Dan Romero on Warpcast
@keccers.eth know anything about this brand? gruns.co https://gruns.co
When I get presented with a question like "do you know anything about this brand" with a link to a health product, this triggers the emergency brake on my focus and redirects it entirely.
Today's asker is Dan Romero wondering: "do you know anything about this brand [Grüns]?
So here we are folks! Let's take a trip and see if Grüns Gummies are worth your cold hard cash (especially in this economy)
What are Grüns?
Grüns are a plant-based gummy multivitamin packed with a broad range of active ingredients. They are completely vegan and contain no animal products or gelatin. Each serving comes in an 8 gummy snack pack that makes them easy to grab and go.
The Gruns are extremely on-trend
You can buy the gummies basically everywhere, and of course they've got a trillion videos in partnership with various influencers (mostly lifestyle) who extol the vitamins' virtues.
Through a combination of organic and manufactured momentum, gummy supplements have been on a generational tear. The people yearn for healthy candy.
Gummies became a widely available option for consumers in 2010, and then exploded in popularity as influencers like Kim Kardashian and Tati Westbrook endorsed the products.
Today, chewables are the most popular way for adults 35 and under to take their vitamins.
The supposedly great thing about Grüns is that it simplifies your stack. As we'll dive into below, they contain so many active ingredients they say they can replace all your other vitamins. This also allows them to simultaneously market their product using the other health trends of the moment, whether it be gut health, greens, mushooms, adaptogens, nootropics, supplements for hair and nails, and so on.
Grüns' product versus Grüns' claims
The claims for this product are truly staggering. There is nothing these gummies will not do for you. They will improve your thinking, give you stronger nails, make you poop better, improve your immunity and aid in weight management. They say they can do so much I feel oddly ripped off they can't find me a boyfriend, too.
Looking at the cheaper low sugar version of the product, what do we actually find?
We find a pretty decent, albeit generic, multivitamin.
There's 100% daily value of most essential vitamins, and 25% daily value of a few key trace minerals.
There's a lot of sugar relative to the total serving size.
40% of the product (8g) is sugar. (to their credit, they do offer a 0 sugar option that uses allulose, but it is more expensive.)
The ingredients that drive most of the claims on the website are present in very small amounts.
Another 40% of the product (8g) is their ""Core Nutrients Blend" which is comprised of THIRTY different ingredients.
If split evenly between all of those ingredients, that's .27 grams of each ingredient. But of course, we have no guarantees they did that. The breakdown of the blend is not disclosed, and could be majority comprised of just one of the listed ingredients. For the chart above I generously assumed parity.
The company says that clinical studies back the efficacy of the ingredients in their product—but they don't link to any of these studies, probably because if they did it would be blatantly obvious that the doses that have measurable efficacy are nowhere near the amounts present in the product.
for 41% more gut bacteria...you need significant amounts of prebiotic fiber (5-10g) or targeted probiotic strains
for 53% cognitive improvement...you need specific nootropic-level dosing
for 75% free radical reduction...you need high-dose antioxidants
for 91% skin/hair/nail improvement...you need collagen, biotin, or fatty acids — Grüns does have 100% DV of biotin, but nothing else. I'll give it to them, but I don't feel great about it.
Near total fail. 35,000 research publications support the ingredients in Grüns because Grüns has tons and tons of stuff in it and so there's just a lot of studies related to those lots of things.
There is a Science page on the company's website but all of the "science" it spotlights is related to supplement purity, not efficacy.
Grüns compared to a traditional multivitamin
What can you get for less, was my natural next question.
Grüns costs a whopping $2.14 per day on a subscription plan, and $2.85 per day if you just want to buy them once. My disposable contacts, special contacts made for astigmatics, cost less than Grüns does on a daily basis. To say that this company must be absolutely printing money might be an understatement.
I compared Grüns to the Nutricost multivitamin capsule, which you can buy from Amazon for just under $14. Nutricost's offering comes in about $0.13 a day.
Between the two products, Grüns and Nutricost have 19 nutrients in common out of 22 total, with nearly identical coverage. Vitamin K2 and Biotin are unique to Grüns, and Vanadium is unique to Nutricost.
Between the nutrients they share, the cheaper product has higher dosage of every nutrient, including the trace minerals that Grüns lacks. The capsules are also inherently sugar free, with no sugar substitute needed to achieve that.
The drawback of the capsules is that if you are perfectly adherent, you risk hitting the upper tolerable limits of some of these vitamins—specifically the B vitamins and the selenium.
