The first time Eric Su tried AG1, formerly known as Athletic Greens, he was conflicted.
“Personally, I don’t think I really like the taste,” Su said in a 2023 YouTube review of the forest-green superdrink. (Watch carefully around the 3:10 mark and you’ll see his face sour.) “Maybe I’ll try it with milk in a couple days,” he added.
Su, 26, is an entrepreneur and a self-described health optimizer with more than 74,000 YouTube subscribers at press time. He says he committed to drinking AG1 daily for three months to see if it would change his blood biomarker levels or mood. The drink, after all, advertises a wealth of benefits, from improved digestion to increased focus to a boosted immune system—all thanks to its whopping 75 ingredients, which include probiotics, ashwagandha root, and reishi mushroom.
The promise of AG1, and a rising number of superdrinks like it, is alluring: Instead of buying, storing, preparing, and eating all the nutrients you need through healthy foods—or a supplement stack—you can just knock everything back in a few big gulps.