For science, I tried the TikTok lettuce water to see if it actually makes you sleepy

Yep, it’s literally just a mug of boiled lettuce

3 years ago

TikTok has given us some pretty banging new recipes, from whipped Dalgona coffee to cloud bread, and more recently those peng pesto eggs. But the newest offering from TikTok is substantially worse tasting: Lettuce water. It sounds really appetising, I know.

But people all over the app are saying lettuce water (as in, yep, literally just a mug of boiled lettuce-infused water) is some sort of natural remedy that helps make you sleepy. As someone who usually can’t sleep and runs on about six hours’ sleep a night, I obviously had to try it myself to see if it actually worked. So against everything in my body that was screaming at me not to drink a mug of lettuce-flavoured hot water, I put it to the test to see if it actually makes you tired, like everyone all over TikTok is saying.

Here’s everything you need to do to try the TikTok lettuce water, in three easy steps:

Step one: Secure the (lettuce) bag

For the lettuce water you will need: Lettuce, a mug, a kettle. Pretty self-explanatory really.

Mixed lettuce – back of the fridge; kettle and mug – model’s own

I made my way to Sainsbury’s on the hunt for lettuce, but the heatwave had clearly given everyone a taste for salad and all the shop had was one sad bag of spinach.

I bought it, not sure if spinach would count as lettuce or not, but when I got home I found a 10-day-out-of-date bag of actual lettuce at the back of the fridge. It wasn’t brown yet, so against my better judgement but in the name of science I decided to use that.

The only slight hiccup was that it was a mixed bag of lettuce, so I just picked out just the green bits to use – because again, I wasn’t sure if purple lettuce worked the same. If you can get just normal lettuce I’d definitely recommend this, to save faff.

Ignore the sell-by date, thanks x

Step two: Make the lettuce water

Once you have your mug full of lettuce, you’ll need to pour the boiling water in. At this stage it looks quite minging, but trust me – it gets worse.

My housemate then said it made the kitchen smell “vile” and asked me to light a candle.

After leaving it for about 10 minutes it was time to get rid of the lettuce so I could drink the water. I could have poured it through a sieve or something, but that would be more washing up, so instead I decided to fish the (now warm and floppy) bits of lettuce out with a fork.

Floppy soggy lettuce, yum

The downside to not using a sieve was that there were little bits of lettuce still floating around the mug.

Here’s some delicious lettuce sediment for you

Step three: Drink the lettuce water

The lettuce had turned the water a murky green/brown colour, like pond sludge. Appetising.

Drinking the lettuce water is arguably the hardest step, because you have to convince your brain to actually let you drink it.

I chose my favourite mug for this and it’s now ruined forever

But once I tried it, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I’d expected. It just tasted like hot lettuce – it was more of a weird experience than a gross flavour.

The worst part was the end, when the mushed up little bits of lettuce all went into my mouth in the final gulp. I’ll level with you: It made me gag an obscene amount and I had to spit it out.

Okay but does the TikTok lettuce water actually make you sleepy?

It might have been the heat wave, or maybe I was just particularly tired last night, but about 10-15 minutes after I drank my mug of lettuce water my eyes started getting heavy and closing. I got in bed and was asleep in mere minutes – and it was significantly earlier than when I would usually get to sleep.

Obviously I have no idea if it would work for you – but it’s literally just lettuce and water, so as long as you can psych yourself up for the taste of it, what could go wrong?

Would I do it again?

Honestly? My sleep is horrendous and it actually did work so yeah, I probably would try it again. The taste was probably a 4.5/10, so if I actually used a sieve and didn’t get all the lettuce mush in my mouth, I reckon that’s worth it for a decent night’s sleep.

People on TikTok have been adding lemon slices, or peppermint or chamomile tea bags to make the water taste nicer, which I didn’t want to do because I wanted to test if the lettuce itself would work. But if I did this again I’d definitely add one of these to make it taste a bit better.