Category: 3. Business

Calm in a can. Relaxation after a few sips.

That’s what some drinks companies are promising with beverages formulated specifically to help you chill out.

Lucy and Serena swear by them. They’re good friends who, like many, are juggling careers, the chaos of having small children, trying to stay fit, and everything else in between.

“These drinks aren’t going to get rid of all my worries and anxieties,” Serena says, “but if they give me a little boost – then I’ll take it.”

Lucy finds them really useful too, especially when she’s feeling a bit overwhelmed.

“If I get that low-level panic, then with a drink of Trip or something like it, I can bring it back round.”

But after an advert by one of the industry’s best-known brands was banned for suggesting its drinks helped with stress and anxiety, there have been questions about whether drinks of this kind are quite as effective as they make out.

BBC News has spoken to nutritionists and dietitians who are sceptical the small amounts of supplements the drinks contain could really bring about that sense of zen.

One psychologist has suggested that we might actually “create our own calm” when we set aside time for ourselves with something that feels like a treat.

The “functional beverage” market – that’s drinks with additional health benefits – is booming, with British supermarkets seeing sales jump by 24.5% in the last 12 months, according to one market research firm. Almost 30% of UK households now buy these functional drinks, Worldpanel by Numerator says.

So, what’s actually in them that’s supposed to help you feel more mellow or give your health a boost? Well, that’s where things can get complicated, as each brand takes a different approach.

Along with Trip’s Mindful Blend, other companies like Rheal, Grass&Co, Goodrays and supermarket own-brands, advertise that their drinks contain supplements including:

• Lion’s Mane extract – a type of mushroom found in east Asian countries
• L-theanine – an amino acid found primarily in green and black tea
• Ashwagandha – a herb cultivated in areas of Asia, Africa, and Europe
• Magnesium – a mineral the human body needs to function properly

These supplements are all commonly found in many health and wellbeing products and are associated with enhancing mood, boosting energy, supporting cognition, and helping with stress.

But how robust is the evidence for that? It’s tricky because there are many studies of varying credibility each suggesting different levels of efficacy.

Trip’s advert, which suggested its ingredients were stress and anxiety busters, breached the Advertising Standards Agency’s (ASA) code, with the ASA ruling that Trip’s claims their drinks could “prevent, treat or cure disease” were a step too far.

Trip told BBC News the ruling related to “a single page on the website” and it has made the “changes requested”. It says it’s confident it’s ingredients permit the use of the word “calm” which is “widely and lawfully used by many brands”.

Dietitian Reema Patel is concerned the amount of supplement in these drinks may not give consumers the emotional balance, feelings of calm, or stress relief that is advertised across the industry. She highlights a growing body of evidence around the funghi Lion’s Mane, but says there are no conclusive findings about whether it can have any impact – as yet.

“The research is still very much in its infancy,” she says. “In one of the more advanced clinical trials, a small number of participants were given 1800mg – that’s at least four times more than what is in some of these drinks.”

Studies suggest women are more likely to consume these kinds of supplements, but they’re not always front and centre in the research.

The lack of research that includes female participants is partly down to menstrual cycles and fluctuating hormones, making it more “complicated to track”, Ms Patel explains.

But these drinks can make a good alternative to drinking alcohol she says, and she has clients who have made the switch from having a wine or a gin and tonic every night to opening a can of one of these drinks to help them unwind.

“I think you can take a lot of the claims with a pinch of salt, but they are definitely giving people that other option.”

Dr Sinead Roberts, a performance nutritionist, says supplements can make a difference, but they tend to work for certain groups of people in specific circumstances – such as high-performing athletes who want that extra edge, or people who are deficient in a certain nutrient – not necessarily for the general population.

If you enjoy the taste, “crack on”, Dr Roberts says, but if you want to reduce stress and anxiety you’re probably best saving your £2 or £3 and putting it towards a “therapy session or a massage at the end of the month”.

