Celebrities have discovered the ultimate performance enhancer: supplements that boost their bank accounts more than your health. With a dash of glamour and a sprinkle of pseudoscience, they promise you can buy your way to Beckham-level vitality—one overpriced scoop at a time. Spoiler: the glow is mostly marketing.

For celebrities and athletes, supplements are often an easy money maker. Athletes capitalize on their public image of strength, endurance, vitality, and athletic prowess by marketing a small pill, powder, or gummy as the key to their success. Through slick marketing tactics, they sell the idea to everyday people that they, too, can have it all.  

One of the biggest soccer stars in the world, David Beckham, has jumped into the supplement game. IM8 is a line of powders, meant to be dissolved in water or some other beverage, for “more energy, healthier gut, better sleep, and sharper mental performance.” 

“The all-in-one daily supplement, co-founded by David Beckham and trusted by World No. 1 tennis player Aryna Sabalenka, is developed by experts from Mayo Clinic and NASA. Transform your daily routine with IM8’s Daily Ultimate Essentials – the premium nutritional supplement that delivers 92 nutrient-rich ingredients in one delicious drink. Clinically proven to boost energy, improve digestion, and support overall wellness.” – IM8health.com

The flagship powder, the Daily Ultimate Essentials: All-In-One Supplement, includes a laundry list of ingredients, all with their own ingredient label and information card, including, but not limited to, several vitamins and minerals and raw food “superfoods” like tart cherry fruit, tomato fruit, spinach leaf, pomegranate fruit, and cranberry fruit extract. Thirty servings of this powder will set you back $89 if you are part of the subscription service and $112 if you’re not. 

The website claims that this one powder replaces 16 supplements, though it’s not immediately clear which exact supplements it’s meant to replace. If you’re not taking 16 supplements, fear not, this is as good as doing that! But if you are, we have you covered: take this one-and-done to save you time!

Meet the Experts

Like any big supplement brand, IM8 wants you to believe that it’s based in science. There’s an impressive panel of experts who have lent their names to the brand. Many have written books, host popular podcasts, and come from fancy institutions. They include, but are not limited to:

While all the people on the IM8 board of experts are impressive, scrutinizing the expertise of this panel is especially relevant. For example, why would a former NASA scientist who did not work on astronaut nutrition be on this board? My bet is that it’s because NASA inspires a specific thought in people’s brains: Science! But is working on spaceships actually relevant to nutrition? I would argue no.

Fancy scientists should have the accompanying fancy relevant expertise to be on the board of a company like this. However, this seems to be people lending their credentials to a product to lend it legitimacy, not necessarily to ensure the science is sound. 

In addition to adding the generic sheen of “science” to the board, many board members also run boutique clinics that cater to the wealthy and do not accept insurance. Some sell their own supplement lines. Why “hitch their wagon” to this particular supplement? Could it be because David Beckham’s name is better marketing than making their way through the wellness world individually? 

Third Party Testing

IM8 is very proud of its third-party testing results. You can even download some of the batch results. The third-party testing evaluates: dosage accuracy, purity and safety, nutritional content, and probiotic potency.

Dosage Accuracy: Standardizing the amount of each ingredient per batch is good. However, just because an ingredient is present in the identical amounts every time does not mean it is beneficial to your health; standardization is not the same as efficacy.

Purity and Safety: Ensuring the supplement isn’t contaminated and contains only the ingredients it claims to contain is good. I’m glad they do this. Many, if not most, supplements don’t take this step. 

Nutritional Content: Just because a supplement contains specific nutrients doesn’t mean that you will benefit from them. Part of why supplements are often lauded as “expensive pee” is that in your body’s effort to maintain homeostasis, any excesses in vitamins, minerals, or nutrients will be excreted. As I’ve written, more of a good thing does not, by default, mean better, more effective, or more beneficial. 

Probiotic Potency: While there is value in knowing that the contained probiotics are “potent,” the evidence of their benefit is mixed. 

The research is exploring the role of the gut microbiome in various conditions, finding some correlations, but we do not yet fully understand the cause-and-effect. Clinical evidence has been either negative or preliminary. No disease treatments for probiotics have been established”

–Steven Novella, Science Based Medicine

I don’t wish to disparage third-party testing and actually think this testing is one of the best and only ways we have to ensure that supplements are at least mostly safe for consumers. However, the devil lies in the details. For third-party testing to be meaningful, three criteria must be met.

Truly independent third party with no crossover in employees or relationships with the supplement company.
The science and testing need to be methodologically and statistically sound.
The evaluated outcomes must be meaningful and align with the claims made in the supplement’s marketing. IM8 performs poorly on this particular point while still making you think they perform well.

More Marketing

“At 50, Beckham looks younger than most 35-year-olds.” 

The implication is that Beckham looks the way he does because he religiously takes supplements, IM8 specifically. Except IM8 only launched in 2024. Also, keep in mind that Beckham was a professional athlete for most of his life, and he’s extremely wealthy, both of which mean more consistent access to better health care. We should also account for his genetics. By not mentioning these other extremely relevant factors, it’s easy to sell people a solution that makes them believe they can achieve at least some of the same successes by buying this product.

With the stated goal being “premium, science-based nutrition” and a slate of experts with “Doctor” in front of their names, it’s easy to understand how people could feel good about IM8 being an investment in their health. Except, it’s all marketing. 

The science isn’t telling you what you think it might be. Having a NASA scientist on the board doesn’t mean you’re getting the best in astronaut nutrition. The third-party testing that they conduct, while ensuring the product isn’t contaminated, isn’t informative on how beneficial the product may actually be for consumer health. 

So, why would this powder be different from any other supplement? The answer: it isn’t. It’s just affiliated with a major athlete and has invested heavily in marketing. Being one of the biggest soccer stars in the world comes with certain perks, like lending your name to a supplement company; odds are pretty good that you’ll make a lot of money doing so. Don’t fall for the glitz and glamor; IM8 is just another ploy for your hard-earned dollars while making you feel like you’ve invested in your health. 

What IM8 ultimately demonstrates is that with the right mix of fame, scientific jargon, and inspirational messaging, you can sell almost anything as “essential.” But no supplement, celebrity-backed or otherwise, can replace science-based medicine, good nutrition, or the genetic lottery that makes Beckham look like Beckham. Don’t confuse slick branding for science; the only thing this powder reliably boosts is profits.