There's a video doing the rounds. Sixteen thousand of you have watched it on our site alone. It's called the Dr Oz Pink Gelatin Trick, and the pitch is exactly what you think it is: dissolve some gelatin in warm water, tip in a splash of cranberry or hibiscus, drink it before dinner, and watch the pounds fall off like plaster off a damp ceiling.

I have bad news. It is, to use the technical term, absolute bollocks.

I have equally bad news for the people selling it: I'm a chef. I've been working with gelatin since I was nineteen years old, elbow-deep in pork stock at half two in the morning, and I can tell you with some authority what gelatin is, what it does, and what it doesn't do — which, regrettably for the daytime telly wellness-industrial complex, includes melting the fat off anyone.

What's actually in the glass

The "trick" is unflavoured gelatin bloomed in warm water with a bit of fruit juice for colour. That's it. That's the whole recipe. Dress it up with hibiscus and call it a ritual if you like, but stripped of the pink lighting and the breathless narration, you're drinking a thin, weakly-set broth with about eight grams of protein per serving.

Is protein before a meal useful for staying full? Yes, modestly. Is a slightly-set puddle of flavoured water the most effective way to get it in? No. A boiled egg costs 40p and doesn't require a production assistant. A tin of tuna will do the same job in half the time and without making your kitchen look like a forensics lab.

The reason gelatin gets dressed up in this nonsense is because it is an extraordinary ingredient — it just doesn't do what the grifters claim. Gelatin is what makes a proper panna cotta wobble with dignity. It's what gives a beef consommé its glossy, lip-coating weight. It's the quiet backbone of a pork pie, a proper wine jelly, a French cream, a Japanese mizu yokan. It turns bone stock into stock you can slice. It is one of the most useful things you can have in a pantry drawer.

What it is not, and has never been, is a weight-loss supplement that bypasses the laws of thermodynamics because a man in a suit said so on television.

Why this one went viral (and why we're talking about it)

Look, I understand the appeal. Food costs a fortune. People are tired. The idea that you can eat biscuits and lose weight because you've drunk a glass of pink something first is an immensely seductive lie. And crucially — this is the bit nobody says out loud — it tastes nice. It's a mildly sweet, soft jelly. Of course people like it. That doesn't make it medicine.

The most telling thing, to me, is that one of our other viewers-favourite videos this month is a debunking of the same trick. A YouTuber called fitforfreelance went through the whole pitch — Japanese green tea extract, acerola cherry, turmeric, piperine, the full witch's cabinet — and pointed out the blindingly obvious: there are no doses, no mechanism, no actual evidence. Just vibes and a cash register.

That our audience is watching both videos tells you something hopeful: people aren't stupid. They're curious. They want to know if the thing works before they waste the afternoon on it. Which is exactly what this column is for.

What to do with gelatin instead

If you've already bought a tub of Knox or a box of sheet gelatin off the back of a TikTok, don't bin it. Use it for something that will actually improve your Tuesday night. Here's my short list:

  • Panna cotta. Cream, sugar, a vanilla pod, two sheets of gelatin, set overnight. The first time you make a good one, you'll understand why chefs get a bit emotional about it.
  • Consommé. A lump of gelatin added to a clarified stock turns it into something you'd pay £18 for in Mayfair. For roughly 90p.
  • A proper pork pie. The jelly that fills the gap between the meat and the crust? Gelatin, flavoured with pork stock and a touch of sage. Hot-water crust pastry optional but character-building.
  • Homemade marshmallows. Because once you've made them you will never, ever buy the bag version again, and you'll also have an excuse to eat them for breakfast.

The wider point

Here's what I want you to take away, because this is going to keep happening. Every few months a new gelatin trick, cinnamon trick, lemon-and-cayenne trick will go viral. Someone on daytime TV will hold up a glass of something pink and insinuate it has medicinal properties. You will be told it's "ancient wisdom" or "what Japanese women have known for centuries."

It will always be marketing. It will usually be rubbish. And the money you were going to spend on the ritual would buy you a decent kitchen thermometer, a pot big enough to actually cook something in, or, frankly, a week's worth of vegetables.

Cook properly. Eat plenty of whatever your body is telling you it needs. Skip the pink jelly and go make a panna cotta. At least at the end of that one, you get pudding.

— Harry