Drinka pinta tea a day
Q: So what’s with this green tea article at Stuff.co.nz?
A: It’s reporting an experimental study on weight loss using green tea extracts
Q: And did it work?
A: Yes, the treated subjects gained less weight than the untreated ones, by about 4g.
Q: 4g?! Don’t you mean 4kg?
A: No, 4g. They were mice.
Q: So it’s just a beat-up?
A: It’s not quite that bad. The researchers found that one of the compounds in green tea blocks an enzyme needed to digest fat (like some weight-loss drugs do), and that’s interesting.
Q: So it works in people, too?
A: A bit. There was a review of 11 published studies by a Dutch group that found green tea increased weight loss by an average of about 1kg.
Q: And that’s because of this weird fat-blocking compound?
A: Not clear. There’s a well-known stimulant in green tea as well, and people who habitually drank caffeine-containing drinks benefited less from green tea.
Q: So it might work?
A: It could, and drinking green tea is certainly more pleasant than many mild attempts to lose weight would be.
Q: Wait, I went and looked at your link for the study in mice, and it was published in June.
A: Was that a question?
Q: Why is the story appearing now?
A: Beats me. I’m just a blogger.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »