Chances are you’ve spotted an ad for one on Instagram. ‘Teatoxes’ are big business, promising to trim you down and detox you up. But simple cuppas these are not. Between sketchy health claims, potentially harmful ingredients and celebrities at war, a social-media storm has been brewing. So, before you swipe up to buy, we uncover the truth about teatoxes
It’s the celebrity showdown you never saw coming: in one corner, the Kardashian-Jenner juggernaut, rapper Cardi B and a squad of taut, toned Instagram influencers; in the other, British actor and presenter Jameela Jamil. The beef? Tea.
In case you’ve quit Instagram and missed it, tea recently transformed from an innocuous hot drink to a powerful weight-loss aid, raved about by social media’s biggest stars, who leverage their following to promote 14- and 28-day ‘teatoxes’ as a shortcut to a flat tummy. It’s true that teatoxes, detox teas, skinny teas and fit teas aren’t news, but the social media spin and subsequent slap-downs are. The war of words has even made its way beyond the social media realm, as Jamil, star of Netflix sitcom The Good Place, goes after big-name celebs – mainly the Kardashians, Cardi and Iggy Azalea – for plugging what she describes as “poisonous” products.
“Unfollow those people who try to sell you toxic rhetoric about your body image, or toxic products that they don’t even know what’s in them or probably don’t even drink themselves,” she urged USA Today viewers in a guest appearance late last year. “Stay away.”
So far, the response from the Kardashian/Cardi corner has amounted to little more than a smirk. And no wonder: although Jamil’s crusade is gaining ground, so is the slimming tea industry, which is expected to grow 8.3 percent by 2022, to reach a global value of about $16.3 billion. A good chunk of that money will no doubt be poured straight back into the pockets of the A-listers who endorse them – the Kardashian-Jenners, for example, command between a cool $500,000 and more than $1 million-plus per post. That’s big money for a bag of dried leaves. Which begs the question: are detox teas a super fat blaster, or just a big fat scam?
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