You can't buy the fountain of youth. But at some convenience stores, health-food markets and forward-thinking restaurants, consumers seeking an energy boost or a cure for what ails them will find a new "functional" family of beverages for sale. Pumped up with vitamins or exotic supplements such as ginseng and kava kava, so-called "nutraceutical" drinks — ranging from fortified fruit juices and nutrient-spiked smoothies to herbal remedies, medicinal teas and carbonated tonics — promise to clear the mind, cleanse the body and soothe the soul.

But do they work? Can a beverage really change your life, instead of merely quenching your thirst? Those are questions skeptics, doctors and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are still debating. For many consumers, the promise of health in a swallow is hard to resist. Nutraceuticals, also known as "functional" beverages, are fast gaining in popularity, even as medical experts question their effectiveness. Juice bars, cafes and teahouses are rushing to catch the trend, with tableservice restaurants just a step or two behind.

Gulping gourmets

In 1992, when Doug Levin founded the fresh-juice company Fresh Samantha, Inc., in Saco, Maine, his idea was to capitalize on the growing consumer demand for gourmet foods — the same demand that the Vermont-based company Ben & Jerry's tapped into with super-premium ice cream.

"People are looking for higher-quality foods, and people are looking for fresher foods," says Levin, who has gradually turned his love of carrot juice, alfalfa sprouts and other minimally processed foods into a multimillion-dollar business that stocks its juices in markets, bakeries and quickservice restaurants from Bangor, Maine, to Washington DC. Because Fresh Samantha juices have "sell by" dates, and therefore a short shelf life, the company buys back any unsold stock — an effective enticement for operations such as Boston-based Au Bon Pain Co., which sells the juices in many of its cafes.

Levin's instincts were on target: Fresh Samantha fans rave about the superior taste of fresh juices and smoothies like "Mango Mama" and "Raspberry Dream." But after he launched the company, he discovered through letters and phone calls that his customers wanted his products to do more than just taste good. Eventually the company developed a line of "body zoomers," which are juice blends supplemented with ingredients such as echinacea and bee pollen.

"We started to realize that this was a trend. People were looking for a tasty way to take [possible health-promoting supplements]," says Levin. "It's a bit like astronaut food. People think 'I can drink this one thing and get all this good stuff.' There's no silverware involved. There's nothing to clean."

Today, hundreds of entrepreneurial companies like Fresh Samantha, plus a growing number of established beverage giants, are distributing their own versions of so-called energy drinks, immune-system boosters, brain sharpeners and free-radical cleansers. Though they have been slow to break into the tableservice-restaurant arena, they are beginning to make inroads, hoping to capture their fair share of the alternative-beverage menu.

"We've received a huge amount of interest from the restaurant industry. People have been reading articles about [nutraceuticals]," says Sumner Katz, creator of Alter Ego beverages, a new line of nutraceuticals from the Buffalo Grove, Illinois-based American Marketing Technology Group. A food technologist and chemist who spent more than 30 years creating flavors for corporate-brand colas and other beverages, Katz now uses his flavor skills to make good-for-you beverages that taste good. In response to industry interest, Katz recently developed an Alter Ego beverage concentrate that can be diluted and served in restaurants.

Says Katz, "I really believe that people need to understand that they can go into a restaurant and buy drinks that provide more than just caffeine and calories."

Drinking in ancient wisdom

Until recently, most North Americans had never heard of guarana, a plant from the rainforests of Brazil reputed to be an "energy booster." Nor had they tasted Asian herbs such as ginkgo biloba, reputed to enhance circulation. Green tea was just a handy way to wash down Chinese food, not a possible means of preventing cancer. It's no wonder that nutraceuticals, now that they've hit the mainstream American market, seem "new." But both here and in other parts of the globe, people have been sipping supplements for centuries.

"I have been a vegetarian or predominantly a vegetarian since I was eighteen," says Laurrien Gilman, owner of the Gravity Bar in Seattle. A visual artist, Gilman and her former partner, a fellow vegetarian/artist, opened up what they dubbed a "modern food and juice" restaurant in 1986 because they were "tired of never having a choice" when they went out to eat.

Their menu naturally evolved to include a host of ingredients that might be considered "alternative," though many of them were common outside the United States. Wheatgrass, spirulina, ginseng and protein powder have been available at the Gravity Bar since the day the restaurant opened, along with vegetarian staples such as tofu and miso and fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices. Among the more unusual menu items are concoctions such as the "Dragon Slayer," a two-ounce shot of ginger, lemon juice, cayenne and garlic.

