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Choosing A FormulaChoosing A Metabolism Supplement: Seven Questions, In Order
Read the panel before the front of the bottle. A metabolism supplement can be judged in about four minutes if the questions are asked in the right order: does it print amounts, does it print the stimulant amount, do the amounts reach the trial doses, what is the cost per day, who should not take it, how long is the window, and who answers the phone.
A method, written so it can be used on any bottle in this category including the one this desk sells.
Question one: does the label print amounts at all?
This is the first question because it decides whether any of the others can be answered.
A US dietary supplement carries a Supplement Facts panel. What varies is whether that panel gives an amount per ingredient or hides them inside a proprietary blend, where only the blend total is printed. A blend of “600 mg proprietary metabolic matrix” containing eight ingredients tells you nothing: it is compatible with 590 mg of the cheapest one and 10 mg spread across the other seven.
If the panel prints amounts, you can do arithmetic. If it prints a blend, you are buying on trust. If there is no panel visible at all in the product's own photography, ask why before you ask anything else.
The SodaSlim label artwork supplied to this desk carries no Supplement Facts panel, and no amount is printed for any of its five ingredients. That is the answer to question one for this bottle, it is stated on every page of this website that touches the subject, and it is the reason the ingredients page prints trial amounts instead.
Question two: does it print the stimulant amount?
A separate question from the first, and more urgent, because this one is about safety rather than value.
Most products in this category contain caffeine, often under a name that does not say so: caffeine anhydrous, guarana, green tea extract, yerba maté, kola nut. Health Canada's review puts the ceiling for healthy adults at 400 mg a day, about 6 mg per kilogram of body weight, and above that associates caffeine with cardiovascular effects, behavioural effects and effects in pregnancy.
You cannot keep to a ceiling you cannot count against. A bottle that names a stimulant and prints no figure for it is asking you to add an unknown to a daily total, and the only safe response is to assume generously and subtract a drink.
- Look for the word caffeine anywhere on the label, including inside a blend.
- Look for the plant names that carry it: guarana, kola, yerba maté, green tea, green coffee.
- If a figure is printed, add it to your day and see what is left of 400 mg.
- If no figure is printed, treat the serving as a strong coffee until a week of use says otherwise.
Question three: do the amounts reach the doses the trials used?
Only answerable if question one came back yes, which is why it is third.
| Ingredient | What a trial used | What to look for on a panel |
|---|---|---|
| Caffeine | 100 mg repeated; 400 mg a day is the adult ceiling | Any figure at all, then arithmetic |
| Green tea extract | 300 mg of EGCG to move metabolic rate | An EGCG figure, not just an extract weight |
| Green coffee extract | 500 to 800 mg a day over 8 to 12 weeks | A chlorogenic acid percentage as well as the extract weight |
| Garcinia | 1,500 mg of hydroxycitric acid a day, which failed | An HCA percentage; 50 per cent of 500 mg is 250 mg |
| Raspberry ketone | No human trial of the compound alone | Nothing will help here |
Trial amounts are from the papers cited at the foot of this page. Percentages matter as much as weights: a 500 mg extract at 5 per cent is 25 mg of the thing that was studied.
The percentage point in that note is where most people are caught. A label that prints “green tea extract 500 mg” has told you the weight of leaf powder, not the weight of catechins, and the two can differ by a factor of twenty. A good panel prints both.
Questions four and five: what does a day cost, and who should not take it?
Cost per day rather than cost per bottle, because bottle sizes and serving sizes both vary and the headline price is designed to be compared with the wrong thing.
Divide the pack price by the number of days it covers at the label's own serving. A sixty-capsule bottle at two a day is thirty days, not sixty. That single arithmetic step reorders most price comparisons in this category, and it is the number to carry between two browser tabs.
Then read the caution, which is usually the smallest text on the label. A good one names specifics: stimulant sensitivity, blood pressure, pregnancy, an age limit, a medicine class. A bad one says “consult your physician if you have a medical condition” and stops, which is a sentence that excludes nobody and informs nobody.
Signs of a label written to be read
- Names specific conditions rather than gesturing at them.
- States an age limit.
- Says what the serving is and how many servings a container holds.
- Prints a lot code and a best-before date.
Signs of a label written to be photographed
- A caution that could be printed on any product in any category.
- A serving size buried so the per-day cost is hard to work out.
- A blend total with no per-ingredient amounts.
