Climbed to TOP 1 of the beverage ranking, Freshippo's fully revamped coconut water is set to seize the "de-bloating" business that used to be dominated by black coffee.
By reinventing coconut water into a "high-potassium water", the product hit the top 1 of both new beverage ranking and repurchase ranking of Freshippo within less than half a month after launch.
This "Matcha Coconut High-Potassium Water" from Freshippo has an extremely simple ingredient list, which only contains coconut water and matcha powder, focusing on natural electrolytes.
The official product page never mentions reducing edema, but on Xiaohongshu, consumers have already regarded it as a "magic edema-relieving drink". Some say it works better than black coffee; some say that drinking a bottle the next morning after having hot pot can really prevent facial puffiness.
Image source: Freshippo APP, screenshot taken on August 18; Xiaohongshu
Foodaily has been keeping a close eye on the electrolyte water track recently. In our view, this practice of highlighting the natural electrolyte content of raw materials itself also represents a more innovative direction for natural electrolyte water. However, what is more noteworthy than the product itself are two signals behind it:
First, "high potassium" is becoming a new entry point in the electrolyte water track. The narrative of traditional electrolyte water centers on "sodium supplementation", but consumers have pushed a product focused on "potassium supplementation" to the top of the ranking. This shows that apart from sodium, other elements in electrolyte water are also worthy of attention.
Second, "edema reduction" is a more noteworthy business opportunity behind this new entry point. From black coffee to red bean and coix seed water, and then to high-potassium water, consumers have been using different categories to solve the "edema reduction" problem, but this demand has never been claimed by a single category. This indicates that "edema reduction" is a potential market to be tapped.
Why hasn't edema reduction grown into an independent track in China up to now? Looking at neighboring markets, South Korea has already had the independent category label of "edema-relieving tea", and Japan has even listed "edema reduction" as an officially recognized functional claim.
Overseas markets have verified the commercial potential of "edema reduction", so what is the huge growth opportunity hidden behind this demand in China?
A bottle of coconut water added with matcha, why is it regarded by users as an emergency edema-relieving artifact after a big meal?
Before Freshippo stepped in, "high-potassium water" had actually become a hit on Xiaohongshu for a round.
The so-called "high-potassium water" is a homemade edema-relieving drink made from high-potassium ingredients such as bananas and coconut water, paired with ingredients that help boost metabolism like matcha and coffee. The underlying principle is simple: supplement potassium and excrete sodium to quickly reduce edema.
Ingredients can be freely matched, but the formula is basically fixed — bananas, coconut water, matcha, milk or soy milk, plus a portion of coffee. The drink with five ingredients is called "5x high-potassium water", the one with four ingredients is "4x", and the one with three ingredients is "3x". Some people even directly call it "regret water" or "big-meal gut-cleansing water".
As of June 2026, the Xiaohongshu topic #5xHighPotassiumWater has about 2.105 million views; the related topics on Douyin have about 21.382 million plays[1].
Image source: Xiaohongshu
Why can "high-potassium water" ferment so quickly on social media? The key lies in that it hits two real pain points in daily scenarios:
The first is post-big-meal remedy. Many people have had this experience: you enjoy hot pot and barbecue to your heart's content the night before, and wake up the next day with a puffy face.
Because this kind of diet usually contains excessive sodium, the body will automatically retain water to maintain osmotic pressure. At this time, a drink focused on "draining water" is very attractive. That's where the name "big-meal regret water" comes from.
The second is daily edema caused by sitting for long hours and staying up late. After sitting in the office all day, you find a tight sock mark around your ankle when you take off your socks at night; when you look in the mirror the next day after working overtime late, your face is obviously "puffed up". "Supplement potassium, excrete sodium, reduce edema" has become a simple and straightforward solution.
In addition, the "celebrity same style" effect brought by the figure management of Zhang Ruonan, Tong Yao and K-pop idols has further boosted the popularity of high-potassium water, making the high-potassium concept quickly break out of the circle and enter the public view.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
With consumer demand and social media popularity both in place, what Freshippo needs to do is to capture the product prototype that can be standardized from the trend.
As we learned in our previous report on the "Budweiser Yogurt Bowl", there is a clear R&D path inside Freshippo: turn the viral dietary therapy eating methods on social platforms into standardized pre-packaged products, launch new products in small batches quickly to test market acceptance, and tap incremental category opportunities.
"Matcha Coconut High-Potassium Water" is exactly the new product born under this hit-making logic.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
However, the high-potassium water of Freshippo only retains two raw materials: coconut water and 1000-mesh Guizhou matcha powder. Why did Freshippo pick these two out of all the ingredients?
In the formulas that have been repeatedly verified by content creators, the three main ingredients that support the "high potassium" function are bananas, coconut water and matcha.
Among them, banana has the most intuitive "high potassium" public recognition, but its biggest problem lies in industrial production: after being made into puree, its color is prone to oxidative darkening, its stability and shelf life are difficult to control, and the cost is also relatively high. For Freshippo, which aims at large-scale production, all these are negative factors.