“A trace of Lion’s Mane or Ashgawanda in a fizzy drink is not going to make any difference,” she adds.

Emily May, 25, first discovered these drinks at Glastonbury a couple of years ago. She’s not overly bothered about trying to reach a state of zen through them – she just likes the taste.

“I’m ADHD,” Emily says, “so I would definitely need a lot more than one of those drinks to calm me down.”

There is a fine line between advertising that a product will give you a feeling of calm and quiet, and claiming these kinds of drinks will help with mental health problems.

Psychologist Natasha Tiwari says mental health and well-being are “increasingly conflated” in the wellness sector, creating a “toxic mix”.

There can be a positive – yet temporary – change in mood and consumers might feel a buzz, she says, not because of the ingredients necessarily, but because “everything around the experience of the product is real”.

“So you’ve bought a drink which, let’s say, is a little bit pricier than the alternatives in the market. Therefore you make a commitment to sit down quietly and enjoy it nicely,” she says. “You look at the branding – which is lovely and calming – you’re processing your environment in the moment, and then actually what you’re experiencing truly is a calm moment in your otherwise busy day. That’s not fake.”

And it’s that little window of peace that Lucy and Serena yearn for – and for a few minutes a fizzy drink in a can gives them that, whether the science really agrees, or not.

BBC News contacted all the brands mentioned in this article. Grass&Co told us it’s their mission “to deliver high-strength natural adaptogen and vitamin-packed blends formulated by experts… which are supported by approved health claims.”

Additional reporting by Megan Fisher

US President Donald Trump had been in office scarcely a week when a new Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) app called DeepSeek jolted Silicon Valley.

Overnight, DeepSeek-R1 shot to the top of the Apple charts as the most downloaded free app in the US.

The firm said at the time its new chatbot rivalled ChatGPT. Not only that. They asserted it had cost a mere fraction to develop.

Those claims – and the app’s sudden surge in popularity – wiped $600bn (£446bn) or 17% off the market value of chip giant Nvidia, marking the largest one-day loss for a single stock in the history of the US stock market.

Several other tech stocks with exposure to AI were caught in the downdraft, too.

DeepSeek also cast doubt on American AI dominance. Up until then, China had been seen as having fallen behind the US. Now, it seemed as though China had catapulted to the forefront.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen referred to the arrival of DeepSeek-R1 as “AI’s Sputnik moment,” a reference to the Soviet satellite that had kicked off the space race between the US and the USSR more than a half century earlier.

It has now been six months since DeepSeek stunned the world.

Today, China’s breakthrough app has largely dropped out of the headlines. It’s no longer the hot topic at happy hour here in San Francisco. But DeepSeek hasn’t disappeared.

DeepSeek challenged certain key assumptions about AI that had been championed by American executives like Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

“We were on a path where bigger was considered better,” according to Sid Sheth, CEO of AI chip startup d-Matrix.

Perhaps maxing out on data centres, servers, chips, and the electricity to run it all wasn’t the way forward after all.

Despite DeepSeek ostensibly not having access to the most powerful tech available at the time, Sheth told the BBC that it showed that “with smarter engineering, you actually can build a capable model”.

The surge of interest in DeepSeek took hold over a weekend in late January, before corporate IT personnel could move to stop employees from flocking to it.

When organisations caught on the following Monday, many scrambled to ban workers from using the app as worries set in about whether user data was potentially being shared with the People’s Republic of China, where DeepSeek is based.

But while exact numbers aren’t available, plenty of Americans still use DeepSeek today.

Certain Silicon Valley start-ups have opted to stick with DeepSeek in lieu of more expensive AI models from US firms in a bid to cut down on costs.

One investor told me for cash-strapped firms, funds saved by continuing to use DeepSeek are helping to pay for critical needs such as additional headcount.

They are, however, being careful.

In online forums, users explain how to run DeepSeek-R1 on their own devices rather than online using DeepSeek’s servers in China – a workaround they believe can protect their data from being shared surreptitiously.

