Squishy, fruity, sweet-tasting, chewable treats in adorable shapes, such as teddy bears, stars and berries. They’re not in plastic packets, but colourful tubs or beautifully designed subscription boxes. We’re not talking about children’s sweeties, but gummy supplements. We’re told these little morsels can give us thicker hair, healthier skin and stronger nails, they can improve our sleep and mood, and ease our digestion. Taken daily, they’ll even help us cope with the demands of modern life. And they are very big business.

The UK vitamins and supplements market is currently worth £520m, with nearly one in four Brits popping vitamins, minerals or supplements daily and, increasingly, we are chewing rather than swallowing our way to healthier versions of ourselves. Gummies are the star of the industry. The global market in cute, chewable gummy vitamins is worth an estimated $7.3bn, displacing pills which, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, officially slipped behind non-pill format supplements in 2019. The appeal of gummies ties into a high demand for personalised supplements, according to market research agency Mintel, and “beauty from within”.

Powerful marketing tells us that smearing creams on our faces is no longer enough – we need to ingest ingredients that are said to defy ageing as well. Beauty sites now sell tubs of gummies alongside makeup and cosmetics. Chewy supplement makers have jumped on the hyaluronic acid and collagen bandwagons – with gummies containing these wrinkle-reducing ingredients widespread. No wonder global demand for collagen supplements is now soaring, while the hyaluronic acid market is booming.

In pharmaceuticals, or, in this case, “candyceuticals”, looks matter. Boots’s bestselling ibuprofen is Nurofen Express – a bright red liquid capsule, despite the fact it costs £4.20 and contains the same active ingredient as Boots’s own-brand ibuprofen for 55p. “Research shows that various pharmaceuticals work better when taken in colourful tablet, or multi-coloured capsule than when in standard white tablet form,” says Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology who specialises in sensory marketing. “Generally speaking, more/stronger colour is associated with stronger taste/greater efficacy.” We associate white, says Spence, with an absence of taste. “Ever wondered why Pepto-Bismol is pink?” he asks of the indigestion medicine. The owner’s intuition was that children would be more likely to drink it if it looked pink and thus sweet.” The texture is also key. “By explicitly selling supplements in gummy/chewy form, there is both a link to sweets, which people like, and also a very strong cue that this will not taste bad.”

Looks may matter but, as far as nutritional benefits go, it’s what’s inside that counts. Dietitian Sophie Medlin says most gummies fail to offer any benefits beyond traditional pills. She adds that “it’s hard to get a meaningful amount of anything into a gummy because of all the other stuff you have to put in there to make it taste OK, to make the mouth feel OK, and to make it look cool.” According to Dr Federica Amati, a postdoctoral medical scientist and nutritionist: “Gummies are often high in sugar. There isn’t a particular benefit to this, unless you find traditional supplements difficult to take.”

Valerie Stark, a neuroscientist and director at Novomins, a gummy company that prides itself on being founded by doctors, scientists and nutritionists, raises the use of the pigment, titanium dioxide. “Some gummy companies use it because it’s a convenient and cheap ingredient that creates a specific structure and taste, and adds this pastel coating on pills. But in 2022, the EU banned it. The UK was supposed to follow, but Brexit cancelled all those decisions. We’ve looked at the research, and it isn’t something we want to have in our gummies.” Medlin agrees on this point. “It’s considered too high risk to be added to anything for human consumption, but until we get our act together in terms of regulation, people will exploit these legal loopholes.”

Sweetness is the gummy’s secret weapon. While traditional pills, washed down with a glass of water, are sugar-free, many multivitamin gummies list sugar as the first ingredient, followed by glucose syrup (another word for sugar). One particular pregnancy gummy lists the first two ingredients as glucose syrup and sucrose (sugar and sugar), while a hair, skin and nails gummy lists glucose syrup, sugar and glucose as the first three ingredients. It’s no wonder we like them.

“If the first listed ingredient is sugar, that’s the main thing you’re getting,” says Medlin. “These companies use multiple forms of sugar to capitalise on the fact that consumers don’t know the names of all the different types.” The fact that some sugary gummies are promoted as a supplement for weight management is particularly galling.

As a nation, we have one hell of a sweet tooth; candy sales in the UK increased by 6.9% just last year, with Haribo, the world’s first gummy candy, invented in 1922 in Germany, selling an extra 13m packs. Meanwhile, M&S says they shift 271 bags of Percy Pigs every minute. Gummy sweets don’t only appeal to kids, either. More than half a century ago the advertising slogan “Haribo macht Kinder froh” (Haribo makes children happy) was changed to include “und Erwachsene ebenso” (and adults, too). Gummy makers might argue that we’d be better off chewing a candyceutical or two than scoffing a packet of sweets. But public health tsars would counter we need to get a grip on our sugar cravings, not add more sugary offerings to the market, regardless of whether they purportedly provide a vitamin kicker.

