Welcome to Well. Done.

There are many things which about the wellness industry and how it exploits us which make very angry, but nutritional supplements are one of the most enraging, especially botanical blends and so-called nutraceuticals like adaptogenic mushroom coffee.

Many of us hold onto a pervasive but entirely incorrect belief that living somewhere like the UK, USA or Europe means that the foods we eat – and indeed the products we buy to clean or decorate our homes – are tested for both safety and effectiveness before we get our hands on them. But that is not always true.

Just under 20 million British adults take nutritional supplements, according to Kantar (supplement use leapt up during the pandemic), despite new evidence from a study of 400,000 adults suggesting daily multivitamins don’t increase longevity. For most vitamin and mineral supplements, there is reasonable evidence that they’re worth taking – like iron for anaemia or B12 if you’re vegan – but things get much murkier when you start to look at botanical supplement ingredients like lions mane mushrooms, chaga, cordyceps, ginseng, gingko biloba or ashwaghanda.

Until quite recently, I too assumed that pretty much everything I use, eat or consume – anything from food additives, room fragrances and washing up liquid to toothpaste, nail varnish and vitamins – had at some point been tested to see if it might hurt me, and that in the case of things like supplements, that there would be occasional random testing to check that they contain what the packaging says they contain, and nothing else. When I investigated ‘hormone-balancing’ and menopause supplements for the Observer, I discovered was entirely wrong on all counts.