At 1:30 pm, after a busy day, Liu Dawei, a first-year graduate student at a university in Beijing, did not rush to sleep. He sat up from the bed, opened two bags of goji berry juice as usual, and then rummaged through the bottles and jars on the bedside table to find probiotic tablets and melatonin capsules. He drank the goji berry juice in one gulp. After finishing all of this, he lay down with a sense of relief.

I feel like I'm surrounded by health supplements, "said Liu Dawei. Taking vitamin pills during the day and wolfberry juice and probiotics at night has become a routine in his daily life. After pursuing a master's degree, I have been under too much pressure and have been having difficulty sleeping lately. I started taking melatonin as it was introduced in a live stream that it can help me sleep.

After staying up late, liver protection tablets combined with melatonin, a handful of multivitamins after waking up, and a spoonful of protein powder after exercise have quietly become a healthy lifestyle in the eyes of some college students. Open social media and e-commerce platforms, search for "health products" as keywords, and a dazzling array of product information will be presented: minerals, probiotics, fish oil, liver protection tablets, protein powder, coenzyme Q

Associate Professor Zhang Jingjie from the School of Food and Health at Beijing Technology and Business University believes that college students' use of health supplements marks their concern about their own health status, but she also expresses concern about the health risks that may arise from excessive use of health supplements. Taking compound vitamin tablets as an example, water-soluble vitamins such as B vitamins and vitamin C have relatively small toxic side effects because they usually do not accumulate in large amounts in the body. Excess ingredients can be excreted through urine, but excessive use may still cause adverse reactions. Fat soluble vitamins such as vitamin A and vitamin D can accumulate in the human body, leading to vitamin poisoning to a certain extent. ?

She called on college students to return to a healthy lifestyle, eat scientifically and reasonably, exercise moderately, ensure sufficient sleep, and reduce excessive dependence on health supplements.

College students' health anxiety

Chen Lin, an undergraduate student at Changjiang Normal University, recently encountered a troublesome situation. "Recently, I have been under a lot of academic pressure. My overall mental state is listless, and I always feel lethargic. In addition, my stomach and intestines are not good, accompanied by occasional dizziness. When I went to the hospital for a check-up, I found that I was actually iron deficient.

After entering graduate school, I found that there were more courses. The pressure was even greater, and I had to frequently go to the department to be on duty, so I had very little time for myself to exercise. During the summer before entering graduate school, I could run several times a week. At that time, it was easy to run 5 kilometers in one breath, but now I am gasping for breath even after running two steps, "Liu Dawei sighed helplessly.

There are many college students like Chen Lin and Liu Dawei. The sneezing caused lumbar vertebrae to protrude, stretched waist and sprained neck. "Crispy college students" became a hot topic describing college students' poor physique and became popular on the Internet. This kind of meme is not groundless. According to the 2020 China College Student Health Survey Report, 23% of college students were diagnosed with diseases in the past year, and 86% of college students reported health problems, with the three major problems being skin, emotions, and sleep. And as students grow older in grade, their evaluation of their own health condition decreases.

Many college students face multiple pressures such as academic pressure, academic pressure, and employment pressure. Liu Dawei observed that on the one hand, due to the requirements of the training program for students' elective courses, some students are eager to complete the elective course credits required for graduation in order to participate in off campus internships as soon as possible, so they concentrate their elective courses in a single semester. Although he is currently in the second semester of his graduate studies, many students in his class have already completed the credits for elective courses this semester, meeting the graduation requirements, and plan to start off campus internships from the second year of his graduate studies. Therefore, the courses originally scheduled for three semesters were all concentrated in one semester, resulting in nine elective courses in one semester, almost every day from morning to evening classes, with heavy academic pressure.

On the other hand, Liu Dawei found that before entering the graduate stage, his classmates were crazily grading their grades in order to obtain scholarships and compete for admission quotas, and the competition was fierce. Faced with a sluggish job market, a considerable proportion of students are choosing between taking postgraduate entrance exams and civil service exams, and are in a state of sustained high pressure and lack of physical activity for a long time.

I am a punk health enthusiast myself, with a day of classes and little personal time, so I usually stay up late for entertainment at night. Buying health supplements is also to compensate for the harm caused by staying up late to some extent, after all, eating health supplements is definitely more convenient, "said Liu Dawei.

When asked whether the health care products have any effect, Chen Lin said that she was a little guilty. "I eat these mainly to comfort myself, feeling that I am taking care of my body, but the actual effect is not obvious.".

However, Zhang Jingjie clearly disagrees with the behavior of "punk health preservation". This approach is essentially treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. The harm of staying up late cannot be simply offset by taking these health supplements. For most people, maintaining sufficient sleep and a happy mood, and exercising two or three times a week are actually the best health supplements

Price is a sensitive point

According to the "2025 China Nutritional Supplement Consumption Insight Report" released by iResearch Consulting, China's nutritional supplements are in a high-speed growth state, with a market size of 25.9 billion US dollars in 2024 and a compound growth rate of 10.4%, leading the world in growth rate. In terms of purchasing channels, e-commerce channels account for 56% of the market share, while direct sales and pharmacy share have shrunk to 20.8% and 16.4% respectively. At the same time, a large number of overseas brands have flooded into China, resulting in a relatively low market concentration of overall products.

During a visit to a pharmacy near the Liangxiang campus of Beijing Technology and Business University, it was found that the vast majority of college students purchase nutritional supplements online. A staff member from Good Pharmacy told reporters, "Currently, nutritional supplements for college students are mainly focused on vitamin and mineral products. However, students have less offline purchasing behavior and mainly consume cold medicine in stores. The shop assistant also said that college students are most concerned about the price when purchasing supplements, and often overlook the attention to product efficacy.

Professor Chen Zhenling from the School of Economics at Beijing Technology and Business University stated that with the improvement of the economic situation of college students, the consumption level of nutritional supplements has increased. However, due to the general lack of economic income among college students, their purchasing behavior is mainly constrained by product prices, and they usually choose low-priced supplements.

Professor Yin Sheng from the School of Food and Health at Beijing Technology and Business University pointed out that college students should have a scientific understanding of health products. 'Health products' is not a scientific name. For foods with health functions, their official name is' health products'. Unlike ordinary foods, health products, special medical formula foods, and infant formula foods belong to special foods, and many' health products' that are commonly considered by the public are not within the scope of special foods and should be regarded as dietary supplements. 'He said,' True health products must be strictly reviewed by the Special Food Safety Supervision and Administration Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation. Only after ensuring that there are no hazards and that they have organic regulatory functions can the declared enterprise be approved for production and sales. The packaging of health products must be labeled with the 'blue hat' mark (including registration number or filing number) to distinguish health products. 'The important label of authenticity. However, it should be emphasized that health foods are not drugs and cannot replace medication for treating diseases. ?

Yin Sheng believes that false advertising is the biggest problem in the current dietary supplement market, and incidents of big brand "rollovers" occur from time to time. Not long ago, CCTV exposed the Australian imported brand Yousiyi for alleged origin fraud, and under the guidance of a group of celebrities, products with a cost of only 20-30 yuan per bottle were priced at hundreds of yuan, with a premium of up to 40 times.

He stated that the phenomenon was not caused by a single factor, but by the combined effects of multiple factors. The enterprise has not fulfilled its main responsibility and is using false advertising to promote itself. Consumers lack a basic scientific understanding of dietary supplement products, and there are also shortcomings in the supervision of relevant departments.

(Liu Dawei and Chen Lin are pseudonyms in the article)

(The author of this article is a graduate student from the School of Language and Communication, Beijing Technology and Business University, graduating in 2025)