Weight Loss Supplements Undergo Scrutiny

Unhealthy food habits and inactive lifestyles have caused the majority of Americans to be overweight. But as more people become aware of, or start experiencing, the adverse health effects of excess fat, they are turning to diet pills and weight loss supplements to help them slim down. These products aren’t hard to find; they are available in dizzying varieties at drugstores, supermarkets, health food stores, and online. The difficulty lies in choosing one.

Before deciding on a weight loss product, it’s important to find out all you can about it. Has it been proven effective? Is it safe? How might it react with other medications you are taking? Does it contain the ingredients that it claims? Fortunately, you can find answers to all of these questions and more at one place: ConsumerLab.com (CL), a privately held company that provides non-bias consumer information and independent evaluations of products that affect health and nutrition.

Recently, CL published the first in a series of reviews of dietary supplements with evidence of causing weight or fat loss. This report focused on 10 supplements containing CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), which has been shown to help with slimming by improving the body’s lean mass to body fat ratio but not to reduce overall weight. Brands included in the report are Action Labs, Bally Total Fitness, GNC, Iron-Tek, Natrol, Nature’s Sunshine, Progressive Labs, Puritan’s Pride, The Vitamin Shoppe, and Vitamin World. Each supplement was tested for its amount of CLA and for potential contamination with lead.

The results showed that none of the supplements were contaminated with lead and the majority of them contained their claimed amount of CLA. However, one contained only 82 percent of its listed 1 gram of CLA, which means its effect could be less than expected. ConsumerLab.com explained that CLA in supplements is typically made from safflower oil that is about 80 percent CLA, with the remainder consisting of other fatty acids. Sometimes, a product will list the total amount of oil or the amount of one of the branded sources of oil, of which a percentage is CLA. It is possible that the maker of the supplement that did not meet its claimed amount failed to properly account for the portion that was non-CLA fatty acids.
CLA cannot be produced by the human body, but is naturally available in a variety of foods, but especially in the meat and dairy products of grass-fed animals. However, changes in feeding practices (mostly grain-fed instead of grass-fed animals) have significantly decreased CLA content in meat and milk, with today’s products containing only one-fourth to one-third of the CLA content they used to have before 1960. Non-fat and low-fat products have very little CLA.

The full report on CLA, along with concerns and recommendations for use, can be found here  and reviews of other popular types of supplements are available from www.consumerlab.com. In February, CL will also be reporting their test results of supplements containing chromium, green tea, 7-keto DHEA, and/or caffeine, which are common in weight loss suplement.