Five units is the entire sales footprint that Global Mix Inc., of Middle Village, New York, reported for its Niwali Tejocote products when the FDA posted the company’s recall on September 21, 2026. Two of the units were capsules and three were root pieces. Each was sold as tejocote, a Mexican hawthorn root, and the recall says the contents were yellow oleander (Thevetia peruviana), a poisonous ornamental shrub.
The recalled lots are RM500925 for the 90-count capsules and RM400925 for the 90-day-supply pieces, both with an expiration date of March 3, 2028. Both products were sold through eBay.com and Everymarket.com. Global Mix told the agency that no illnesses or adverse events had been reported to the company, and it asked anyone holding the products to stop using them immediately and return them for a refund.
Yellow oleander sold under a tejocote name
The recall notice ties the danger to one chemical family. In the agency’s wording, “All parts of the yellow oleander plant are known to contain cardiac glycosides, which are highly toxic to humans and animals.” The notice lists the symptoms a consumer could expect: nausea, vomiting, dizziness, diarrhea, abdominal pain, irregular heartbeat and arrhythmia. Anyone with symptoms is told to contact a health care provider, and reports can go to the FDA’s MedWatch line at 1-800-FDA-1088.
Tejocote itself is a legitimate botanical. The FDA’s standing safety alert on the subject draws the line plainly: tejocote (Crataegus mexicana) is a hawthorn relative, while yellow oleander is a poisonous plant the agency has repeatedly found substituted into products labeled as tejocote root or Brazil seed. As of the alert’s March 11, 2026 update, the FDA listed 23 products with verified yellow oleander contamination, sold through Amazon, eBay and independent websites.
Cardiac glycosides and a digoxin-like toxidrome
Cardiac glycosides act on the sodium-potassium pump in heart muscle cells, and the heart drug digoxin belongs to the same broad family, which is why clinicians treat yellow oleander poisoning with digoxin antidote. A case report from emergency physicians at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, led by Samantha E. Long, MD, shows how fast it can go wrong. A 70-year-old man ate about a quarter of a seed he had bought at a market as a “Peruvian nut” and reached an emergency department 30 minutes later with vomiting, dizziness and a heart rate of 44 beats per minute.
A digoxin level measured 4.04 ng/mL, against a normal range of 0.5 to 2. The first hospital gave four vials of digoxin immune Fab without improvement; after transfer he received 15 vials over 12 hours plus intravenous atropine, briefly developed atrial fibrillation, and went home after two more hospital days. The Southeast Texas Poison Center advised on the initial dosing. The authors wrote that yellow oleander ingestion “can cause severe, potentially fatal digoxin-like toxicity.” His exposure was a raw seed rather than a recalled product, and it did not set off the Niwali recall, but it shows what the glycosides do at the bedside.
The New Jersey poison-center case that exposed the substitution
The case that prompted the original testing came from New Jersey. In September 2022, a 23-month-old child who had taken Eva Nutrition Mexican Tejocote Root developed vomiting, a heart rate of 90 and blood pressure of 71/60, with an electrocardiogram showing frequent premature ventricular complexes and scooped ST segments that the authors called consistent with cardenolide toxicity. Noah Berland, MD, of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, and co-authors including Diane P. Calello, MD, reported in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that the child received 40 mg of digoxin-specific antibody fragments, improved, relapsed on follow-up, and recovered after a second dose.
The investigation then sent ten tejocote-labeled products bought online to Flora Research Laboratories in Grants Pass, Oregon. Nine contained yellow oleander, identified through the toxic glycoside thevetin B, and none contained tejocote; the tenth showed neither plant.
Global Mix and an earlier recall
Niwali appeared in this story before 2026. On April 5, 2024, Global Mix announced an earlier recall covering four brands (Eva Nutrition, Science of Alpha, Niwali and NWL Nutra) after the same finding, with every item sharing lot 181121U and an expiration of June 2025. Those products had been sold in nearly every state through Amazon, Etsy and the company’s website, so the 2026 recall, at five units, is a far smaller sweep.
The sources leave open where else yellow oleander is sitting under a tejocote label. The FDA’s alert says agency testing and product identification continue, and the Houston authors point out that contaminated products remain available through online retailers despite the warnings. Global Mix lists a refund line at (646) 419-5884. In the CDC report’s own count, nine of the ten tejocote-labeled products tested carried the plant.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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