Once again, I was browsing the internet over my morning coffee and came across a new weight loss product. Burn belly fat with this gold, custom-shaped bottle of magic pills (brand and product name withheld). Here we go again, marketing at its finest. You’ll find products like these in your face on every corner of the internet. What’s the deal, do these sorts of products actually work?
This particular company has been nice enough to link a hand curated list of peer-reviewed scientific articles to support their product and its claims, so let’s have a closer look. For reference I have listed and compared the product's maximum recommended dose, which is a double dose, to the clinical recommendations.
1. Cayenne fruit powder- 600mg. Cayenne powder is not an active ingredient, but perhaps they have included it for its capsaicin content. Two studies have been linked, with both trialling capsaicin/ capsaicinoids on weight loss. The results from these two studies are promising, with both demonstrating significant weight loss. The two effective doses in these linked studies were 4mg and 6mg. This all sounds promising but cayenne powder only contains approximately 2.5mg of capsaicin per gram of cayenne powder. Meaning, that in this weight loss product, you would consume 1.5mg of capsaicin which is not even half of the effective dose used in the clinical trials they linked. Furthermore, a dose of 2mg, which is still higher than what is in this product, was scientifically proven to be ineffective. Keep in mind the product's 1.5mg is a double dose.
2. Choline bitartrate- 600mg. The famous nootropic, choline improves your mental wellbeing and can positively influence your mood. It has also been promoted as a weight loss supplement. Two studies are linked, one is in mice so let’s not bother with this one . The second is a trial in humans, showing a significant reducing in body fat percentage in training athletes who consumed choline compared to control. This sounds very promising, however, participants in this study consume 2g/day. This is a huge difference to the 0.6g/day you consume with this product.
3. Green coffee bean- 600mg. The effects of green coffee bean extract have been studied in three human trials. There seems to be some good consensus across all three studies that green coffee bean extract can help with weight loss. However, the ingredient label reads “Green coffee bean- 600mg”. The effective dosage in the clinical trials was 180-200mg, why would you triple this concentration. Given the under-dosing theme of this product, my theory would be that this product contains green coffee beans, not the extract. Green coffee beans are very different to green coffee bean extract which is what was used in all of the studies. There’s not much information on what the conversion is between bean and extract, but one source suggests that 14g of green coffee will make 1 teaspoon of extract. Assuming the extract would be a density to coffee grind, that would be 1.8g of extract from 14g beans. That’s a yield of 12.85% or 77.15mg of green coffee bean extract from the 600mg green coffee bean in this product. That’s 230% below the lowest clinically relevant dose. The other possibility is they have mislabelled their nutritional table and it is three times the required concentration, which seems no more appealing from a professional, trust or health perspective.
4. Green tea- 600mg. Here we go again, extract is not the same as the un-extracted material. Referencing clinical science that studies extract to justify your use of un-extracted ingredients is fraudulent, misleading and most likely illegal.
5. Inositol- 100mg. The only study provided for inositol use was a pilot study. Pilot studies should never, ever, be used to justify commercial products with pharmaceutical properties. This pilot study was investigating women with polycystic ovarian syndrome which, without getting side-tracked, is an imbalance in healthy testosterone. This is clearly not appropriate to assess the effectiveness of inositol on weight loss in people who don’t have polycystic ovarian syndrome. Further investigation of the literature showed very little, to no information regarding inositol as a weight loss agent. This is in complete contrast to their claims “Inositol - Proven to directly affect metabolism and increase fat burning”. Oh, and let’s not forget in the single pilot study linked, the dosage was 1.75g/day, which is almost three times the 0.6g/day from this product.
6. L-Carnitine- 600mg. Does L-carnatine work? Yes, at 2g/day as stated by the references included on the product page. Not the 0.6g/day from this product.
7. Betaine- 300mg. Human trials regarding betaine and weight loss are mixed. Given that betaine has been used to reduce weight in livestock for a number of years, let’s give the product benefit of the doubt. Minimum concentrations required to possibly lose weight starts at 2.5g/day. The daily dose is 0.3g in this product. That’s over eight times less than what is required.
8. Methionine- 30mg. Last but not least, there was one study referenced for methionine. It’s a single animal study on mice undergoing a ketogenic diet and focused on mediating the metabolic effects of ketogenic diets, not weight loss. In direct contrast, a clinical trial has found reducing dietary methionine helped weight loss, increased metabolic rate, reduced adiposity and increased insulin sensitivity in individuals with metabolic syndrome. Granted the animal study did show reduced liver fat in mice. However, given deficient intake of B vitamins or excessive intake of methionine can result in hyperhomocysteinemia, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and there are no human studies supporting methionine consumption, I see no argument for this ingredient to exist in weight loss formulas.
Summary:
Please always do your due diligence on any hype product you are considering purchasing. This particular product comes in at AUD16.6/day (double dose as required for the dosages listed) which is ridiculously expensive. On top of syphoning your wallet, it does not work. Even reviewing the references they have cherry-picked, the supplied evidence clearly demonstrates that their own product does not work. This doesn’t even touch the surface of their particularly dodgy labelling which seems to insinuate coffee beans and green tea being extracts without specifically identifying them as such. Let's not forget that they have attempted to use mice studies to justify health benefits in humans. This is extremely misleading, foul play and potentially down-right dangerous.
Further to my scathing review of these hype-scam products, we need to put to sleep a few ongoing loopholes that a lot of these companies use. The first is, “look at our reviews, our customers tell us it works”. Many people looking to progress their fitness journey will look for any sort of product to help them achieve want they want to see. The placebo effect is when a person's physical or mental health appears to improve after taking a placebo or 'dummy' treatment. The placebo effect is real, never be sucked into thinking a product works because of the reviews if the clinical data says otherwise. You were the one who lost the weight, not the magic weight loss pills.
The second excuse I see commonly is “well the ingredients by themselves aren’t clinically dosed but together they are effective”. There is no evidence this is true. Yes, some ingredients do have a synergistic effect. Take caffeine and l-theanine for example, the effects of each ingredient are greater together than the sum of their effects individually but this needs to be tested before you can say it is true. Even if it were true, this product is so devastatingly under-dosed it probably still wouldn’t make any difference.
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