- A seal that names nobody: clinician formulated, doctor approved.
Questions six and seven: how long is the window, and who answers the phone?
The last two are commercial rather than chemical, and they are the ones most likely to decide whether a purchase turns out well.
A guarantee is only useful if it is longer than the time the product needs. In this category the trials ran eight to twelve weeks, so a thirty-day window is a window that closes before the question can be answered. Check what the window counts from as well: purchase or delivery, and the difference is a week.
Then find a phone number, and notice whether the site distinguishes between an order desk and an editorial one. A website with a single contact address for both is a website where a refund request and a typo report land in the same inbox, and one of them will wait.
- Find the guarantee length and what it counts from.
- Check whether opened bottles are included. A sealed-only guarantee is a packaging policy.
- Find out who pays return postage.
- Find a phone number, and check it is for orders rather than for sales.
- Check whether the site says who should not take the product, above the footer.
- Check whether the site prints a negative trial result for anything it sells. Most do not, and it is the fastest test of whether the rest is trustworthy.
That last one is the question this desk would most like to be judged on. The JAMA result for garcinia and the Cochrane result for green tea are both printed on the ingredients page of a website that sells a capsule containing both.
Sources behind this method
- Nawrot P, Jordan S, Eastwood J, Rotstein J, Hugenholtz A, Feeley M. Effects of caffeine on human health. Food Addit Contam. 2003;20(1):1-30. PMID 12519715. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12519715/
- Dulloo AG, Geissler CA, Horton T, Collins A, Miller DS. Normal caffeine consumption: influence on thermogenesis and daily energy expenditure in lean and postobese human volunteers. Am J Clin Nutr. 1989;49(1):44-50. PMID 2912010. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2912010/
- Kapoor MP, Sugita M, Fukuzawa Y, Okubo T. Physiological effects of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) on energy expenditure for prospective fat oxidation in humans: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Nutr Biochem. 2017;43:1-10. PMID 27883924. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27883924/
- Jurgens TM, Whelan AM, Killian L, Doucette S, Kirk S, Foy E. Green tea for weight loss and weight maintenance in overweight or obese adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012;12(12):CD008650. PMID 23235664. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23235664/
- Roshan H, Nikpayam O, Sedaghat M, Sohrab G. Effects of green coffee extract supplementation on anthropometric indices, glycaemic control, blood pressure, lipid profile, insulin resistance and appetite in patients with the metabolic syndrome: a randomised clinical trial. Br J Nutr. 2018;119(3):250-258. PMID 29307310. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29307310/
- Sudeep HV, Shyam Prasad K. Supplementation of green coffee bean extract in healthy overweight subjects increases lean mass/fat mass ratio: a randomized, double-blind clinical study. SAGE Open Med. 2021;9:20503121211002590. PMID 33796302. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33796302/
- Heymsfield SB, Allison DB, Vasselli JR, Pietrobelli A, Greenfield D, Nunez C. Garcinia cambogia (hydroxycitric acid) as a potential antiobesity agent: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 1998;280(18):1596-600. PMID 9820262. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9820262/
- Onakpoya I, Hung SK, Perry R, Wider B, Ernst E. The use of Garcinia extract (hydroxycitric acid) as a weight loss supplement: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised clinical trials. J Obes. 2011;2011:509038. PMID 21197150. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21197150/
- Rao S, Kurakula M, Mamidipalli N, Tiyyagura P, Patel B, Manne R. Pharmacological exploration of phenolic compound: raspberry ketone-update 2020. Plants (Basel). 2021;10(7):1323. PMID 34209554. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34209554/
- Batsis JA, Apolzan JW, Bagley PJ, et al. A systematic review of dietary supplements and alternative therapies for weight loss. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2021;29(7):1102-1113. PMID 34159755. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34159755/
- Dietary Supplements for Weight Loss: Fact Sheet for Consumers. Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WeightLoss-Consumer/
- Questions and Answers on Dietary Supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov/food/information-consumers-using-dietary-supplements/questions-and-answers-dietary-supplements
Run the seven questions on SodaSlim before you buy it
This desk has answered all seven on its own product pages, including the first one, where the answer is that the label prints no amounts.
$158 for two bottles, $294 for six, and 60 days from the date you buy
Order SodaSlim On The Official WebsiteLot SOD-26/SO-5737 · 30 capsules · taken once each morning
