---
title: "Is Health Tea a False Proposition?"
description: "Young people's 'punk health' trend has given rise to health tea drinks like 'stay-up water,' which claim to address health anxiety but may have low nutritional value and questionable efficacy. Despite capital influx and market growth, the category faces challenges in repeat purchases and long-term viability."
author: "乔雪"
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published: "2022-08-23"
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# Is Health Tea a False Proposition?

> Young people's 'punk health' trend has given rise to health tea drinks like 'stay-up water,' which claim to address health anxiety but may have low nutritional value and questionable efficacy. Despite capital influx and market growth, the category faces challenges in repeat purchases and long-term viability.

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"Stay up the hardest, use the most expensive eye cream." Punk health has escalated in the current context; today's young people are "staying up the hardest, using the most nourishing ginseng."
On the market, "stay-up water" has become popular again. Since last year, similar products like "stay-up water," "fairy water," and "oil-scraping water" have emerged one after another, with waves of products and brands appearing.
A whole ginseng root, a large chrysanthemum, and roses are all visible signs for young people, but according to sources told Tech Planet, the ginseng in these products is relatively cheap and has low nutritional value.
With the attitude of "eat it and you'll be healthy," this generation's "Buddhist health" and "punk health" are nurturing a new track, with capital quickly entering. Some brands have raised tens of millions in cumulative financing within six months, and health tea drinks have brought a health trend to young consumers.
The sudden rise of health tea drinks is an innovation, but it is also a manifestation of the involution in the tea drink track. The repeat purchase rate and long-term sustainability are still unknown, and whether it can truly win over young people remains to be seen.
**01 Stay-up water, fairy water, oil-scraping water: Can young people's health anxiety be cured with a drink?**
This time, young people's health anxiety has been integrated into new tea drinks.
Products like "stay-up water," "bare-faced water," "fairy water," "oil-scraping water," and "vitality water" have emerged on the market, seemingly reaching a point where "there are too many waters, and young people are not enough."
Searching for "stay-up water" related data, social media is filled with marketing and organic promotion. For example, on Xiaohongshu, there are over 420,000 notes about "stay-up water," with some posts receiving over 40,000 likes and thousands of comments. There are also over 1,200 products for "stay-up water."
In fact, "stay-up water" has indeed achieved a brief period of explosive popularity. According to a report by Case, the team behind "Yigengen" (One Whole Root) ginseng stay-up water launched the product in Lawson convenience stores in the Sichuan-Chongqing region in May 2022. The next day, the first batch of 10,000 bottles sold out in the region, and recent daily sales have reached 100,000 bottles. On Hema, "Yigengen" quickly rose to the top of the new product list.
According to Tongrentang, which told Tech Planet, the three best-selling herbal drinks are stay-up water, fairy water, and good-night water. Since their launch, they have sold tens of thousands of bottles and brought significant foot traffic to stores. Zhima Health, as a sub-brand of the time-honored brand, conducted market research and found that modern young people's health needs could be met by combining traditional Chinese medicine culture with fashionable life. They launched national trend health drinks suitable for young people to check in on social media. In terms of marketing, they continuously innovate, obtaining diversified traffic from social platforms. Many celebrities have visited Zhima Health to check in and share their purchases, which has contributed to the popularity of stay-up water.
The reason for this is that products featuring "health," "beauty," and "collagen" precisely target the pain points of consumers from the post-90s to Gen Z, claiming to improve physical depletion and replenish vitality, thereby alleviating young people's health anxiety to some extent.
Young people, on one hand, endure 996 and 007 work schedules, suffering immense physical and mental pressure, and on the other hand, they can only sacrifice sleep time for entertainment and relaxation, leading to continuous physical depletion. This has caused the health maintenance cycle for this generation to start earlier. According to McKinsey's Health Consumption Guide, Chinese people are the most health-conscious globally, with those aged 26 to 30 being the main group, and over 70% of post-90s young people regard health as a top priority.
