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Local Professors Discredit Raspberry Ketone Diet Supplements
Posted: Jan 25, 2013 4:32 PM by Mitch Bryan
Updated: Jan 25, 2013 6:34 PM
CORPUS CHRISTI - Health food stores throughout the country have had a mad rush of customers buying "raspberry ketones."
A pill that claims to help you burn fat. It was even advertised as a "miracle fat-burner" by a popular, syndicated, TV doctor. But we found out, some chemists and dietitians don't agree with all of the claims.
Odds are, either you, or someone you know is taking raspberry ketones in hopes of losing some weight.
And at first glance, they seem like a sweet deal, but I checked in with Dr. Mark Olson, a Professor of Chemistry at TAMUCC.
"The raspberry ketone is actually a single molecule," said Dr. Olson.
According to Olson, the ketone is a natural component of several types of berries and it increases Lypolosis, which is "fat-burning." But don't get too excited, because an important detail seems to have been left out of most of the ads you might have seen.
"The studies that suggest that this occurs have only been done in mice. So, there's absolutely no scientific evidence in peer review journals that suggests it would work in humans as well," Mark said.
Gene Power, a Professor Of Kinesiology at Del Mar College agrees with Olson.
"To my knowledge there are no clinical trials of this product," he said.
Powers tells me that the lab rats were fed a fatty meal then fed 2% of their own body weight of the ketones, in order to make the rats "lose weight."
Power explained, "That would be, for me, as a 200 pound man, I would have to eat, like, 4 pounds of this dietary supplement everyday, to get a fat burning effect. If it works in human beings at all."
Since February, the dietary supplements have been flying off the shelves, and both of these men think they know why.
"The hype was basically from a famous doctor's television show," Power said.
"And now I've got the number 1 miracle in a bottle to burn fat, it's raspberry ketones," said Dr. Oz in a February episode of the Dr. Oz Show.
I found this clip on the Dr. Oz Show website and though this doctor calls raspberry ketones a "miracle in a bottle," my professors aren't buying it.
"The statements that are being made are not FDA approved," said Olson.
And at an average of $20 a bottle online, there has to be another way to lose weight, though it may not be as convenient.
I asked Olson, "Would you recommend this to me?"
He replied, "You know, probably not, I mean, people want to take a miracle drug to lose weight."
"There's no magic pill, there's no secret exercise program, it's lifestyle," Power added.
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