It turns out more that enzymes with unknown efficacy are a lingering "painted skin" that hides on some drug ingredients.
Text | Zhou Xinyu
Edit | Gin soup
Operational | Trixy
The intestines are not moving
The abdominal cavity is filled with gas, and sometimes a dull grunt is emitted. Yi Hong changed from paralysis to standing, his intestines still indifferent, "no sense of existence, will not move."
Another thing became a luxury with the "sleep" of the intestines - for three days, she had no intention of defecating. Yi Hong flipped through various experience posts: trying to mix dragon fruit, yogurt, or drinking a lot of flaxseed water, all of which had little effect. She sees an enzyme jelly that has been out of service for more than half a month as the ultimate solution. Less than half a day after taking it, Yihong felt the intestinal sound.
But she clearly realized that she had developed a pathological dependence on enzymes and was "cured".
Yihong, who is 160 centimeters tall, has only 45 kilograms, which belongs to the "thin side". Five years ago, she weighed 54 kilograms. Although she fell within the normal BMI range, YiHong still had body anxiety, and she quit snacking, controlling her meal to two or even one meal a day. With no money to get a gym card, she runs around the school playground every day.
Hair loss, amenorrhea, anemia, Yihong finally paid the price for long-term dieting. The most uncomfortable thing is the poor bowel movement caused by the valley - insufficient food intake, intestinal peristalsis is getting slower and slower, and over time, Yihong's bowel cycle is extended from one or two days to four or five days.
Yihong chose to find shortcuts to weight loss in health care products. "Eat and drink big and are not afraid of fat", the business's advertisement poked at Yihong's pain point. She bought some of the hottest products on the market, and enzymes happened to be one of them.
There are also young people who choose enzymes because of intestinal anxiety. Liu Xun, in his early twenties, has suffered from constipation since high school. The school's toilet environment is not good, and Liu Xun, who has a slight cleanliness habit, chooses to be patient and "go home on the weekend to solve it." But the consequence is that the feces are dry and knotted, and Kaiserol does not promote excretion. An enzyme punch recommended by Fan Bingbing attracted Liu Xun to place an order: "It is said to promote excretion, and there are stars as endorsements." ”
▲ Photo / Weibo
The results are immediate. Liu Xun's bowel movements became regular with the use of enzymes. Smoking enzyme jelly has also become a habit of Yihong, and less than half a day after taking it, the diarrhea sensation comes uncontrollably. Yihong stopped dieting and resumed supper, concentrating the dose of the day at night, "afraid of causing trouble in the morning."
But there are still many people who are "in trouble". Wei Wenfeng, the holder of the review blogger "Dad Review", received private messages from several fans. One fan told him that just one enzyme made it difficult for her to control her bowel movements, "feeling like she could pull on her pants at any time." After the private message customer service, the reply was: "This is normal, it is a detoxification." ”
What puzzled Wei Wenfeng was that the purchase comment area of these enzyme products was almost a praise from Qing Yishui: "Maybe it is the personal physical problem of the fans?" But after turning a few more pages, many consumers have similar experiences: diarrhea, continuous abdominal pain, and no weight loss effect."
Two choreographers from Wei Wenfeng's team also tried several enzymes. These enzymes are made into blueberries, peaches and other flavors of jelly, after 5 hours of consumption, the choreographers' stomachs began to faintly ache; after 7 hours, the feeling of "a thousand miles" came uninvited, "still not very suffocating" kind. After that, it was unbearable, and the pain was relieved after five or six trips to the toilet. "If enzyme jelly has a weight loss effect, it is also thinner." One choreographer cried and laughed.
Bigger troubles have long been laid. After taking enzymes for a month, Yi Hong, a nurse, obviously felt that her intestines were not moving. The effect was weakening, or even rebounding- the time to defecate after taking it was extended from half a day to three days, and a year later, Yihong fell into a deadlock of not eating enzymes and not being able to defecate. Customer service agents who sell enzymes told her it was a phased symptom "because the course of treatment wasn't enough."