Young people who "act recklessly but fear death" are seeking external solutions, and food supplements seem to be the simplest and most convenient. Their usage scenarios include snacks, office convenience stores, and food delivery, which facilitate purchases. Another background is that under the influence of national trend culture, the market for traditional Chinese medicine and food supplements is becoming hot, and Chinese-style food supplements have become a new generation's health maintenance method.
Merchants who are adept at capturing needs and understanding pain points cleverly exploit young people's health maintenance demands. For example, "Yigengen" contains a ginseng root under 5 years old. Tongrentang's stay-up water contains ginseng, red dates, tribute chrysanthemum, Luo Han Guo, and honey. Chunfeng's "Royal Jelly Stay-up Water" includes a ginseng root, red dates, fetal chrysanthemum, and kudzu root.
A user named Cici, who has drunk stay-up water, told Tech Planet that it tastes like Compendium of Materia Medica. When asked what that tastes like, Cici thought for a moment and said it's like Wanglaoji with a lot of water, but it gives a healthy feeling.
"I want to try products like black sesame pills, qi-boosting, and oil-scraping and dampness-removing products. I now buy donkey-hide gelatin cakes and jujube-walnut snacks as snacks," said Xiao Ke, a consumer of "oil-scraping water," to Tech Planet.
Health maintenance is becoming a new necessity. With the further development of punk health, young people don't care about specific functions; they want visible "efficacy."
"I'm the type who eats the most expensive health supplements, stays up the latest, and is intermittently excited and depressed, practicing Buddhist health. For example, I check if a drink is zero sugar and zero calories before buying. If it's labeled as rich in vitamins, that's also a reason to persuade me. This is actually a form of self-hypnosis and comfort. As long as it's labeled healthy, even if it's a cold drink, I feel like I'm maintaining my health," Xiao Che told Tech Planet.
In this era where all traditional consumer tracks are worth redoing, the sub-category of health + tea drinks has become a virgin land without giant players. "Stay-up water" is undoubtedly seeing the huge potential and profit space of this generation's punk health.
According to CBNData's "Young People's Health Consumption Trend Report," over 90% of post-90s have health awareness, and more than half are on the path to health maintenance. According to data from China Business Industry Research Institute, the functional food market is predicted to exceed 600 billion yuan in 2022.
Facing the future billion-yuan market supported by young people's health needs, "stay-up water" is striving to become the next new tea drink hit.
**02 Can it truly maintain health, or is it a智商税 (IQ tax)?**
Health maintenance has become a new fashion for young people.
Under the high-intensity work rhythm of 996, physical consumption is unprecedented. Young people's demand for health maintenance exceeds that of other generations. In terms of consumption, young people are more eager to buy health products. According to data from Qicheng Capital, Chinese-style nourishing products have the highest penetration rate of nearly 90% among people under 40.
But what is the actual efficacy?
Chen Qi, an insider in the ginseng industry, told Tech Planet that ginseng can be divided into pure wild ginseng, forest-grown seeds, cultivated, and garden ginseng. For example, pure forest ginseng is sown artificially and then left without human intervention for over 15 years, so it is classified as wild ginseng and labeled as such to indicate its value. Due to the introduction of flatland cultivation techniques, 4-year and 7-year ginseng are artificially cultivated, and such ginseng in Northeast China is often priced the same as radish, and sometimes even cheaper.
Chen Qi told Tech Planet that the nutritional value of ginseng comes from ginsenosides. White ginseng is usually further processed into red ginseng or black ginseng, mainly because white ginseng has few ginsenosides. For ginseng with a short growth period, the retail price is about 50 yuan per 500g, or 0.5 yuan per gram. A typical ginseng root weighs about 10g, and if purchased in bulk wholesale, the price can be halved. This estimates that the cost of stay-up water is within a few yuan.
Chen Qi also joked that in Northeast China, the ginseng box is more expensive than the ginseng itself, and the glass bottle for such stay-up water is probably not cheap either.
Taking "Yigengen" as an example, the bottle label shows that the ginseng growth cycle is 5 years or less. In terms of function, it may not truly maintain health. Some doctors say that ginseng needs to be cut into small pieces and soaked repeatedly for a long time to extract the active ingredients, and the best solvent is 70% ethanol, which is why many people use high-proof liquor to soak ginseng. If high-proof liquor is not available, hot water can be used, but the effect is slightly inferior. Currently, most stay-up water on the market is extracted with cold water, so the nutritional content is relatively low.