Stark argues that, in their gummies, at least, “The total sugar in a serving is less than in half a cherry.” Of course, cherries also provide fibre, potassium, vitamin C, phytochemicals and antioxidants – and 14 of them would count as one of your five-a-day. Sweeteners such as maltitol syrup, isomalt, xylitol, sorbitol and steviol glycosides frequently top gummy ingredients lists but, cautions Amati, “as recently outlined by the World Health Organization, artificial (non-nutritive) sweeteners are not healthy and should not be considered better than sugar.” Medlin adds that sweeteners are “not great for our microbiome and for our digestion overall”. Yet probiotic gummies that contain high levels of artificial sweeteners and/or sugar also claim they can “restore the balance of bacteria in your gut”. Amati points out that “sweeteners, thickeners and gelling agents are disruptive for the gut microbiome”.

Gummies don’t simply supplement nutrients, they have entered three lucrative industries at the same time: beauty, health and wellness. There’s plenty of glossy hair being swished around on social media, promoting hair, skin and nail gummies that contain biotin, or vitamin B7. I ask Amati if there’s good evidence behind it. “Not that I’m aware of,” she replies. Indeed government regulation states that you can only claim that biotin “contributes to the maintenance of normal hair”.

What about CBD? Can gummies deliver anything meaningful for anxiety or pain and the other strains and stressors of modern life? “Effective dose cannabidiol is not typically found in gummies,” says Amati. Though she adds, “we mustn’t negate the powerful impact of the placebo effect for pain reduction and mental health. There is lots of evidence to support that, so if a CBD gummy is helpful, then that’s what matters.”

The act of chewing, according to Stark, is one gummy superpower. While a traditional pill is washed straight down to make its way to your gut, with gummies, Stark says, absorption starts in your mouth as you chew. “Vitamin sprays use intra-oral absorption and they can work, but they don’t always taste great. Gummies make use of both intra-oral absorption and the digestive tract for delivery.” For Medlin, though, this is a niche benefit. “For the vast majority of nutrients,” she says, “there isn’t an oral absorption mechanism.”

Arguably, some in the gummy industry are using similar tactics to food manufacturers who overstate health claims (like “low fat” or “low calorie”), to give their products a “health halo”. On some gummy websites, we’re led to believe medics are “prescribing” the perfect options for us. Smiling doctors in lab coats invite us to fill out an online questionnaire, which generally includes your age bracket, gender, fertility status and main health goals, and you’re served up a customised suggestion. But it takes more than a lab coat to convince Medlin. “There are probably a handful of options [of suitable gummies]. You may just be funnelled down into those, when in reality [prescribing vitamins] is much more nuanced than that,” she says. The problem is that these supplement quizzes “are not regulated, so no one’s checking that [the recommendations are being made] in a way that’s evidence-based or medically sound.” Amati agrees, pointing out that the only company she knows of that creates truly personalised supplements is Bioniq, a business that provides customers with a blood test that is analysed by a GP or nutritionist, and from which supplements that address your personal needs are prescribed. But they then use capsules, not gummies.

None of this deters influencers from cashing in on the gummy boom. US big players like the Kardashians promote gummies with impunity, though Kourtney Kardashian was recently slammed for producing her Lemme Purr range to improve vaginal health. Here in the UK, Love Island alumni clock up 30,000-plus likes per paid Instagram post. For gummy marketeers, pleasure is a major selling point. Trad supplements, they are at pains to tell us, are unenjoyable and a well-meant habit that we quickly ditch.

Stark is on-message when it comes to gummies being both healthy and fun. “When you work long hours,” she tells me, “you have to be very health-conscious, almost a bit obsessed to plan [a healthy diet]. We offer a delicious and effective mechanism not only for achieving daily nutritional intake, but enjoying the process.”

It is the same time-saving, feelgood message peddled by food delivery companies who tell us to stop faffing about cooking and embrace doing less. Stark points out that you can get all your daily iron in “two delicious gummies”, adding that “to obtain the equivalent from food you’d have to sit and eat a whole bag of spinach – not many people would do that.” Perhaps not, except you wouldn’t expect to get all your daily iron intake from one source, in one sitting. You also wouldn’t sprinkle sugar on your spinach.

“There’s a market for almost demedicalising supplements and making them feel less like a pill and more fun, mainstream and Instagrammable,” says Medlin, “when we need to be taking this seriously because supplements aren’t benign – you can take too much and they can cause harm.” Research has found links between excess beta-carotene supplementation and increased risk of lung cancer, excess vitamin E and higher risk of prostate cancer, and high dose vitamin D has been found to reduce bone density. On Mumsnet, panicked mums regularly take to forums asking for advice when their kids have eaten entire tubs of gummies, and there’s been a reported rise in vitamin D overdoses among adults, which can cause symptoms ranging from drowsiness to high blood pressure and kidney abnormalities.

Scientists are still grappling with whether taking supplements at all provides any significant health benefits. “There isn’t a huge amount of evidence to support supplementing,” says Amati, “unless we are addressing specific deficiencies. Pregnancy and supplementing a vegan diet are the biggest exceptions. Making sure we have a good diet and healthy lifestyle should be much more evidence-based than any gummy or pill.”

Trends come and go, but this wellness craze shows no signs of slowing any time soon, despite health experts bemoaning the proliferation of ultra-processed foods (UPF). Gummies, often laden with sugar, sweeteners, glazing agents and colourings, are another, more insidious form of UPF. We’re being urged to read food labels more carefully and avoid lengthy lists of chemical-sounding words. We should perhaps apply the same logic to supplements.