If you were watching the Super Bowl, you might have noticed a certain brightly colored beverage starring in a coveted commercial slot: Poppi. It’s one of several prebiotic sodas, including Olipop and Culture Pop, that market themselves as healthy alternatives to traditional soft drinks.
Competition recently heated up between Poppi and Olipop—the latter went on the offensive over Poppi’s over-the-top attempt to appeal to TikTok influencers in the lead-up to the Super Bowl. Both were ranked among the top 10 fastest growing brands of 2024, while Olipop just announced its value reached $1.85 billion.
But as popular as these sodas have become, are they actually healthy?
Here’s how prebiotic sodas stack up against the Coke and Pepsis of the world—and against their own claims.
What prebiotic sodas claim
Both Poppi and Olipop are “prebiotic” sodas, meaning they theoretically feed the good bacteria in your gut with the fiber they contain (as opposed to kombucha, which contains probiotics, which are themselves beneficial bacteria).
Poppi’s website invites consumers to get “all the soda feels with 5g sugar, ingredients you can love and prebiotics.” A can of Poppi contains about two to three grams of fiber per can (about 10% of recommended daily fiber intake based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture Dietary Guidelines) in the form of organic agave inulin (a prebiotic extracted from the roots of the agave plant), five grams of sugar—which is 34 grams of sugar fewer than a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola—and other ingredients like apple cider vinegar, stevia (a natural sweetener), and apple juice.
Poppi’s health claims—the cans used to say “Be gut healthy”—led to a class-action lawsuit last year, where one woman sued the company after buying the drinks for their advertised gut health benefits, only to learn that those are negligible due to its minimal amount of prebiotic agave inulin fiber.
The other prebiotic soda giant, Olipop, calls itself “A new kind of soda” that “supports digestive health.” Its website describes the product as “a leading research-backed functional beverage that actually tastes good while supporting your gut microbiome, and digestive health.”
To back up its gut-health claims, Olipop has its own proprietary blend—called “OLISmart”—of cassava root fiber, chicory root inulin, jerusalem artichoke inulin, nopal cactus, marshmallow root, calendula flower, and kudzu root (a thickener). Each can has four grams of sugar and nine grams of fiber—which is not quite a third of the USDA’s recommended daily fiber intake.
Olipop and Poppi did not respond to requests for comment on this article.
But are prebiotic sodas healthy?
The answer is two-fold, says NYU Professor of Nutrition and registered dietitian Lisa Young.
“If you want to have something that has a little bit less sugar than soda, by all means it’s fine,” Young tells Fortune. “But it’s highly unlikely that it’s going to do a whole lot for your gut.”
While Young is skeptical of prebiotic sodas’ gut health claims, she does think they offer a better soda alternative.
“They’re healthier because they have less sugar,” she says, comparing them to conventional sugar-packed sodas. Young also thinks they are a better alternative than diet sodas made with controversial artificial sweeteners like aspartame, which became classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in July 2023 by the World Health Organization.
But what bothers her is that the health claims are largely tied to the idea of being gut-friendly—meaning they are supposed to boost the health of your gut microbiome, which has been connected to improved mental health and lower colorectal cancer risk, among other key health benefits.
But Young doesn’t think the sodas have enough fiber to support your gut—especially Poppi, with its just two to three grams of fiber per can. Poppi’s can also notes on the nutrition label that it is “not a significant source of fiber.”
Olipop, on the other hand, has a much higher fiber content—nine grams per can, which is nearly a third of the recommended daily fiber intake.
Even so, Young says that the sodas’ sources of fiber are not the best way to get your fiber or its benefits. Because the fiber comes in an extracted form—from chicory root or cassava root, for example—you’re not getting all of the nutritional benefits that come from high-fiber, whole foods like fruits and vegetables, she says.
“When we talk about gut health, you’re talking about adding a wide variety of fruits and vegetables” which contain prebiotics that support the bacteria in your gut, Young says.
“Having a sparkling soda that has some apple cider vinegar and some chicory root fiber and then putting a claim on it—it’s really defeating the purpose,” she adds. As a dietitian, she says she would much rather see people looking to improve their gut health drink water, eat an apple or sweet potato (which naturally contains prebiotics), or have fermented foods rich in probiotics, like yogurt or kimchi.
Young also warns that chicory root fiber (found in Olipop) can actually irritate some people’s stomachs, especially those with irritable bowel syndromes or who need to adhere to a low-FODMAP diet to avoid certain foods high in fermentable carbohydrates, such as apples, broccoli, garlic, and legumes.
“It’s fine to have it once in a while, but don’t think that you’re going to be any healthier by having it,” Young says of the sodas, instead recommending probiotic-rich fermented foods, like kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut, tempeh, and kimchi, and prebiotic-rich, fiber-packed foods like whole grains, leafy greens, and soybeans, which, she says, are “actual foods to really improve your gut health.”
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