Additionally, a food industry practitioner told Tech Planet that according to the Food Safety Law, all food categories are only divided into ordinary food and health food. Foods other than health food cannot claim health functions, and health food must have a "blue hat" label. These "stay-up waters," functional drinks, and beverages with various Chinese herbs that claim health benefits are not truly health products.
In terms of efficacy, "stay-up water" may ultimately only have a placebo effect.
**03 Colluding with capital: The differentiation path of new tea drinks**
Capital will not be absent from any hot track.
New tea drinks themselves are a sufficiently hot major track. The two leading companies, Nai Xue's Tea, with a market value of 10 billion yuan, and Heytea, with a valuation of 60 billion yuan, both reflect capital's determination to invest.
On the other hand, the health maintenance track is a major track with no visible ceiling. According to the "China Health Maintenance Big Data Report," the current health maintenance market in China has exceeded one trillion yuan, with each urban resident spending an average of over 1,000 yuan annually on health maintenance, and young people aged 18 to 35 accounting for as much as 83.7%.
Therefore, products like stay-up water, as new tea drink brands focusing on health maintenance, are seeking incremental opportunities in an already huge market. In the eyes of capital, their increment and potential are enormous.
"Hetian Shui Pu," which advocates instant health maintenance, opened its first store in Qingdao in December 2020, with first-month delivery sales exceeding 3,000 orders. Within three months, it received two rounds of financing with participation from Meihua Chuangtou, with cumulative financing reaching tens of millions. Hangzhou-based "Chunfeng," a Chinese-style health tea drink brand, completed a Pre-A round of tens of millions of yuan in March and has now initiated an A round.
Behind "Yigengen" is Hardcore Research Institute, which has launched four products in just over a year, with the first few not being very successful: from small bottle bird's nest to carb-blocking milk tea, and now ginseng stay-up water. The transformation behind this is actually switching from a small category to a larger market.
Even stay-up water cannot escape the fate of crazy store expansion in the tea drink industry. Facing the potential market supported by young people's health needs, capital is rushing in, and "stay-up water" brands are setting off a wave of store openings.
According to 36Kr, Chunfeng has opened over 70 stores. Tongrentang's "Zhima Health," which first launched "stay-up water," plans to open 300 stores in Beijing within a year.
In fact, the emergence of the new category of stay-up water is another manifestation of the involution in the new tea drink track. Tea drinks are a relatively large track. With capital support, health maintenance has become a "new necessity." Stay-up water targets the specific health needs of young people, making the large category more segmented and differentiated in the new consumption environment, and finding a new opportunity in the fiercely competitive tea drink track.
But the low threshold and low barriers of tea drinks determine that if health new tea drinks continue to be popular and break out, giants will soon learn and replicate the same products. At that time, the advantages of new brands may no longer exist.
On the other hand, health tea drinks represent higher gross margins. Many drinks with herbs, ginseng, and other medicinal and edible ingredients can easily be priced at 25-30 yuan, which helps offset high costs such as labor, rent, and delivery platform fees.
But the problem is that repeat purchase rates are currently a challenge. For example, the PSD (per-store daily sales) of "Yizhan Benbai," an instant bird's nest product developed by the "Yigengen" team, is only 0.3 bottles.
With the dual support of health maintenance and new tea drinks, it is easy for new brands to emerge and gain temporary popularity. However, what we see now is more about concepts like appearance, novelty, and limited editions. In the future, continuous innovation in taste, daily use, snackification, processes, and products will be the key to long-term success.
Otherwise, young people cannot sustain the health tea drink market hyped by capital, and the "new necessity" may easily become a false demand and an IQ tax.
Source: Tech Planet (ID: tech618)
[Southern Black Sesame Group Beverage Division General Manager Cheng Fuliang] Salute to channel partners, meet in Chengdu, August 31 - September 2, 2022 (7th) China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference.
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