Fashion and beauty trends change and evolve at the drop of a hat. What may seem bizarre to one is high fashion to another and one that trends within no time. Nowhere are the fads most visible than in Instagram feeds. It has become pretty hard to ignore the sudden deluge of dark-looking lattes, ice cream, hamburger, buns and crackers to ice cream cones and hot dogs, pizza crusts, and cocktails when they are presented in all their glory. That is thanks to the charcoal trend that has swept the globe and caught the fancy of a large number of people including celebrities. Right from charcoal in beauty products in the form of masks to toothpastes, it has now metamorphosed into activated charcoal drinks and foods that claim to detoxify your body.
So, what is activated charcoal that is becoming a hot fad? Activated charcoal is the byproduct of burning coconut shells, wood, or other plant materials. If that has you furrowing your brows with worry, then the explanation offered is that charcoal made from coconut is harmless as opposed to consuming food that has been burnt. It is made by heating coconut shells to extremely high temperatures until they are completely burnt, thereby creating coconut ashes. Those ashes are then processed with steam at very high temperatures, which leads to an increase in the surface area of the charcoal. The charcoal is considered ‘activated’ due to its negative charge, which means it supposedly has the capacity to bind to positively charged ions (such as chemicals), removing them from the body. It is promoted as a strong detoxifier because it claims to absorb toxins in large quantities. But a word of caution here as with any new fad— there are critics who argue that when you consume activated charcoal, it can also bind to essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients which is not good news. Also, in chat rooms there are claims that it causes intestinal blockage.
The safer option would be slathering on the activated charcoal masks on faces and necks, which many celebrities seem to be endorsing, Khloe Kardashian being one of them.