▲ Figure / Screenshot of Dad's review public account
As an old user who has used enzymes for five or six years, Liu Xun has also comforted himself with not being able to "choke on food". But the later dependence on enzymes made her afraid. "Be sure to see a doctor." She intends to declare war on an enzyme jelly of less than 5g.
I bought Li Kui and ate Li Ghost
In the beginning, the story of enzymes was a bit magical. Anchor Dan Dan pours a packet of enzyme infusion into a liquid separated by water and oil. After a while, the red oil was wrapped in water into small balls. She explained to the audience in the live broadcast room: "Our enzymes can wrap the fat in food and excrete it from the body. This is the secret of eating light without getting fat. ”
Originally, dan dan accumulated tens of thousands of fans by doing food broadcasting, and also increased her weight from 50kg to nearly 70kg, and then an enzyme salesman sent the product to Dandan to try. After trying enzymes, constant excretion suppressed her appetite, and Dandan gradually lost weight and did not care about discomfort. Gradually, some fans privately sent her a message: "How did my sister eat so much and lose weight?" This allowed Dan Dan to see the business opportunities contained in enzymes.
Dan Dan was the earliest "believer" in water and oil experiments. She followed the experimental video sent by enzyme sales to demonstrate to the fans in the live broadcast room, and the live broadcast room suddenly poured in hundreds of people, and more than ten orders could be sold in half an hour. Eat a packet of enzymes, the oil can be drained away, who can not be moved? ”
But Zhong Kai, deputy director of the Kexin Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center, told the Daily People that this experiment is far from the internal environment, and the oil will be gradually decomposed into glycerol and fatty acids after entering the digestive system, and absorbed by the human body, and it cannot be directly excreted from the body.
Despite this, enzymes have been a regular in the top three sales lists of Taobao health care categories for a long time. In January 2015, enzyme products ranked third in the monthly sales list of Tmall health products with sales of 16.18 million yuan. But it's not that no one realizes the bubble behind the glamour. In 2015, nutritionist Gu Zhongyi mentioned in an interview with Guangming Daily that the effects of enzymes on the market such as "eliminating toxins in the body, promoting metabolism, and removing waste in the body" were not accurately defined, and the efficacy could not be discussed.
However, the track is still hot, and the brand effect of enzymes is gradually highlighted. In 2020, the enzyme brand Zimeitang, which has been used by Xie Na, Jing Tian, Sun Li and other celebrities, ranked second in the Tmall health food pre-sale list - within 3 days, the single sales of the main product fruit and vegetable enzyme powder reached 88,000. Consumers enter one by one, and doubters appear one by one.
Until September 2021, the Weibo topic of "Auntie eats enzymes for 3 years, and the surface of the intestines is like snakeskin" has become a hot search. At that time, the results of the colonoscopy showed that the surface of the colon of the 63-year-old aunt was covered with snakeskin-like brown-black patterns.
Although there are no clear clinical trials to support the cause of the disease, many people suspect that the aunt took the enzyme with additional laxatives. Liu Qiang, deputy chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology of the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, explained that if cassia seeds, senna leaves, aloe vera and other anthraquinone laxatives are added to the enzyme products, it is very likely to cause colon melanosis, and eventually the intestinal function will become worse and worse.
This hot search has become a stone thrown at consumers. Many people panicked. Someone posted a message on the social platform: "I plan to go to the hospital to check it out." "The bottom attracted dozens of people to echo. Yihong is one of them. A week later, she got her own examination report: Yi Hong, who had just turned 20, had wrinkles and dark spots crawling on the inner wall of her intestines, and several polyps on the wall. The doctor told her that the enzyme she took contained cassia seeds and was "too irritating."
In October 2020, during a joint test of the quality assurance platform of cross-border importers, Wei Wenfeng found the banned drug sibutramine in an Internet celebrity Japanese enzyme. This ingredient acts on the central nervous system to control appetite, but also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Since 2010, the former State Food and Drug Administration (now the State Drug Administration) has explicitly banned the production, sale and use of sibutramine preparations and APIs in China.
