The collagen drinks that promise to fight the ageing process

Chinese women are drinking collagen to gain 'skin as soft as a baby's'

Age may be respected in China, but wrinkles are definitely not – fighting the process is a boom industry. According to Euromonitor, the Chinese skincare sector was worth £3.3bn in 2007, while cosmetic surgery raked in an estimated £1.5bn last year and is thought to be growing at around 20% a year.

Now women have added a new weapon to their armoury of facelifts and Botox injections: collagen. Most Brits associate it with lip injections and the resultant trout pouts, but Chinese women are drinking it instead. Wander around department stores in Shanghai and Beijing and advertising slogans bombard you with promises such as: "Take a collagen drink for 30 days and have skin as soft as a baby's."

Cosmetics firm DHC China uses fish collagen in its drinks, but promises that they do not smell fishy. Sure enough, the pale yellow juice-like drink tastes a little sweet, a little sour, but certainly not of seafood.

"Sip it every night before sleep and you will see a clear improvement in skin texture after just 10 days," says a spokeswoman for DHC China. "And if you want to maintain good skin condition, you should not stop drinking it." Clearly women are taking that advice – sales of collagen-enriched drinks, powders and tablets are growing rapidly – and it's not a cheap investment. A bottle of DHC China's cherry-flavoured liquid – its bestseller – costs 29.8 yuan (£2.80), which means a month's course comes to around 900 yuan – more than half the average urban disposable income.

Cao Lingzhi, a 22-year-old enthusiast, says her skin is 'super smooth' after a six-month course, while 30-year-old Tian Jing thinks her pores are less visible after two years. 'My skin is better than before. But I am not sure whether it is because of collagen or because now I sleep more than I used to,' she admits.

Bian Huawei, vice-director of nutrition studies at the Sun Yat-Sen university hospital in Guangzhou, doesn't believe that the drinks are working any wonders. The amount of collagen that is absorbed through the digestive system is "extremely little. Eating more vegetables and fruits may be more helpful because they have antioxidants," advises Huawei.

However, if you still want to give collagen a try, you don't have to fly all the way to China: Gilgamesh, the pan-Asian restaurant in Camden, London is promising to serve collagen-infused dishes this autumn.

Hope springs eternal, it seems – even if youth does not.