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Coffee Bean That Melts Fat?

That was the subject line of an email in my Inbox this morning. I almost deleted it straight away because it was SPAM from some company I’d never asked to send me stuff, but I thought no, let’s have a look. So I opened it up and was greeted by a scantily clad, skinny lady – rather like the one on the cover of my book How to Lose Weight Easily – and emblazoned across her very attractive bosom in giant writing were the words.

Weight Loss Experts
CAN’T BELIEVE THIS

I couldn’t believe it.

They were absolutely right.

I am a weight loss expert and I can’t believe it.

Having come this far, I thought I’d better check this out, after all it might make for something interesting to write about today. My intention being to quickly discover that it was a load of rubbish and then tell you why and what was wrong with the research.

You might think it’s quite easy to track down a piece of research these days with the internet being what it is. But, truth be told, Google is a bit rubbish when you want to find out specific and accurate information. What tends to happen is that you trawl through twenty, thirty, forty promising looking sites only to find out that they are all rehashing the same information which originated in the same press release. Occasionally there is a snippet of fresh information that leads, like a trail of breadcrumbs either to the goal, or to a giving up on the search.

It really is important to locate the original research paper because, quite often, distortions creep into the reporting of what the results mean. Especially when the reporting is done by a company whose product sales are going to benefit.

For instance one site reported

“16 overweight young adults”

Another…

“The 16 people were obese or overweight and between the age of 22 and 26.”

The study actually used 16 people between the ages of 22 and 46.

The key author of the study is cited as Dr Joe A Vinson, a chemist at the University of Scranton, PA, but the study was conducted in Bangalore, India. Dr Vinson’s research was funded by Applied Food Sciences. Applied Food Sciences are the company that supplied the Green Coffee Bean Extract (GCA – Green Coffee Antioxidant) that the research was testing!!!!

Looking at Dr Vinson’s list of publications on the University website it seems he is a leading light in researching natural products that produce health benefits. But I am nevertheless suspicious when the guy who is paying the bills is also the guy whose products you are testing to see if they do what they say.

Back to the research: 16 people is such a small sample that no statistically significant conclusions can be drawn – which makes me wonder why bother. That said, the results are certainly interesting. The study ran for 22 weeks. Participants had a period with a low dose green coffee extract, a period with a higher dose, and a period with a placebo. There was a two week recovery period between each test. Over that time the subjects showed an average weight loss of 18lbs. 10 subjects had 10% loss of body weight, and 5 of the other 6 lost 5% of their body weight. Average heart rate slowed by 2 beats a minute – this doesn’t sound much but is significant for heart health. There are also indications, but nothing statistically significant, that there might be beneficial effects on blood pressure.

It is important to note here that Green Coffee Extract is low in caffeine. The caffeine comes when the beans are roasted. The extract used is primarily chlorogenic acid which is removed from the green beans, but is destroyed in the roasting process so drinking more coffee isn’t going to do you any good.

You’ll find elsewhere on this site my comments about two drugs, Belviq and Qsymia that the FDA recently approved for use with weight loss – both of which look like they could have very serious long-term side effects. A 22 week trial isn’t going to identify long-term side effects, but no short-term side effects were reported in this coffee bean trial.

It looks to me as though this trial was created specifically to provide scientific evidence and backing to promote the sale of Applied Food Science’s GCA. It is too small to be of any use for anything other than to provide quotable results from a clinical trial in order to convince customers of the product’s efficacy. However, the results are interesting, so I cannot say, as I was hoping to, that this is just more junk. If you are desperate for a solution in a pill – this might help you. If you decide to take it then please let me know how you get on.

Michael

 

If you want to check it out yourself you can find the report here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3267522/?tool=pubmed