Now, dealing with enzymes again, Wei Wenfeng found that chaos still existed. Of the 12 internet celebrity enzymes he sampled, 6 contained the illicit drugs senna A and senna B. The literature proves that as senna leaf extract, senna has a strong effect, and long-term use can easily lead to damage to the body function of patients with constipation and dependence on drugs.
As the negative news about enzymes gradually fermented, many viewers threw out questions in the live broadcast room: "You have cassia seeds in your ingredient list, will you eat black sausages?" Dan Dan was a little nervous and lost the passion of sales: "Since the platform lets us sell, it must be no problem to eat." ”
Behind the hype, there is nothing
Mu Mu is an enzyme seller who usually sells enzyme jelly in Taobao and Jingdong stores. She continues to develop her own sales agent, co-selling an enzyme jelly called "Jiaoxitang", and will also find anchors like Dan Dan to bring goods. She is well aware of the pain points of the audience, "eating big is not fat, detoxifying and nourishing the face, product promotion should seize these two points."
"'Enzyme' is 'こうそ', which is an enzyme in Japanese." In the view of Li Shuguang, a professor at the School of Public Health of Fudan University, enzymes are essentially a protein, except for a very small number such as bromelain, most of which are gradually decomposed into amino acids by the digestive system and lose their original role. When asked whether enzymes can defecate", Li Shuguang explained: "From a medical academic point of view, there is no concept of the professional term 'defecation', which can only be understood as a gimmick promoted by some businesses. ”
He is also skeptical about the moisturizing and slimming effects of enzymes: "The human body cannot directly absorb foreign enzymes. As for what specific role enzymes can play in the process of digestion, absorption and decomposition, it is also necessary to be able to provide specific clinical data and convincing scientific experimental results. ”
However, many enzyme products on the market have not been refined in clinical trials. Anchors and dealers handled by Mu Mu will get a unified live copy and advertising map, which mentions that the product adopts "compound microbial fermentation technology" and "the same technology is used by Japanese enzymes", and "helps clear the intestines, defecates, and promotes absorption" and other effects are "consumers' feelings after use".
"The curse comes out of other people" has become a shield for more businesses to avoid supervision, and finding celebrities, KOL endorsements and promotions is another routine. "When talking about the efficacy of the product, we must say that the stars are also using it," Mu Mu introduced his experience to the agents, "so that it is not our own publicity." ”
Mu Mu also emphasized the after-sales service rules of enzymes, which recorded in detail the response to adverse reactions of consumers, such as diarrhea, "are the normal effects of the product, indicating that there are many bacteria in the body, the product is to help bacteria and toxins to be discharged"; no effect? "That's the reason for the individual's constitution, everyone's reaction can't be the same"... She uses food production licenses as the last line of defense: "The qualifications are all here, what is allowed on it, how can it be harmful to eat it?" ”
But enzymes really fall on the gray area of health care product efficacy promotion. The Drug Administration Law of the People's Republic of China stipulates that non-drug advertisements must not have publicity involving drugs.
As an imported concept, enzymes leave a lot of room for business promotion. Liu Xun, a Japanese language major, has a deep understanding of the promotional routines in enzymes: "Many merchants will add Japanese words directly as ingredients to the ingredient list. Her earliest enzyme ingredient list had a flavor of "Razor stem extract," which has a familiar name in Chinese: senna leaf extract, which is also known as laxative ingredient.
▲ Photo / Visual China
"The principle is kimchi water"
In the face of customers who came to consult, Liao Yong, who did enzyme foundry and sales, offered a price of "taking 300 boxes of wholesale price of 5 yuan / box". He advised customers to wholesale more, "take more than 10,000 boxes of price can be pressed to (a box) 4.2 yuan", and reach the million level, even less than 4 yuan / box. On the platform, Liao Yong OEM's enzyme is uniformly priced at 7.99 yuan / box, starting from ten boxes, "this is a 'treatment course'".
