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Does One A Day Weight Smart Supplement Work for Weight Loss?

September 30 2008

I see this product every time I go to Walmart. And I have seen people talking about One a Day Weight Smart supplement on internet boards. Let’s see if this one has anything interesting to talk about. Or One a Day Weight Smartis it another useless fat-loss supplement wrapped in glossy papers?

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One a Day Weight Smart Supplement Claims

  • One A Day Weight Smart enhances your metabolism with EGCG (green tea extract).
  • One a Day Weight Smart converts food to fuel with extra Chromium and key B vitamins
One a Day Weight Smart Claim 1

One A Day Weight Smart enhances your metabolism with EGCG (green tea extract)

A decrease in metabolism occurs with diets and/or when people lose weight. This is mainly attributed to the decrease in muscle mass. Exercise is one way to increase the metabolism; another way is to take natural herbal nutrients. Green tea is one such product and is one favorite ingredient in most weight loss supplements.

Green Tea mainly contains contain caffeine and polyphenols. In the past the increase in metabolism was credited solely to the caffeine content in green tea. But it is now shown that the metabolism increase with green tea is greater than of an equivalent amount of caffeine. Hence the increase in metabolism with green tea was partly attributed the polyphenols in green tea. Out of the several polyphenols, the most active one is the EGCG (Epigallocatechin gallate).

So does EGCG conatined in One A Day Weight Smart really enhance metabolism?

  • The couple of studies which showed reductions in body fat with green tea extracts used green tea extracts & caffeine rather than just EGCG used in One A day Weight Smart.
  • The dosage used in most studies range from 400 - 1200 mg of green tea extracts compared to 60 mg used in One A Day Weight Smart. The study which showed an increase in metabolism used 270 mg of EGCG compared to 27 mg in One A Day Weight Smart
  • A recent study in 2005 which used 1000 mg (27mg in One A Day Weight Smart!) of green tea extract couldn’t find any noteworthy increase in metabolism nor decrease in body fat (1).
Conclusion 1

EGCG contained in One A Day Weight Smart will not enhance metabolism.

One a Day Weight Smart Claim 2

One A Day Weight Smart converts food to fuel with extra Chromium and key B vitamins.

A review of all weight loss studies using chromium showed around 1kg loss in a period of 6-14 weeks. If you missed it, that’s .2kg/week!

The claim of conversion of food to fuel with chromium and B vitamins with One A Day Weight Smart only happens to be true if you are born in Mars. This effect is yet to be seen in earthlings.

Conclusion 2

Chromium & B vitamins in One Day Weight Smart will not convert food to fuel

Conclusion

One A Day Weight Smart supplement will not help increase metabolism nor convert food to fuel and thus help you lose weight or fat.

Eat an apple once a day instead.

NOTE: These product claims have been changed if you go to One A Day Weight Smart supplement website. Their older claims can still be seen in other websites, like Amazon. Understandable, since they had to pay 3.2 million in fine to the Federal Trade Commission for making unsubstantiated claims.

Reference 1

 

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Shannon | Sun October 19, 2008  

Hi Anoop

Thank you for the timely article. I was about to buy the one a day weight smart supplement from walmart. In fact, me & my neighbour were planning to try one a day weight smart supplement. They have a number of one a day products for weight loss, cholestrol, men’s, women. They all might be bogus as this one.

Shannon

Anoop | Sun October 19, 2008  

Hi Shannon,

Good to hear you saved some money.

Now take that money, put in an envelope, and send it to me (:-

One A Day weight smart supplement is another good example of supplement marketing.

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