Neo-Health: tasty weight loss

Obesity in the US has reached a high alert level, and product innovation is reacting. Some work better than others, and it’s often because developers realized a human truth: we like to eat. We don’t want to not eat (a lot). Introducing the “more for less” health mentality. It’s more bang for your buck, with a slight diet change (often an addition, so they can sell product) you can experience amazing results! Eat what you like, do what you want, and you’ll get skinnier/healthier/prettier!

Two examples:


Enviga and Celsius.
Two new green tea drinks that claim to help you burn calories. They lean on two familiar faces: caffeine and ECGC, an antioxidant found in green tea to claim that both will stimulate your metabolism enough to burn between 60 and 100 extra calories a day. (Enviga is on the high end, but you’d have to drink three cans a day. So really you’d only be burning 85 calories because you’d have to subtract the 5 per can you consume).

Coca-Cola, the maker of Enviga, is also leaning on study it funded to prove Enviga’s effectiveness. Its findings are questionable—only 31 participants, conducted once—and the Center for Science in the Public Interest is filing suit.

I tried Enviga and I’m thinking the weight loss comes from the sick feeling I had for hours after drinking it. Maybe it’d be better marketed as an appetite suppressant.

Anti-obesity gum.
The Imperial College London received a grant to explore adding an appetite suppressant to gum. It’s a drug that mimics the effects of a hormone that naturally occurs in our digestive tracks to make us feel full after a meal. Researchers decided that gum would be the ideal delivery method “because obese people like chewing.”

via iconoculture