FDA widens warning on weight-loss supplements laced with a poisonous plant

The Food and Drug Administration has once again expanded a running safety alert for weight-loss supplements after laboratory testing turned up a poisonous ornamental plant, yellow oleander, in products sold as "tejocote root" and other botanical slimming aids. The agency said in its updated notice that a state laboratory partner and the FDA's own testing found the toxic substitution in three newly listed products, including two Niwali-brand items and a fiber supplement called Easy Forte Natural Fiber.

It is the latest entry in an alert the FDA has updated at least eight times since November 2025, and it brings the number of implicated products to more than 30, according to Food Safety News, which first reported the latest additions. Global Mix Inc., the Middle Village, New York, company behind the Niwali brand, has since issued a formal recall, a step many of the sellers named in the alert have refused to take.

What the FDA found

Yellow oleander, scientific name Cascabela thevetia, is a flowering shrub native to Mexico and Central America that is popular as an ornamental plant but contains cardiac glycosides similar in effect to the heart drug digoxin. The FDA says consuming it "can cause neurologic, gastrointestinal and cardiovascular adverse health effects that may be severe, or even fatal." Two products previously added to the list, sold under the names D Magic Plus and B. Magi, were found to contain yellow oleander alongside undeclared prescription-strength drugs, diclofenac and phenolphthalein, that the agency says pose additional life-threatening risks.

The pattern traces back to a 2023 report from the CDC's weekly bulletin, which documented a case in which a 23-month-old New Jersey child became severely ill after swallowing her mother's tejocote root capsules. The child developed vomiting, dangerously low blood pressure and a slowed heart rate before recovering with treatment. Testing on the product she had ingested found it was not tejocote root, a small red fruit related to hawthorn that is sometimes used in traditional Mexican remedies, but effectively pure yellow oleander.

The numbers behind the alert

Since that report, the FDA has tested dozens of products marketed under names including tejocote root, Raiz de Tejocote, Mexican Hawthorn and Brazil seed, adding new offenders to its table roughly every few months: three products in September 2026, three more in August, one in March, three in November 2025, two in December 2024, three in September 2024 and one in April 2024. The agency's adverse-event database has logged roughly 30 reports tied to tejocote products since 2018, with about 13 resulting in hospitalization, according to reporting compiled by the nonprofit health-journalism outlet MedShadow Foundation. A 63-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest in 2020 after taking a similarly adulterated weight-loss supplement, a death that was only linked to the products afterward.

Most recently, Global Mix's recall covers Niwali Tejocote Capsules and Niwali Tejocote Pieces sold through eBay and the marketplace site Everymarket.com. The company told regulators that only five affected units — two bottles of capsules and three containers of pieces — are known to have sold, and that no illnesses have yet been reported in connection with them, according to a recall notice covering the Niwali products. Because the items were sold through third-party online marketplaces, the FDA has cautioned that the company may not have a way to directly contact everyone who purchased them.

A weight-loss shortcut with a poisonous substitute

Tejocote root has circulated online for years as a "natural" alternative to prescription weight-loss drugs, often marketed with promises that it works quickly and without the side effects of pharmaceuticals. Investigators who have tracked the supply chain say the substitution with yellow oleander does not appear to be accidental contamination. Because yellow oleander causes diarrhea and gastrointestinal distress, taking it can produce the kind of rapid, visible weight loss that keeps customers buying — even though the mechanism is toxicity, not fat loss.

The products are sold through a scattered web of channels: individual sellers on Amazon, eBay and Etsy, dedicated e-commerce sites, and word of mouth amplified on social media, where testimonials about dramatic weight loss circulate widely. Consumers who reported adverse reactions in interviews with MedShadow Foundation described learning about the products through social media posts before ordering bottles online, then experiencing dizziness, nausea and a racing heartbeat that they treated at home rather than reporting to a doctor or the FDA — a pattern researchers believe means the true toll of the tainted supplements is significantly undercounted.

Why the same products keep resurfacing

Supplement researchers who have followed the tejocote cases for years say the FDA's alert-and-request-a-recall approach struggles against sellers who simply disappear and reopen under a new name. The FDA itself acknowledged in an earlier update to the alert that "a few [firms] have initiated voluntary recalls," but that products containing yellow oleander "remain on the marketplace" even as the agency works through "additional regulatory pathways."

"It's a systematic problem that's been going on for 20 plus years, and it's not getting better," said Dr. Pieter Cohen, a Harvard Medical School researcher who studies supplement contamination, describing the broader pattern of adulterated weight-loss products slipping past regulators.

Because dietary supplements do not require FDA approval before going on sale, the agency's main tools are testing products after the fact, issuing public warnings and asking companies to recall voluntarily. Consumer advocates note that a company can simply relist an identical product under a new brand name on the same marketplace once the old listing is removed, a cycle researchers who spoke to MedShadow described as a game of "whack-a-mole" that the agency has struggled to keep pace with given limited inspection resources.

What the FDA is telling consumers to do now

The agency's advice has not changed with this update: stop using any product on the list immediately, dispose of it, and contact a healthcare provider even if the supplement was taken in the past rather than recently, since cardiac effects from yellow oleander can be delayed or missed. Anyone with severe symptoms — irregular heartbeat, severe vomiting, or dizziness — is urged to call 911 or a local poison control center rather than wait. America's poison control centers have separately warned that tejocote-labeled products offer no proven weight-loss benefit even when they are not adulterated, since the fruit itself has little evidence behind it as a diet aid.

The FDA says it is continuing surveillance testing of botanical weight-loss products more broadly, not just those explicitly labeled tejocote root, after finding that some supplements with no mention of the ingredient also tested positive for yellow oleander. Consumers who believe they have experienced a reaction, or who want to check whether a product they own appears on the list, can do so through the FDA's dietary-supplement complaint system. The agency says it expects to keep updating the alert "as it becomes available," meaning the list of implicated brands is likely to grow again in the coming months.

For now, the practical guidance from toxicologists is blunt: any product claiming to be tejocote root, Raiz de Tejocote or a related "natural" fat-burning supplement bought online should be treated with suspicion regardless of brand, packaging or seller reviews, since the same contamination has now turned up across more than a dozen unrelated companies over nearly three years of testing.