Recently, in a few cities across the country, Starbucks quietly unveiled a pair of drinks, one resembling a pistachio milkshake, the other a mossy sludge. Unlike with green beverages already on the Starbucks menu, their hue does not come from matcha, mint, or grapes. They are green because they contain actual greens—or, at least, a dried and powdered form of them sold by the supplement company AG1. Now getting a hefty dose of vegetables—including, but not limited to, broccoli, spinach, and, uh, “grasses”—is as easy as ordering an iced AG1 Coconutmilk Blend or its sibling, the Watermelon Blend.
Powdered greens are hardly a new concept: Dehydrated, pulverized vegetables, sweetened with natural sugars, have been stirred into shakes and smoothies for decades. But AG1, formerly known as Athletic Greens, is one of many powdered-greens brands that are having a moment. Inescapable on the social-media feeds of wellness influencers, powdered greens are riding the same wave as green juices and Erewhon smoothies. These health-coded, aesthetically pleasing, status-symbol products are cool, pleasant-tasting vectors for plain old vegetables.
Powdered greens claim all sorts of benefits, such as more energy, stronger immunity, and a happier gut. But above all, they promise convenience—a “hack” for eating vegetables, as Suja, another powdered-greens company, frames it. The basic premise is that eating vegetables is a slog, but a necessary one. Buying and consuming fresh vegetables—cleaning, chopping, cooking, and chewing them—is apparently so energetically taxing, so time-consuming, so horrible that it’s better to sneak them into tasty drinks, some of which are flavored like candy.
Yes, swirling powder into liquid is less strenuous than massaging kale. And drinking food is a faster way to choke down something foul-tasting. There was a time when eating vegetables was challenging and disgusting, but not now. Greens have never been so cheap, tasty, or accessible. There are so many better ways to eat veggies than slurping them down like baby food.
The wellness industry is full of products marketed as shortcuts to better health, some more dubious than others. At the very least, powdered greens can be a genuinely useful way to get a solid amount of vegetables. Americans “really under-consume leafy greens,” Anna Rosales, a dietician and senior director at the Institute for Food Technologists, told me. According to the USDA, only 10 percent of people eat the recommended amount of vegetables, which is roughly 2.5 cups a day. That’s a problem because greens reduce the risk of chronic ailments such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
Greens that are dried through freezing instead of heat retain more nutrients and fiber, Rosales said. But green powders should be viewed as a “safety net”—they’re meant to “help us get to a place where we’re closer to the dietary recommendations.” They’re not a replacement for greens, or an excuse to eat less of them. In pretty much every way, normal greens are better than the powdered kind. The classic complaint about vegetables is that people don’t have time to buy and prepare fresh produce. As a working parent, I can relate. Often, grocery shopping and cooking are simply out of the question. How about just grabbing a salad to go?
Earlier this year, I wrote about the fast-casual salad chains expanding out of coastal cities and into Middle America. They aren’t all $18-a-bowl places such as Sweetgreen; an exclusively drive-through chain called Salad and Go, based in the Southwest, offers options for less than $7—about the same price as a Big Mac.
Standard fast-food chains, some of which waffled on salad in previous decades, now regularly sell it: Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A’s offerings have even been praised for being quite tasty. Growing interest in salad is pressuring restaurants to make them better, or at least more interesting: Caesar salads are mutating to include all sorts of weird ingredients such as tequila and fava beans, as my colleague Ellen Cushing wrote, but “even bastardized ones rock, and people want to buy them.”
Even if salad isn’t your thing, ready-made vegetable dishes are easier than ever to get a hold of. Gone are the days when the only options available at fast-casual restaurants were the celery sticks that came with chicken wings. Crispy brussels sprouts, spinach-artichoke dip, and sweet-potato fries (along with salad) are now standard fare at national chains such as Applebee’s, Olive Garden, and Cheesecake Factory. (While not particularly healthy in these forms, they count toward your vegetable intake: Just eight brussels sprouts comprise a single serving.)
Even at-home options are better now. It takes about the same time to shake up a cup of greens as it does to heat up a frozen dish of, say, roasted-squash-and-tomato pasta or spinach saag paneer. Many meal-subscription services will ship such dishes directly to your home. Most grocery stores offer precut vegetables to save on cooking prep time (or to eat directly out of the tray). And discount stores such as Dollar General have even begun to sell fresh produce. There are simply more ways than ever to get your greens.
Of course, eating at restaurants and subscribing to meal plans are out of budget for a lot of people. Many Americans struggle to meet the fruit-and-vegetable dietary guidelines because of cost, which has only increased with inflation. Regular vegetables aren’t cheap, but neither is the powdered stuff. Powdered greens range from $1 to $3.30 per drink, according to a recent roundup by Fortune; a month’s supply of AG1 would set you back $99. The number of vegetable servings in each unit of green powder depends on the brand, yet even those that offer three or four servings of vegetables per scoop aren’t exactly cost-effective. A 12-ounce bag of frozen broccoli at Walmart, which would supply you with four servings of vegetables, costs a little more than $1.
The real allure of powdered greens may not be time or cost, but rather that they feel like a cheat code for health. A company called Kroma Wellness markets its Supergreens Elixir Jar as the “easiest way to nourish your body”; another, Bloom, claims that “you don’t have to make any revolutionary changes to feel your best this year—all it takes is one daily scoop!” Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist who hosts a popular health podcast, is also the science adviser for AG1, and has called it the “simplest, most straightforward way” to get his daily dose of nutrients. The hard way, in contrast, would be to overhaul your diet and lifestyle so that you consistently eat enough greens—and learn to like them. Doing so is guaranteed to improve your health, but not overnight, and not without significant effort. You certainly won’t experience the immediate sense of accomplishment you get after downing a glass of greens.
Even so, as it has become easier than ever to eat vegetables, habits can be hard to break. Children holding their nose while they choke down lima beans is not so different from adults guzzling sweetened greens through a straw. Sometimes, parents add pureed beets to brownies, mash squash into macaroni and cheese, and fold black beans into burgers because children won’t eat them otherwise. Yet this practice is contested: Some argue that kids should just learn to enjoy their vegetables. Adults should do the same.
Powdered greens are the latest complication in America’s long, messy relationship with vegetables. At best, vegetables are thought of as side dishes; at worst, they’re the thing you spit into a napkin when no one’s looking. Vegetarians have been mocked for more than a century. That all children hate greens is baked into pop culture. The notion that vegetables are a second-tier food is so pervasive that it’s easy to overlook the fact that vegetables are actually really good now—so good that you don’t need to chug them down in sugary drinks. Powdered greens may be helping some adults get more vegetables, but they perpetuate the underlying problem: They still treat greens as something you have to, rather than want to, eat.
theatlantic.com