Sorry to ruin your guarana trip, but there are no natural fat burners

Cyanide is natural. So are mercury, arsenic and ricin. And they’re chemicals. Zoom in enough on an apple and it, too, is made of chemicals. 

Don’t be fooled by the “natural is always good for you” marketing hype that’s spurred an entire industry of quaint, shabby-chic stores and special aisles.

Nature is wonderful. Crystal clear springs, energetic surf, majestic mountains and summer thunderstorms can cleanse the soul. But, as it turns out, cleansing the soul is not quite the same as cleansing your body, or “detoxing”. You have a liver for that. 

Of course, we are the most dangerous chemicals on this planet and destroy everything in our path. Some are worse than others. 

Some people buy “chemical” body wash and take it home in a “natural” brown bag. Others buy a “natural” body wash and carry it home in a plastic bottle. Others are so natural they don’t wash at all, and that’s bad for the environment too.

Back to the bottled natural stuff – let’s assume you are referring to a reputable brand in a chic café or special aisle and not a product put together by a part-time mechanic in Thailand who happened to find cheap ingredients on Alibaba.com.

When you read the label on natural fat-loss products, you will find similar ingredients in most of them. Also, rather tellingly, the words: “This product may aid in weight loss.”

Some of these recurring ingredients are green tea extract, guarana, caffeine and garcinia cambogia.

“Caffeine alone won’t help you slim down. It may slightly boost weight-loss efforts or help prevent weight gain, but there’s no solid evidence that caffeine consumption leads to noticeable weight loss,” writes Mayo Clinic.

WebMD says the active ingredient in garcinia is hydroxycitric acid, which “appears to block an enzyme called citrate lyase, which your body uses to make fat.

“But actual weight loss results aren’t impressive. A review published in the Journal of Obesity found that people who took garcinia cambogia in studies lost about 1kg more than people who didn’t take it.”

The reviewers couldn’t say for sure that the weight loss was because of the supplement. It could have been from the lower-calorie diet and exercise programmes the people in the studies typically followed.

The Daily Mail, which is rather adept at hyping things up, delivered a rather damp squib verdict on guarana when quoting an Australian obesity researcher writing in The Conversation. “To slimmers’ dismay, guarana alone – without the accompanying ephedra – is not proven to trigger weight loss,” it writes. 

Ephedra, as you will probably know, is in the naughty corner, and Ephedrine is a schedule 6 substance in SA today. 

Medical News Today writes of green tea extract: “It is important to note that any benefits of green tea for weight loss are likely to be very small. The impact of green tea is not as beneficial as other healthy weight-loss methods, such as exercise, that have far greater metabolic benefits.”

You may wonder why didn’t we quote herbal websites or natural blogs because they’d have told a different story. Perhaps you think it’s confirmation bias!

Here’s the scoop: supplements are just that, they supplement a diet and, like the label says, they may provide some benefit. When last did you read: “Decathlete stripped of gold medal for green tea extract found in B sample”?

The drugs that “work” are controlled substances and added to the doping list because many of them are provide an unfair advantage and are dangerous to use. 

The safest and most effective way to lose weight is to eat clean, in moderate amounts, while following a proper, periodised exercise programme. That’s a tough pill to swallow.