In November 2024 David Beckham launched IM8 — a daily powder with roughly 90 declared ingredients, positioned as a replacement for sixteen separate supplements. Its competitor AG1 packs 75 ingredients into a 12-gram serving. In August 2026 the discussion of these tubs reached Russian-language running channels, so it is worth unpacking.

The category has a pretty name — greens powders. The promise is always the same: one scoop instead of the whole shelf.

What the manufacturer actually proved

In 2026 Frontiers in Nutrition published a pharmacokinetic study of AG1. The design is honest: randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover, with a one-week washout. The participants were 16 healthy physically active adults (8 men, 8 women). After a 10-hour fast — one 13 g serving or a placebo indistinguishable in taste and appearance. Blood was drawn at minutes 0, 30, 60, 90, 120, 180, 240, 360 and 480.

The result: concentrations of folate, calcium, zinc, vitamin C, biotin, thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinamide and hesperidin rose significantly. Pyridoxine moved in the right direction but did not reach significance.

The conclusion is correct and very narrow: substances from the powder are absorbed. That is not a tautology — it happens that a substance is in the tub but never appears in the blood. But it is also not what people are paying for.

What the study did not show, and did not try to show: that any of this improves how you feel, raises performance, speeds up recovery or reduces illness. A single fasted dose with eight hours of blood sampling is a protocol about bioavailability, not about benefit.

And a separate line: the lead author of the paper is the head of scientific research at AG1 itself. That does not make the data false, but it does mean there is no independent replication yet.

The arithmetic that explains everything

Take a 12–13 gram serving. Subtract the vitamins and minerals at their declared doses, subtract the fillers, sweeteners and acids that provide the taste. What is left for the entire “plant complex” of two dozen items is on the order of one and a half grams.

One and a half grams across 21 ingredients is an average of tens of milligrams each. The doses at which those same extracts were studied in clinical trials are usually one or two orders of magnitude higher. Shiitake powder, ashwagandha, berry extracts — in a serving like this they are all present as a line on the label rather than as an active amount.

The phenomenon is known as label dressing: the ingredient list is long in order to impress, not in order to work. Proprietary blends, which state the total mass of a block without a breakdown by item, make verification impossible in principle.

Exactly the same logic applies to IM8 with its ninety ingredients. The longer the list at an unchanged serving mass, the less there is for each line.

The microbiome: also a narrow result

A separate two-week RCT in 20 trained men and women showed a significant increase in the abundance of four potentially beneficial bacterial species in stool. At the same time overall microbiome diversity did not change, and the digestive quality questionnaire did not shift either.

So there is a measurable biological signal, but no effect the person could feel was found in that experiment.

A separate risk for athletes

Multi-ingredient products are the worst option from an anti-doping perspective. The more plant extracts in the tub, the higher the chance of an impurity or contamination, and the harder it is afterwards to explain where a finding came from. Athletes subject to testing should look only at products certified under third-party testing programmes — and even then understand that responsibility for the contents rests with them.

How to apply this

Do not buy a powder for its “plant part”. That is what you pay the most for, and working doses are almost certainly not in there.
If you need vitamins, buy vitamins. An ordinary multivitamin gives you the same thing more cheaply, and its formula can be read without guesswork.
What works is bought separately and in working doses: creatine 3–5 g, caffeine 3–6 mg/kg, nitrates from beetroot, sodium bicarbonate. All of it has an evidence base and a clear dose — precisely because it is taken on its own.
Deficiency is treated from blood tests, not from a subscription. Iron, vitamin D, B12 — if they are low, you need specific doses, not forty milligrams just in case.
Food first. A serving of vegetables and legumes covers most of the same list and costs less than a monthly powder subscription.
Check who paid for the study. Manufacturer funding is not a verdict, but it does require independent replication before the question can be considered settled.

Key points

IM8 (launched November 2024, David Beckham among the founders) claims around 90 ingredients; AG1 — 75 in a 12 g serving.
Frontiers in Nutrition, 2026: RCT, double-blind, crossover, n = 16, a single 13 g serving — folate, calcium, zinc, vitamin C, biotin, thiamine, riboflavin, nicotinamide and hesperidin rose significantly.
This is evidence of absorption, not of benefit: performance, recovery and wellbeing were not measured in the protocol.
The lead author is an employee of the manufacturer; there is no independent replication.
The arithmetic of a serving leaves the plant complex about 1.5 g across 21 ingredients — tens of milligrams per item against doses one or two orders of magnitude higher in research.
A two-week RCT (n = 20): 4 bacterial species increased, while overall microbiome diversity and subjective digestive quality were unchanged.
Multi-ingredient products raise the anti-doping risk for tested athletes.

Sources: Sapp P. et al. «Absorption kinetics of vitamins and minerals from a novel nutritional product in physically active adults: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial», Frontiers in Nutrition, 2026. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2026.1793264 · NutraIngredients, «AG1 study finds greens powder increases circulation of multiple micronutrients», 23.07.2026 · ConsumerLab, review of the Athletic Greens AG1 formula