“It’s a good way to use the model without being concerned about what it’s exfiltrating” to China, said Christopher Caen, CEO of Mill Pond Research.

DeepSeek’s arrival also marked a turning point in the US-China AI rivalry, some experts say.

“China was seen as playing catch-up in large language models until this point, with competitive models but always trailing the best western ones,” policy analyst Wendy Chang of the Mercator Institute for China Studies told the BBC.

A large language model (LLM) is a reasoning system trained to predict the next word in a given sentence or phrase.

DeepSeek changed perceptions when it claimed to have achieved a leading model for a fraction of the computational resources and costs common among its American counterparts.

OpenAI had spent $5bn (£3.7bn) in 2024 alone. By contrast, DeepSeek researchers said they had developed DeepSeek-R1 – which came out on top of OpenAI’s o1 model across multiple benchmarks – for just $5.6m (£4.2m).

“DeepSeek revealed the competitiveness of China’s AI landscape to the world,” Chang said.

American AI developers have managed to capitalize on this shift.

AI-related deals and other announcements trumpeted by the Trump administration and major American tech companies are often framed as critical to staying ahead of China.

Trump’s AI czar David Sacks noted the technology would have “profound ramifications for both the economy and national security” when the administration unveiled its AI Action Plan last month.

“It’s just very important that America continues to be the dominant power in AI,” Sacks said.

DeepSeek has never managed to quell concerns over the security implications of its Chinese origins.

The US government has been assessing the company’s links to Beijing, as first reported by Reuters in June.

A senior US State Department official told the BBC they understood “DeepSeek has willingly provided, and will likely continue to provide, support to China’s military and intelligence operations”.

DeepSeek did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment but the company’s privacy policy states that its servers are located in the People’s Republic of China.

“When you access our services, your Personal Data may be processed and stored in our servers in the People’s Republic of China,” the policy says. “This may be a direct provision of your Personal Data to us or a transfer that we or a third-party make.”

Earlier this week, OpenAI reignited talk about DeepSeek after releasing a pair of AI models.

These were the first free and open versions – meaning they can be downloaded and modified – released by the American AI giant in five years, well before ChatGPT ushered in the consumer AI era.

“You can draw a straight line from DeepSeek to what OpenAI announced this week,” said d-Matrix’s Sheth.

“DeepSeek proved that smaller, more efficient models could still deliver impressive performance—and that changed the industry’s mindset,” Sheth told the BBC. “What we’re seeing now is the next wave of that thinking: a shift toward right-sized models that are faster, cheaper, and ready to deploy at scale.”

But to others, for the major American players in AI, the old approach appears to be alive and well.

Just days after releasing the free models, OpenAI unveiled GPT-5. In the run-up, the company said it significantly ramped up its computing capacity and AI infrastructure.

A slew of announcements about new data centre clusters needed for AI has come as American tech companies have been competing for top-tier AI talent.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has ploughed billions of dollars to fulfil his AI ambitions, and tried to lure staff from rivals with $100m pay packages.

The fortunes of the tech giants seemed more tethered than ever to their commitment to AI spending, as evidenced by the series of blowout results revealed this past tech earnings season.

Meanwhile, shares of Nvidia, which plunged just after DeepSeek’s arrival, have rebounded – touching new highs that have made it the world’s most valuable company in history.

“The initial narrative has proven a bit of a red herring,” said Mill Pond Research’s Caen.

We are back to a future in which AI will ostensibly depend on more data centres, more chips, and more power.

In other words, DeepSeek’s shake-up of the status quo hasn’t lasted.

And what about DeepSeek itself?

“DeepSeek now faces challenges sustaining its momentum,” said Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney.

That’s due in part to operational setbacks but also to intense competition from companies in the US and China, she said.

Zhang notes that the company’s next product, DeepSeek-R2, has reportedly been delayed. One reason? A shortage of high-end chips.