The decor of the Gravity Bar has always been funky and futuristic, suggesting that the globally inspired "health" food was slightly ahead of its time. Now that the rest of the country is finally catching up, however, the fare at the Gravity Bar seems a lot less foreign. Speculating on why nutraceuticals are suddenly hip, Gilman says, "It takes a lot of variety to satisfy Americans."

In part it was Americans' unquenchable need for variety that inspired Linda Orr and Michelle Brown to open Teaism, a tea house and restaurant in Washington DC. They figured that what had happened with coffee — a sudden explosion of interest in its history, quality, flavor and varieties — was going to happen with tea next. "It's part of the growth of gourmet culture. People are really beginning to appreciate quality," says Orr.

Since Teaism opened in 1996, wholesale and mail-order sales have increased exponentially each year. People have learned to appreciate the taste of high-quality loose-leaf teas, just as Orr predicted. Fine-dining restaurants in the Washington area have started calling on Orr for help when developing diverse tea lists to please discriminating diners.

But there is another reason people are attracted to tea these days: the buzz about its purported health benefits. Research on green tea, in particular, has yielded controversial claims that this ancient beverage, considered a medicine and a "divine elixir" in China for more than 4,000 years, may boost longevity, enhance immune functions, aid digestion, and decrease the risk of heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

Last September, Orr attended the second annual International Symposium on Tea and Human Health, sponsored by the American Health Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the Tea Council of the USA. "There were doctors there from all over the world," she says.

But although Orr believes in the medicinal aspects of tea, she takes care not to overemphasize their importance at Teaism: "I think stopping to enjoy a beautiful pot of tea, perhaps sharing it with a friend, is a way to preserve quality of life. We're not hanging our hats on health benefits."

Doing the legal limbo

The name of a recent conference in Chicago, "Growth Opportunities in Functional Foods and Beverages," says it all: Nutraceutical sales are starting to boom. But there is also trouble brewing behind the scenes as the FDA and other government regulatory agencies struggle to keep up with the flow of functional beverages. For restaurateurs, wading into the functional-beverage market can be bewildering at best — and legally risky at worst. Additives and supplements are loosely regulated, creating a legal gray area that may cast a shadow over unsuspecting restaurant operators.

Phil Newton opened the High Time Tea Bar & Brain Gym in downtown Austin, Texas, in the early '90s. Originally the concept was "to provide an alternative to the bars downtown for people who didn't want to smoke and drink," says Newton. The restaurant offered shots of so-called "smart drugs," which at the time were legal, herbal concoctions said to provide a "natural high." But according to Newton, the shots were expensive to produce, and eventually "the FDA came down pretty hard on promoting herbs as 'smart drugs.' "

Newton changed tactics, revamped his operation and reopened in a suburban location. High Time is now a more traditional cafe, serving espresso drinks, milkshakes and herbal teas, along with fresh-squeezed juices and a few nutraceutical drinks that Newton creates himself in house. Customers can order smoothies such as the "Sunbeam," which contains protein powder and brewers' yeast, or try one of Newton's specially blended tea tonics, such as the "Hibiscus High Energizer." His customers value the freshness of his homemade brews, and he can personally attest to the quality of the ingredients. As for the FDA, Newton says he has adopted a "wait-and-see" attitude. His concept doesn't rely on nutraceuticals anymore, and he doesn't make any health claims on his menu about the ingredients in his drinks.

Gravity Bar owner Laurrien Gilman is similarly cautious about making menu claims about health benefits. When customers ask, she makes informational material available, but she lets customers make up their own minds. A nutritionist recently joined the staff of Fresh Samantha, and the company's Web site provides consumers with ingredient descriptions. Sumner Katz has tried to "legitimize" his Alter Ego beverages, he says, by using only standardized herbal extracts.

"There is no panacea of health in any of these herbs," admits Katz. "Our product appeals to the mainstream-market customer who wants to purchase something [that may be] healthy that tastes good. You don't have to belong to a secret organization to drink it."

In other words, there is no magic healing elixir. But most consumers love to follow trends, and even if they find some of the claims about nutraceuticals a little hard to swallow, the good-tasting tonics still go down easy.

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