B vitamins in high doses consistently over time can cause neuropathy. Selenium in high doses consistently can cause hair loss and gastrointestinal distress. If you're stacking supplements and are interested in the Nutricost, definitely watch out given the high potency of this product.
Overall, looking across both products, I think the Nutricost comes out ahead, and not just on price.
Would I buy Grüns?
Hell would freeze over before I bought these. Had I not been asked to diligence this, I would have assumed it was a scam from the start simply because of the egregious number of benefits claimed on the package; I mentally tune out companies like this now all together. When something feels too good to be true, it usually is!
I didn't when he asked, but now I do. This is the type of question that slams the emergency brake on my focus and immediately diverts it. The TLDR: Gruns are a pretty decent, albeit generic, multivitamin. There's 100% daily value of most essential vitamins, and 25% daily value of a few key trace minerals. There's a lot of sugar in these relative to the total serving size. 40% of the product (8g) is sugar. (to their credit, they do offer a 0 sugar option that uses allulose, but it is more expensive.) The ingredients that drive most of the claims on the website are present in very small amounts. And the things they claim are egregious. As I say in the piece, they say they can do so much I'm almost offended they also can't get me a boyfriend. Click in for the deep dive. There's lots of pictures as well as a comparision to Nutricost's multivitamin. https://paragraph.com/@keccers/whats-the-deal-with-gruns-gummies
It’s genuinely wrong how expensive these gummies are, too. I find it offensive actually Even on a subscription plan the vitamins come in more expensive than my special blind person disposable contacts on a per day basis
despicable. abhorrent. we need Mark Cuban on the beat
I was curious until I saw the price. Even before your analysis (thank you!) with my “discount “I decided it was silly. Why yes, I already overspent on creatine gummies, why do you ask?
😆 been there just with diff wellness stuff. Oh have I been there
The price of some supplements and nutrients is truly ludicrous if you're not careful about it. One of my friends uses electrolytes that come in sachets (it's some trendy brand) and they're not only ridiculously expensive, but much less potent (you need to take like 5 sachets a day). I just get boring generic ones that cost about 10% of the price and only need to take one.
Electrolytes in particular. Have seen massive upcharges on brand alone I always like that spendy brand LMNT gives you recipe for how to replicate their formula exactly low cost https://science.drinklmnt.com/electrolytes/best-homemade-electrolyte-drink-for-dehydration/
Thanks for the write up!
ofc this is my strain of autism! I appreciate the tag so much!
$100M !? https://x.com/ArfurRock/status/1882846336552185942
It’s not even that many people needed to get there. Assuming an even mix of 1 and 2 person subscription plans, that’s only 95,800 customers to get to $100mm ARR 60-80% profit margin on avg for supplements 😅
doesn't surprise me tbh
I say at bottom for products like these now I usually outright ignore. 9/10 frauds
and not a drop of boron to be found… Never heard of these yet now i know heaps about them. Nice straight talk.
🫡 The thing in the Nutricost was interesting — had never heard of vanadium https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10381252/
Appreciate the write-up. It's timely for me because I recently decided I wanted to start taking a sugar-free multivitamin, but I don't have any idea about what the best brands are and I don't have much time to research them either. I definitely won't be starting with Grüns. Thanks.
https://warpcast.com/samantha/0x001d33d3
I did the math here to prove this point You pay $2+ per serving and get a weaker potency version of a capsule that costs $0.13 per serving….
If I had to be honest a lot of CPG is just branding on generic products with marketing that is “on trend”
Interesting that they use Umlaute (ü) for an US brand.
OG for that Häagen-Dazs ofc for that faux taste of old Europe rofl
they recently sent me a two month supply (one of regular gruns, one of nootropics) to try and possibly post about i opted for the sugar free version of both bc i can't go wasting 100+ calories on vitamins with this slow metabolic rate anyway, they made me feel sick, both kinds.
.....doesn't nootropic gruns kind of destroy the whole point that u can take gruns and not take anything else because of their fifty billion ingredients? lol wow i'm sorry they made you feel bad :(
hahah want me to get restocked and send them to you for science
I like how u learn about things that fast haha Keccers ur Peak aura
bless u 🫶
Curious about Grüns plant-based gummy vitamins? @keccers.eth dives deep into their claims versus reality, revealing the Gummies' sketchy ingredient list and disappointing efficacy. Spoiler: they might not be worth the splurge. Check out the latest blog for eye-opening insights!