Walk down any beverage aisle in your local supermarket, and you
may think you have been transported to a pharmacy. Once plain
juices, waters, and sodas are now bursting with exotic
additives—ginseng, ginkgo, and others—that promise to pump you
up, relax you, or improve your memory. There is even a name for
these drinks: “functional beverages.” Do these ingredients
really “work” when added to drinks? What Is Being Added? To
avoid entanglement with the US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA), which has strict guidelines about product health claims,
most drink manufacturers carefully refrain from making direct
promises about curing diseases. However, product labels list
ingredients and often outline general benefits of these
ingredients, leaving consumers to draw their own conclusions
about the potential health effects of the drink. Some common
herbal ingredients used in functional drinks and their supposed
associated benefits, as listed by the manufacturers, include:
Questions have been raised about the possible