for you, and how much of it you got. You can't, because the tub does not say. A scoop that does everything a little is very hard to feel and very hard to test. That is the whole problem with it.

The first block on the back is vitamins and minerals, most of them at well over the daily amount. That is a multivitamin. You may already take one. So the first thing the tub gives you is something you probably had.

The bright yellow pee is the same too. The water-soluble vitamins go straight through when you are not short of them. The green part, the bit you actually paid for, is further down the label.

Under the vitamins comes the long list. Spirulina, wheatgrass, broccoli, beetroot, twenty more. Beside all of them sits one weight for the whole lot. That is called a proprietary blend.

The rules let a company print the total weight and list the plants in order, without saying how much of each is inside. So you cannot tell if the spirulina is a spoonful or a speck. The label is long. It tells you less than a short one.

In 2022 an independent testing lab bought the leading greens powder and tested it. It found 2.1 micrograms of lead in one scoop. That is not a poisoning. It was enough for the lab to say children and women who may be pregnant should not take it every day.

This is not one bad tub. A greens powder is dozens of plants ground down and packed tight, and the same lab found lead in several brands. Ask the maker for the lab certificate for your batch. See how long the answer takes.

On subscription the leading powder is $79 a month. Buy it once and it is $99. That is close to a thousand dollars a year for a scoop and a shaker.

The subscription is the point. It keeps arriving whether you finished the last tub or not, and the sealed ones on the shelf are the receipt. Nobody minds paying for a thing that works. The question is whether you can say what this one did.

Taste is why so many tubs end up at the back of the cupboard. It is grass. Every ad says it tastes good. Every kitchen sink says otherwise.

You start with a scoop a day. Then you skip a day. Then the shaker sits in the sink till four, half full. A thing you have to talk yourself into every morning is a thing you quietly stop taking.

A greens powder promises to cover you. Everything, a little. It is a fair thing to want, and a very hard thing to feel.

Try it the other way. Take a few things. Take a real amount of each, printed beside its name. Take them the same way every morning, for long enough to know. Four things, at an amount you can read, for thirty mornings. That is a test you can run.

Irish sea moss grows on the rocks by the sea. People picked it at low tide. They dried it on the grass. They boiled it in milk until it set. Then they gave it to whoever in the house was worn out. No one called it a routine. No one measured it. A fistful in a pot was the amount, because that was the amount that did something.

Selkie is that, made stronger. Thirty parts of raw sea moss go into one part of the extract. You get 1,000mg of that extract in each serving. It also has 250mg of bladderwrack, 250mg of burdock root, and a 50mg complex so it works under your tongue. Every milligram is on the label.†

There is nothing to mix. Two droppers under your tongue and you are done. A liquid under your tongue skips the queue, so it does not have to go through your stomach before your body can use it. That is what the 50mg complex is for.

It tastes a little like the sea. It is seaweed. Anyone who says it tastes of nothing is not being straight with you. It is gone in about ten seconds, and the glass stays in the cupboard.

You do not need another promise. You need room to find out. Selkie comes with a 90-day money-back promise. Take it for the full ninety days. If you do not feel a real difference, send it back and we refund you. An empty bottle is fine.

Here is what to expect.

• Days 1 to 4. Nothing. A faint taste of the sea for ten seconds. If you quit here, you have learned nothing.

• Weeks 2 to 4. This is when most people who felt something first felt it. Often it was quieter than they expected.†
• Month two. This is when the people who order again say they could tell. That is why the promise runs ninety days, not thirty. It is also why we sell three bottles at once.

Your first bottle is $29 when you subscribe. You get three free gifts and free shipping. You can pause, skip or cancel in two clicks.