“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” This famous line from Michael Corleone is apt here: our Office and others have been over the AG1 story, denouncing its flimsy scientific evidence. In fact, an entire podcast mini-series from New Zealand exposed its founder’s history of fraudulent and deceptive behaviour.
But the omnipotent green smoothie wasn’t enough; the company has launched an all-in-one sleep supplement, and now we’re pulled right back in. Given AG1’s widespread and unavoidable marketing, expect to hear about AGZ for months to come.
AGZ is yet another powder of herbs and minerals that you add to your liquid of choice, and it’s meant to “support restful, restorative sleep”—no promises, just a bit of “support” and “help” here and there. AG1, formerly known as Athletic Greens, is a juggernaut, and this new product shows the giant isn’t satisfied with a single, all-in-one supplement: it wants to stack your shelves with more all-in-one solutions. Maybe an all-in-one athletic performance smoothie is next, or an all-in-one digestive smoothie.
One thing is certain. As these beverages drip down your esophagus, something akin to magic will take place: money will be teleported out of your bank account and into AG1’s.
A house of ill repute
AG1 was, for the longest time, a New Zealand success story. It was founded by “Chris the Kiwi” Ashenden, who turned a green powder into a $1.2-billion cultural phenomenon. But Ashenden’s priors, as uncovered by the award-winning Powder Keg investigative podcast, were quite unpalatable.
Ashenden, it turns out, had a history of offering houses in a rent-to-buy manner, but he failed to transfer the title of the properties once they were bought. As a judge ruled in 2011, people who “bought” houses from Ashenden “lost everything they had put into the property they were seeking to acquire—indeed were given the understanding they had acquired.” He was convicted of 43 criminal breaches of the Fair Trading Act, and when he failed to pay fines and reparations, an arrest warrant was issued in his name.
Some reparations were made but not all, according to the podcast. During the Powder Keg investigation, Ashenden abruptly stepped down as CEO of AG1.
The original AG1 powder itself reminds me of Ashenden’s previous bait-and-switch. It is promoted as the one health beverage to rule them all; but it gives you certain vitamins in excess of your daily needs; it seduces you with the century-old argument of taking one “just in case,” even though most of us are not vitamin deficient; and it throws into the mix a boatload of unproven ingredients that are trendy in wellness circles and withholds their amounts. Powder Keg revealed that well over 100 reports of adverse events had been filed with the Food and Drug Administration in association with drinking AG1, with 34 of these detailing elevated liver enzymes or flat-out liver injury. These reports do not prove that AG1 causes liver damage, but an investigation was warranted. The FDA began to look into this at the end of 2024. Given the current regime in charge, however, I do not know what will happen to this investigation.
Considering the dubious nature of both the product and the company behind it, imagine my surprise when I heard a skeptic promoting AG1’s latest commodity, AGZ.
My skepticism is brought to you in part by…
“If you also struggle with sleep, you should consider AGZ.” Those are the words of comedian and podcast host Adam Conover during an ad read for the product which sponsored one of his episodes. His wording is certainly interesting. He’s asking you to “consider” the product; he prefaces the company’s claims with “AGZ says;” and he finishes with the deferential phrase “if that makes sense to you, consider starting to take your sleep seriously with AGZ.”
His careful, at times awkward wording comes, I think, from his reputation as a skeptic. He was the creator and host of the TV show Adam Ruins Everything, which debunked misconceptions, propaganda and, occasionally, pseudoscience. Five months ago, he was caught participating in what I called “sponsored skepticism:” taking money from a company and pretending that you were given free rein to criticize the product while ultimately endorsing it. To fit in with the creeping “are we the bad guys?” vibe of Big Tech, the product was called The Orb. It scanned your eyeball and gave you back cryptocurrency and the potential ability to use that scan to validate your identity with certain companies. Conover caught flak for the endorsement, apologized, and returned the money.
His acceptance of an AGZ sponsorship is yet another example of the ethical difficulties in commercializing independent content these days, given that most podcast sponsors are, in my opinion, deceptive if not predatory. Because these ads are read by the host themselves, the product or service rides the coattails of the parasocial relationship the host has developed with their fans. “If Adam suggests it,” the thinking goes, “and I like Adam, then the product must be good.”
Conover isn’t alone in accepting AGZ money. Dr. Arthur Brooks from Harvard University has a podcast that was also recently sponsored by the product. His bio claims he “specializes in the highest levels of science and philosophy to provide people with actionable strategies to live their best lives.” Surely he’s in the perfect position to appraise if a supplement is good or not? And, of course, there’s podcasting mega-star Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist in love with dietary supplements, who endorses AGZ, although in his case, he has reportedly been paid millions of dollars to be a brand ambassador for the company itself.