Liao Yong has been in the industry for nearly 8 years now, and is a "tide maker" in domestic enzyme OEM and sales. Starting from the earliest Taobao store of his own brand, his company's business has begun to develop in the direction of suppliers in recent years. Linlin, an anchor on social platforms, once found him as an OEM enzyme. The OEM is "Lin Skinny" enzyme jelly 7 pieces per box, bundled and sold at a price of 89.9 yuan for three boxes, and nearly 1,000 copies were sold in less than half a month.
▲ Lynn Thin Memories. Photo / Taobao
"Low price and high efficiency" is Liao Yong's positioning of his own products: "Others are single fruit fermentation, but we are diverse. But in the various ingredient lists, the only words directly related to enzymes are "fruit and vegetable complex enzyme powder". As for what kind of enzymes are produced by fermentation and what the effects of enzymes are, even Liao Yong himself can't say clearly.
Li Shuguang regards the enzyme ingredient list as an "information asymmetry" between merchants and consumers. He gave an example: "Papain is an enzyme in a fruit that is a food additive that can be used to soften meat. But there are many types of enzymes, and the functions are not all to break down food, and perhaps the enzymes produced by fermentation with various fruits are papain. ”
But the "gut business" of enzymes is still going on. In the face of customers who came to consult, Liao Yong took the initiative to show several production licenses and food testing reports. But he never opened the contents, but kept stating that "there are test reports, absolutely safe."
"High activity" is a key point of Mu Mu's promotion of enzymes, but Wei Wenfeng found after testing that there are almost no active lactic acid bacteria in the 12 net red enzymes on the market, and it is basically nonsense to rely on probiotics in enzymes to regulate the stomach and intestines. "Eating enzymes is basically eating a lonely," Wei Wenfeng commented: "If you eat enzymes with illegal drugs, it is both costly and guilty." ”
In the past five years, the form of enzymes has been derived from pills in various forms such as punches, meal replacement powders, and jelly, and the ingredient list has become more and more complex. Merchants began to add probiotics, prebiotics, lactulose and other substances to enzymes to meet the increasingly diverse health needs of consumers. On Mu Mu's enzyme jelly packaging, there is no longer the word "enzyme", instead of the "prebiotics" placed in the first row.
But this has plunged people into a new round of consumption traps. Dr. Lilac has pointed out that probiotics, especially those often mentioned in the publicity as effective for bifidobacteria lactobacillus constipation in children, lack evidence-based medical evidence for clinical application. Prebiotics, which are only one word away from probiotics, are effective, but this substance that improves constipation by stimulating the growth and activity of resident bacteria in the human colon is "hooliganism without talking about dosage" in Li Shuguang's view.
"If you want to promote bowel movements, eating prebiotics alone can also start to work, why should you go far away to eat enzymes that add prebiotics?" Zhong Kai made up his mind: "No need to add 'most', the enzyme currently on the market is IQ tax." ”
There are also attempts to use homemade enzymes to jump out of the consumption trap. The "enzyme barrel" came into being – the price of this plastic drum with a sealed buckle was once hyped to thousands. A few years ago, Li Shuguang was invited to host a health program. A consumer once contacted him and spent 499 yuan to buy an enzyme barrel, which was called "homemade natural enzyme". Li Shuguang rejected this practice: "Seven,788 fruits are put into barrels that are not strictly sterilized, and the ingredients produced by fermentation cannot ensure health." ”
Wei Wenfeng's team used the test to bottom the enzyme barrel. Test results after four days of fermentation of the fruit in the barrel showed that it was not yet known whether homemade enzymes could help lose weight, but the number of bacteria and molds was seriously exceeded, and formaldehyde was also produced. "The principle is kimchi water." Zhong Kai made up another knife.
It cost about 1600 yuan before and after cutting the polyps - this is the price that Yihong paid for enzymes. After the operation, only liquid food can be eaten, and the taste is "worse than when constipation is". After being discharged from the hospital, she threw away all her enzymes and resumed eating and exercising.
She signed a comment in the comments section as a WeChat signature: "Shortcuts are often the hardest roads to take, and they come at a cost." ”
▲ Photo / The sixth season of "Bankruptcy Sisters"
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