Coconut water is a natural electrolyte carrier: every 100ml of natural coconut water contains about 200mg of potassium, and is rich in magnesium and calcium. More importantly, after years of market education, it has been deeply bound to labels such as "hydrating" and "natural", so the consumer recognition cost is almost zero.
Matcha powder is an "efficiency player": its potassium content is even higher than that of bananas, and a small amount of addition can raise the potassium content of the whole bottle. At the same time, it comes with unique matcha flavor and color, and can provide a more gentle refreshing effect than coffee.
Therefore, Freshippo did not copy the "5x" formula from content creators, but retained the two core raw materials that are most convenient for industrial production and have a reasonable efficacy logic. Consumer feedback also confirms this idea: many people on Xiaohongshu say that their faces are indeed no longer puffy the next day after drinking it.
Image source: Xiaohongshu @WhatToEatToday, Pan-Fried Pork Chop Bun
The "edema reduction" business that is wildly popular in Japan and South Korea is still an undervalued market in China
Edema reduction is not a new demand spawned by "high-potassium water", but a long-undervalued business opportunity.
More than 2,000 years ago, the book *Miraculous Pivot: Water Distension* recorded: "At the beginning of edema, the eyelids are slightly swollen, just like the state of just waking up" — the puffiness after waking up in the morning is no different for ancient people and modern people[2].
In the Song Dynasty, the book *Materia Medica of Zheng Lei* recorded an ingredient called adzuki bean, noting that "long-term consumption can make people slim". But ancient people used it mainly not for weight loss, but for "promoting diuresis and expelling pus"[3].
Across thousands of years, the demand for edema reduction has never stopped. Up to now, the topics about "reducing edema" on Xiaohongshu have accumulated 220 million views and more than 600,000 discussions.
However, "edema reduction" has never grown into an independent track in China. All kinds of products are trying to meet this demand, but few brands take it as their core proposition for operation.
Take black coffee as an example, it is a well-known "edema-relieving artifact" in public cognition. Caffeine itself is a natural diuretic. After entering the human body, it can inhibit the reabsorption of water and sodium ions by the kidneys, so that the water that would otherwise be retained by the body will be directly excreted as urine.
But edema reduction is only one of its many labels. Black coffee also has multiple labels such as refreshing, fat burning and boosting metabolism, and edema reduction is not enough to define this category alone.
Image source: Xiaohongshu
The same goes for red bean and coix seed water. In recent years, the Chinese health drink track has produced a 1-billion-yuan-level blockbuster product: Genki Forest's Free Red Bean Coix Seed Water.
Although according to social media discussions, many users do drink it as "edema-relieving water" spontaneously, the brand does not take "edema reduction" as its core product proposition, and mostly operates around concepts such as "water substitute" and "light health preservation".
This also illustrates from the side that "edema reduction" is still a track with real consumer behaviors, but has not been officially named.
Image source: Xiaohongshu @Happy Auntie 2, Soymilk
While in South Korea, "edema-relieving tea" has formed a relatively clear consumer awareness.
Under the large track of internal beauty consumption, "edema-relieving tea" is a fast-growing subcategory. According to the offline store sales data released by Olive Young, South Korea's largest beauty chain, in October 2025, "edema-relieving tea" has always ranked at the top of the "health management" category[4].
However, due to regulatory restrictions, ordinary food in South Korea cannot directly claim the function of "edema reduction", so brands usually do not talk about the efficacy directly, but convey product value through "edema-relieving raw materials" that consumers are already familiar with.
Pumpkin tea is a typical example. In South Korea, there has been a folk rumor that postpartum women must drink old pumpkin juice to drain water and reduce edema. Although it was later proved to be a misinformation, the association between pumpkin tea and edema reduction has taken root in consumers' minds.
But old pumpkin itself is rich in potassium, β-carotene and dietary fiber, these ingredients help promote blood circulation and metabolism, and do have certain edema-relieving effects. For this reason, pumpkin tea has long ranked at the top of the sales list of health tea area in Olive Young, and is also recognized as the "edema-relieving artifact for Korean women" by domestic daigou agents.
Image source: Yami
Another product that has to be mentioned is the corn silk tea from South Korea's Guangdong Pharmaceutical, which has almost built "edema reduction" into a category mindset.
In traditional Chinese medicine, corn silk has long been used as a medicinal and edible herb for "promoting diuresis, eliminating dampness and reducing edema". Modern research also found that it contains flavonoids, polysaccharides, organic acids and other components, which have the functions of diuresis, assisting blood pressure reduction and regulating water-salt balance[5].
Since its launch in 2006, this product has been marketed around scenarios such as "diuresis and edema reduction" and "V-line small face" for a long time. It has topped the South Korean ready-to-drink tea market share for 18 consecutive years, with cumulative sales reaching 1.6 billion bottles, which is equivalent to an average of 31 bottles per South Korean person. This figure is enough to illustrate its commercial potential[6].
