SodaSlim Ingredients: Five Named Botanicals And What Each One Is

Dried, powdered caffeine, the same molecule as in coffee with the water removed so it can be weighed into a capsule. It is the first name on the front of the bottle and it is the one that decides how the morning feels.

The evidence is not in doubt and it is unusually clean. A double-blind crossover study in healthy volunteers gave 100 mg, 200 mg and 400 mg of oral caffeine and measured energy expenditure rising with the dose. A later dose-response meta-analysis pooled thirteen randomised trials in 606 people and reported that each doubling of caffeine intake went with roughly a 22 per cent larger reduction in body weight across those studies. A review of caffeine and appetite covers the third route, the shortening of the interval before hunger returns.

None of that can be applied to this capsule, because a dose-response finding needs a dose and the front panel gives none. What a buyer can do is treat the capsule as a caffeinated drink of unknown strength and subtract it from the day's total rather than adding it on. The 2017 systematic safety review works to 400 mg a day for healthy adults, 200 mg in pregnancy, and that is the budget the capsule has to fit inside.

Coffee beans before roasting, which keeps the chlorogenic acids that roasting destroys. Chlorogenic acid is the compound the ingredient is sold for; the proposed route is slower absorption of sugars from a meal.

This is the ingredient with the most complicated record on the label, and the complication is worth stating in one place. The 2012 crossover study that made green coffee famous — sixteen overweight adults, 700 mg and 1,050 mg a day, eight kilograms lost — was retracted by its journal in 2014. PubMed still carries it, flagged as a retracted publication, and any page citing green coffee without saying so is selling a result that was withdrawn.

What survives is smaller and more modest. A 2011 systematic review found the trials few and of poor quality. A 2023 meta-analysis of three randomised trials in 103 people, at 500 mg a day of extract standardised for chlorogenic acid, reported a pooled difference of about 1.3 kg. An eight-week trial in metabolic syndrome used 400 mg twice a day and reported lower systolic blood pressure, lower fasting glucose and a lower appetite score than placebo. Those are the amounts to hold in mind: 500 to 800 mg a day of extract.

The aroma compound that gives red raspberries their smell, made industrially because extracting it from fruit is impractical. Its structure resembles capsaicin and synephrine, which is where the interest came from.

Here this desk has to be blunt, because the alternative is to imply something nobody has shown. There is no randomised trial of raspberry ketone on its own in people, at any dose. The 2005 study that started the category fed mice high-fat diets containing 0.5, 1 or 2 per cent raspberry ketone for ten weeks and found less weight gained and less fat in the liver. Work on 3T3-L1 adipocytes and a companion cell study describe how that might happen in a dish.

The closest thing to human evidence is an eight-week trial of a product containing raspberry ketone together with caffeine, capsaicin, garlic, ginger and Citrus aurantium. The supplemented group did better than placebo on body composition. What that trial cannot tell anyone is which of the six ingredients did it, and the authors say so themselves. Scaled honestly, the mouse dose would be grams per day in a person, which is not what any capsule contains.

An extract of the rind of a small South Asian fruit, standardised for hydroxycitric acid. HCA competitively inhibits ATP citrate lyase, an enzyme in the assembly of fat from citrate, and that mechanism is the whole of the ingredient's reputation.

The mechanism is real; the human result is not there. The largest trial, published in JAMA, randomised 135 overweight adults to 1,500 mg of hydroxycitric acid a day or placebo for twelve weeks, with both groups on the same high-fibre, reduced-energy diet. Both groups lost weight. The difference between them — 3.2 kg against 4.1 kg, in favour of placebo — was not statistically significant. A 2011 meta-analysis of the randomised evidence found a small difference whose magnitude was uncertain and whose trials were mostly poor.

The safety record is the other reason this ingredient is discussed at length on this site rather than listed and passed over. A case of acute liver failure requiring transplantation, a serotonin toxicity case in a patient on an antidepressant and a case of mania with psychosis are all in the literature. Case reports are not incidence rates and the amounts involved were not those of this capsule. They are, though, the reason anyone taking an SSRI or SNRI should raise this bottle with the person who prescribes it.

A concentrated leaf extract, usually standardised for catechins and in particular for epigallocatechin gallate. It is the second of the two thermogenic names on this label and the one with the largest literature behind it.

The 1999 respiratory-chamber trial is still the clearest demonstration: ten healthy men in a metabolic chamber, given an extract supplying 50 mg of caffeine and 90 mg of EGCG at each of three meals, showed a four per cent rise in twenty-four-hour energy expenditure and a fall in respiratory quotient. Caffeine alone at the same amount did neither, which is the finding that made green tea extract interesting rather than redundant.

Over months the effect shrinks. The Cochrane review of green tea preparations in overweight and obese adults found weight changes small and not clinically important. A 2009 meta-analysis reached a similar conclusion, with the effect smaller in habitual caffeine consumers. A twelve-week trial at 856.8 mg of EGCG a day in women with central obesity reported about 1.1 kg, with lower ghrelin and higher adiponectin. A 2024 meta-analysis looked at catechins alongside training and found the addition modest.

One safety note belongs beside it. The United States Pharmacopeia review of green tea extract hepatotoxicity exists because concentrated catechin extracts, particularly taken on an empty stomach, have been linked to liver injury. Taking this capsule with breakfast rather than before it is a free precaution.