Pretty Pills: How Supplements Entered The World Of Beauty

Go to a supermarket and enter the alley of beauty and wellness, there will be a whole shelf of candied pills and green powders. A staff member comes up to you and suggests their best-selling collagen supplement. You read the label—a bunch of scientific terms that claim to transform the health of your skin, joints, nails and hair. Too good to be true, you think.

“Just mix, stir, and drink and get Korean-like skin in a month,” the label reads.

“All your fine lines will go away if you take this,” the staff member says. Until then, you hadn’t noticed you had fine lines, but your knees ache sometimes.

“This will stop it,” says the staff member.

You are now convinced that you must stop the clock right there. But a month later, you look into the mirror and find some fine lines and now a grey hair. Is it too late?

Over the decades, the world of beauty has seen many fascinations—from topical formulations like lotions, potions, and serums to laser treatments, Botox and other surgical modifications. But in the past few years, there has been a shift in the approach to beauty. A new army of capsules, powders, and gummies emerged with a promise to provide “holistic wellness” from top to toe.

Especially in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a cultural shift in beauty regimes where more people started believing “less is more”, stripping back expensive skincare habits. Staying indoors made the idea of wearing makeup unessential and added weight to celebrating natural beauty. Soon, celebrities started posting selfies on Instagram with apparently no makeup on. But for the ordinary person with no makeup and no skin treatments, this turned into a routine to nit-pick on the imperfections on their skin, hair and nails. To combat that, people decided to incorporate components that not only made them “look good” but also “feel good”. That was the point where supplements entered this booming space of beauty.

Supplements as a concept are not new. Research over the years has shown that vitamin and mineral supplements, that most of us have consumed at some point in our life, do boost immunity, help with digestive health and improve nutritional imbalances. However, the sudden rise of supplements in the beauty industry brought back concerns long associated with the beauty industry—that it feeds off the insecurities of its customers and potentially creates new insecurities. After all, with age, everybody sees fluctuations in skin, hair and nails, as with other bodily functions.

The very idea of supplements is to enhance nutrition that is inadequate. Beauty supplements, the same way, are required only if there is a deficiency in the body in terms of skin, hair and nails, and this is typically seen after a certain age. “When we are above 30 years of age, generally there is a decline of hyaluronic acid and collagen production in our bodies and we are prone to nutritional deficiency. In such cases, you need to evaluate medically, know the deficiencies, and accordingly treat it. One should not blindly start taking supplements,” says Dr Lipy Gupta, a Delhi-based dermatologist.

In October last year, Gweneth Paltrow’s wellness company Goop launched a new arm called Goop Wellness, announcing GMO and gluten-free dietary supplements that are readily available on retail platforms. While Paltrow is seen as the torchbearer of celebrity wellness brands, Kate Hudson, Lo Bosworth and Kourtney Kardashian are among others who have announced similar product lines, swiftly dominating social media platforms. This new thing soon reached other influencers who started using and promoting supplements. Eventually, it reached the Indian audience with social media flooded with advertisements of collagen tablets, biotin and zinc gummy bears, vitamin melts, green powders—the list goes on.

What typically used to be something prescribed by a doctor or health professional has now become these readily available candies and powders that claim to transform your hair, skin and nails. Now, who does not want that?

In the world of social media, a significant amount of importance is given to aesthetics and women have been the target of beauty brands for a very long time. “Every woman worries about vanity, isn't that the case? For instance, I want my hair to be longer and healthier... Feeling beautiful and being a beautiful version of yourself is not a bad thing,” says actor and former Miss India winner Hasleen Kaur.

According to industry data, the nutraceutical market in India is estimated to reach $18 billion by the end of 2025 compared to $4 billion in 2020. Globally, according to the Women’s Health and Beauty Supplements Market Report 2023, the supplements market is expected to grow to $79.29 billion by 2030, with an annual growth rate of 5.1 per cent.

Samadrita Palash Bora, a content creator who has collaborated with supplement brands in the past says that she understands that there is a certain social responsibility that an “influencer” has towards their audience. “Firstly, there needs to be some credibility to the brand. And if it is doing good for someone, then I would promote it. But there is also one important fact that different people's bodies process variables in different ways,” she says.

Meanwhile, there is a rising concern that supplements subconsciously coerce people into having perfect skin, hair and nails like their favourite celebrities. It also pressurises people, especially women, to look younger. “There is a huge connection between supplements and ageism because women have always been appreciated more when they look younger. So that is definitely an ageist cultural thing we have going on,” she says.

Beauty is subjective but people still end up chasing the ideas of beauty created by the industry to sell their products. Trends like “Korean glass skin”, which is set to dominate skincare fads in 2024 once again, impel to achieve a no-pore, no-wrinkle skin. To top it off, advertisements for collagen capsules, biotin, multi-vitamin gummy bears and green powders often trick people into believing that taking them will cure these problems from within.

“Most people are hardwired into thinking that way because we have seen these growing up. Often a person would not intentionally take supplements but they feel that their skin is bad because they are being made to feel bad,” Bora notes.

Often supplements are made palatable in the form of gummy bears, melt strips and powders so that people are more willing to consume them on a daily basis. However, Dr Gupta says that such supplements, especially gummy bears, are anyway fraudulent as they contain very little nutritional value. However, there are others that work. “A lot of these are promoted on social media but there is a need to use your judgement of whether or not to go about it,” she adds.

In India, supplements fall under the regulations of the Food Safety And Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). Since they belong to the category of nutraceuticals and not pharmaceuticals, they are easily available for off-the-shelf purchase.

The question then lies in whether supplements should be consumed only on prescription or can be self-diagnosed. Dr Gupta explains that while most supplements are low-risk, there has also been a pattern of overabsorption due to the rampant usage. “A pattern I have observed with Vitamin D is that generally it is assumed to be deficient because generally that is the case. But nowadays, we get cases where the levels are nearly double of what it should be,” she says. While taking glutathione or biotin tablets may not cause a problem, something like vitamin gets collectively accumulated in the body.

Due to the availability of health supplements over the counter, there are also chances of consuming multiple nutrients whose action might be antagonistic to each other like calcium from a multi-mineral supplement might affect the absorption of iron. However, these are not told to consumers while selling the products.

The government has created a high-level committee with secretaries of Ministry of Ayush, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Department of Pharmaceuticals; Chief Executive Officer of FSSAI, Drugs Controller General of India, Director General of Indian Council of Medical Research and Director General of Health Services (DGHS) as members.

During a recent meeting of the panel, it was discussed that health supplements like probiotics, vitamins, minerals and botanicals also have therapeutic usage and due to unclear demarcation, many companies are shifting from CDSCO to FSSAI for approval of ingredients which are akin to drugs such as melatonin and zinc carnosine. According to reports, the government is considering the need and feasibility of bringing nutraceuticals and supplements under the ambit of the CDSCO to promote further consumer safety.