Phytochemistry, pharmacology, and traditional uses of beverage plants with dietary hormetic potential for human health

• Beverage plants contain phytochemicals that stimulate stress response pathways. • Beverage plants with traditional uses have evidence-based pharmacological benefits. • Traditional drinks such as tea, coffee, and herbal infusions have long-term health benefits. • Hormetic effects of low doses trigger adaptive responses, emphasizing safety-related dosage. • Enhanced-delivery functional beverages for personalized nutrition are promising nutraceuticals. The beverage plants help greatly in the human diet and are gradually explored for their dietary hormesis behaviour, a health-promoting adaptation induced by the small doses of the plant bioactives. This comprehensive review integrates the existing evidence of the phytochemistry, pharmacological action, molecular pathways, and traditional uses of major hormetic beverage plants, including tea, coffee, cocoa, yerba mate, hibiscus, chia seeds, herbal beverages, and fermented drinks. These plants provide various constituents, particularly polyphenols, terpenoids, alkaloids, and bioactive metabolites, which modulate the biological pathways through hormetic, biphasic dose–response patterns. This work outlines the biosynthetic pathways and the intrinsic variability of the compounds while also highlighting the analytical techniques for their qualitative and quantitative assessment. The pharmacological actions, such as antioxidant and redox-balancing effects, anti-inflammatory responses, neuroprotection, cardiometabolic benefits, anticancer activity, and gut microbiome actions are discussed with preclinical, clinical, and population-based studies. Traditional usage of these beverages in Ayurveda, folk medicine, and Traditional Chinese Medicine is investigated along with their modern functional foods and nutraceutical applications. This review emphasizes the molecular basis of hormetic responses, which includes the key hormetic pathways Nrf2–ARE, AMPK, sirtuin activation, autophagy, and mitohormesis which are examined.