The green tub and the red tub promise the same thing in different colours: that one scoop makes up for what you did not eat. The short answer is no, and the good part is that you do not have to take anyone's word for it — the sum is printed on the tub.
The fibre sum, which takes ten seconds
A serving of vegetables is not just its vitamins: it is above all the matrix carrying them, and the part of that matrix the label measures is fibre. The reference daily value the federal food authority uses for labelling is 28 g a day.
Now look at the fibre line on your greens tub. It usually reads between 1 and 3 g per serving. A tub claiming to equal several servings of vegetables while delivering 2 g of fibre is not delivering several servings of vegetables: it is delivering a couple of mouthfuls' worth of fibre.
It is not a hidden trick, and that is the interesting part. The figure that contradicts the slogan is put there by the manufacturer, because the law requires it. You only have to look. If that seems thin, how to read a nutrition label has the rest of the method.
Why the amounts do not add up
Dehydrating removes water; it does not create matter. A typical serving of these powders weighs between 5 and 10 g. A serving of fresh vegetables is around 80 g, most of it water: dry it and a few grams of matter remain. Put that way the sum looks like it works — and that is the sleight of hand. What is inside those grams is not whole dried vegetable: it is extracts, chosen to concentrate some compounds and not others, plus fillers and flavourings that also weigh something.
Hence the slogan speaks of «equivalence» and never says equivalent in what. The word superfood is no help either: it has no legal definition. It is not a regulated category, it is a marketing one, and that is why it can mean whatever is needed.
The proprietary blend shows up again
Nearly all these tubs group their ingredients into a «greens blend» or a «reds blend» with a single number at the end. The list is ordered by weight, so you know which one is most abundant; what you do not know is how much. A 6 g blend with eighteen ingredients averages 333 mg per ingredient — and the real split is not the average: the usual case is that the first two take almost all of it and the remaining sixteen are there to make the list long.
When an ingredient does appear with its own amount outside the blend, that figure is worth something. It is the only one that is.
What they are genuinely good for
Saying they do not replace vegetables is not saying they are worthless. They are two different statements and worth keeping apart:
- They are convenient. A day of travel, a long shift or a bad week is settled faster with a scoop than with nothing. That has real value and there is no need to inflate it.
- Many carry added vitamins and minerals, and those do come with an amount and a percent daily value. If you buy for that, you are buying something checkable.
- They add plant material that would otherwise not be in the week. Not much, but not zero.
What cannot be claimed is that they do anything about a disease, or that they «detox»: that last word describes no recognised process, and no dietary supplement may be presented as a remedy for anything. Supplements are not approved before being sold the way a medicine is; the manufacturer answers for the product being safe and the label being true, and the authority acts afterwards. It is worked out in which supplements have evidence and which do not.
The sum before buying
Divide the price of the tub by the servings it declares. That number is the cost of one serving. Compare it with a bag of frozen vegetables, which loses no nutrients for being frozen and does carry its fibre whole.
If the sum comes out in the tub's favour, buy it with a clear head: you know what you are buying. If it comes out against, you now know what to spend it on. The only thing not worth doing is buying it instead of the vegetables, because that substitution is precisely the one that does not hold.
What it does not do
- It does not cover the day's fruit and vegetable servings.
- It does not supply the fibre of those servings, and the label says so.
- It does not make up for a bad week of eating; sort the food out first and then, if you want, add the tub.
Where each figure comes from
- The 28 g reference daily value for fibre and the rules of the nutrition facts label are published by the federal food and drug authority.
- The fruit and vegetable intake recommendations are in the federal dietary guidelines, published every five years.
- The regime for dietary supplements —not approved before being sold, and not to be presented as a remedy for a disease— belongs to that same federal authority.
- «Superfood» appears defined in none of those rules. That is the datum.
United States Government agencies publish in the open and their works are not subject to copyright under 17 U.S.C. § 105. Every figure can be checked one by one; the writing of this article is our own work.
This is a summary. The servings by food group, the nineteen micronutrients with their recommendation and their upper limit, and how a week of shopping is built without counting calories need more room. It is in the Codex of the Table, a 78-page PDF in Spanish, English and French.
Published by VILLUMINATIONS. This text is informational and does not replace the care of a licensed health professional.