Caffeine Keeps Us Up, Not Thin

Lots of people, including the marketing department at the weight-loss supplement Zantrex-3, whose active ingredient is caffeine, will tell you that caffeine can help keep the pounds off. True or false? Chris Woolston, writing in the Los Angeles Times, attempts to find the final answer. Woolston tracks down C. Michael White, a professor of pharmacy at the University of Connecticut, who says he knows of “no well-designed studies showing that caffeine works better than a placebo when it comes to weight loss.” What does he know? Caffeine is a diuretic, which means that people taking large doses might shed some weight through water loss, but then, there’s water loss and there’s weight loss. And while some studies have shown that caffeine can boost our metabolic rate by 4 percent, that doesn’t mean we’ll burn off excess weight. Way better, Woolston’s experts conclude, is 30 minutes at the gym. Read more from the LA Times.