AGZ is no different from AG1: it’s like someone went to their local natural food store, grabbed everything claimed to help with sleep, and poured the content into a large mixing bowl.
The lack of proper scientific evidence behind any of this might actually keep you up at night.
A witch’s brew
The full list of ingredients making up that AGZ sleep powder is impressively long: vitamin B6, two forms of magnesium, zinc, sodium, glycine, myo-inositol, ashwagandha, L-theanine, a saffron extract, followed by a “calming herbs and antioxidant blend” which includes chamomile, valerian root, tart cherry, lemon balm, green kiwi, Baikal skullcap root, passionflower, lavender, and holy basil… as well as coconut milk powder, natural flavours, fruit and vegetable juice for colour, citric acid, and stevia.
Some of the recognizable names on this list don’t make sense when we think about it. Both chamomile tea and valerian root tea have been around for a very long time, are commonly available in grocery stores, and yet a third of Canadians do not report high sleep quality. If it was as simple as sipping a cup of herbal tea before going to bed, insomnia would be a thing of the past. In fact, the literature on chamomile tea to help you sleep is underwhelming, and there’s a good chance that whatever benefit exists is due to the ritual of winding down as we make and drink the tea.
As for the magnesium in AGZ, this mineral is very trendy right now in sponsorship deals. If chamomile was yesterday’s hot thing in the insomnia space, magnesium is this season’s fashion queen. But here too, there is no good scientific evidence that it helps you find the arms of Morpheus. And holy basil? It’s the star of a very popular, blue-collar lunch in Thailand, pad gaprao, a holy basil stir-fry. Are we to believe Thai workers fall asleep after lunch? In fact, I couldn’t find any evidence that the ursolic acid extracted from holy basil and put inside the AGZ mix has ever been shown to help with sleep; rather, it’s reported to be an adaptogen, a sort of stress buffer, and when it comes to adaptogens, the evidence is sorely lacking.
I could go after every single ingredient in AGZ, but the story is always the same: interesting properties in cells growing in laboratory plastic dishes or in mice, and no rigorous trials in humans. The company behind AGZ paints over this with appeals to nature (“AGZ is formulated to support your body’s natural rhythm, not override it”); the use of the phrase “clinically studied” which implies proven benefits but does not guarantee it; the exploitation of vague claims like “promote restorative potential” and “support mood;” and the marshalling of tiny studies, listed in a small font at the very bottom, that actually do not even refer to AGZ but to a new version of the AG1 smoothie instead. There does not appear to be any study of AGZ itself. Instead, the website speaks of “research-backed ingredients.”
As with fashionable diets, the devil is in the unsexy details: a blog post on the specific benefits of AGZ states that “over time, establishing a regular wind-down routine with consistent sleep hygiene practices can help improve the overall quality of sleep.” Those sleep hygiene practices—not looking at electronic screens an hour before bedtime, dimming the lights, avoiding caffeine in the hours leading to going to sleep—are free, though; AGZ will cost you USD 79 a month with a subscription.
Dietary supplements are not infrequently contaminated and adulterated. What reassures me here is that, even though AGZ has not been shown to work, it at least gets checked by a recognized, third-party laboratory, NSF, to make sure that what’s on the label is also in the pouches, and that no concerning contaminants like heavy metals are present in unsafe levels.
The patina of naturalness that coats the AGZ marketing can hide important details, though: drug-drug interactions. Ashwangandha and valerian root interact with a lot of medications. Herbs are full of chemicals. The fact that they occur in nature does not make them safe. AGZ’s only warning I could find is that people who are pregnant or breastfeeding shouldn’t take the product.
Insufficient sleep and insomnia are real problems. They can be caused by stress, chronic pain, and alcohol and drug use. Depression and anxiety can be culprits, as well as a long range of medical conditions. Sometimes it’s restless leg syndrome; other times, it’s the need to get up and urinate more than once during the night. And it can be as simple as doomscrolling your social media platform of choice while in bed, thus feeding your brain bright lights, stimulating videos, and anxiogenic news headlines.
There is no reason to think that a witch’s brew of every “natural” sleeping aid is going to help in any way, and if the company is going to claim synergy—the idea that ho-hum ingredients’ powers get magnified when used together—they will have to prove it. Scientifically.
Andrew Huberman writing that AGZ is “a significant advancement in sleep supplementation” doesn’t cut it. Pay a man enough money and he’ll say anything.
Take-home message:
- AGZ is an all-in-one powder you add to your beverage of choice that is claimed to help with sleep and it is made by the company behind the popular AG1 green smoothie powder
- The ingredients it contains have very little convincing scientific evidence behind them in terms of helping people with their sleep, and no study of AGZ itself has been released so far
