SodaSlim Ingredients: All Five Names And What Each One Rests On

Dried caffeine, the same molecule as in coffee with the water taken out, which is how it gets into a capsule at all. It is the one ingredient here whose effects a buyer will feel on day one, and the one whose absent number matters most.

The research is old, solid and modest. In the 1989 room-respirometer study, a single 100 mg dose raised resting metabolic rate by three to four per cent over 150 minutes; repeating 100 mg every two hours across a twelve-hour day raised daytime energy expenditure by eight to eleven per cent, which came to 150 extra kilocalories a day in lean volunteers and 79 in post-obese ones. Night-time expenditure did not change.

Pooling later work, a 2019 dose-response meta-analysis of thirteen randomised trials in 606 people found that each doubling of caffeine intake was associated with roughly 22 per cent more weight reduction, 17 per cent more BMI reduction and 28 per cent more fat-mass reduction. Heterogeneity was very high, which is the caveat the authors themselves lead with.

And a 2011 respiration-chamber meta-analysis put a number on the slope: about 0.4 to 0.5 kilojoules of extra 24-hour energy expenditure per milligram of caffeine. Twenty-four-hour fat oxidation, though, rose only with catechin-caffeine mixtures rather than with caffeine alone, which is a point in favour of this formula pairing it with green tea.

The ceiling is the part to write on the bottle in your own hand. Health Canada's review concludes that up to 400 mg a day is not associated with adverse effects in healthy adults, equivalent to about 6 mg per kilogram in a 65 kg person. A capsule with no figure cannot be added to that ledger, and that is the whole of this desk's complaint about this label.

Unroasted coffee beans, extracted for chlorogenic acid. Roasting destroys most of it, which is why the green bean exists as a separate ingredient rather than as a strange way of selling coffee.

The honest place to start is the paper everybody quotes. A 2012 crossover study in sixteen overweight adults, testing 700 mg and 1,050 mg of a commercial extract, reported large weight reductions and was the basis of the entire green coffee boom. PubMed marks it RETRACTED; the retraction notice appeared in the same journal in 2014. Any product page citing green coffee without mentioning that is relying on a reader not to check.

What survives is thinner and more useful. The 2011 meta-analysis pooled three eligible trials and found a mean difference of 2.47 kg in favour of the extract, while stating flatly that all of the studies carried a high risk of bias and calling for more rigorous work. Since then, an eight-week trial in metabolic syndrome gave 400 mg twice daily and reported lower systolic blood pressure, fasting glucose and insulin resistance against placebo, and a twelve-week trial in 71 overweight adults gave 500 mg a day of a chlorogenic acid complex and reported changes in body weight, BMI and fat mass measured by DXA.

So the amounts that read well are 500 to 800 mg a day, sustained for two to three months. Whether this capsule reaches them is a question the label leaves open.

Chlorogenic acid also has a blood-pressure literature of its own. A meta-analysis of randomised trials found reductions of about 4.3 mmHg systolic and 3.7 mmHg diastolic, with the authors noting that the trials were confined to Asian populations and funded by manufacturers. A 2017 review of the same claim is worth reading beside it. It is a small effect in the same direction as caffeine's opposite one, which is one reason a combined product is hard to reason about.

The compound that gives red raspberries their smell. It is in this capsule because of a chemical resemblance to synephrine and capsaicin and a set of rodent results, and it is worth being exact about what those results are.

The 2021 review of the compound says in its own abstract that in spite of a lack of reliable human research, it is marketed as a health supplement at very high doses. That is the position, stated by the people who reviewed the field, and this desk has nothing to add to it.

The animal and cell work is real and it is all there is. A 2022 study in mouse adipocytes reported that it raises FNDC5 protein expression through HO-1; a 2024 mouse study reported an effect on hypothalamic inflammation in diet-induced obesity; a 2020 mouse study looked at meal patterns and cardiovascular parameters and found the effects differed depending on which outcome was measured. None of that is a human result and none of it can be read as one.

The two human studies that contain raspberry ketone tested products, not the compound. Lopez 2013 ran eight weeks in 70 obese adults on a product containing raspberry ketone, caffeine, capsaicin, garlic, ginger and Citrus aurantium alongside a calorie-restricted diet and exercise training, and reported a 2.0 per cent body-weight change against 0.5 per cent for placebo. Arent 2018 did something similar with a different multi-ingredient product. With six or nine actives, a diet and a training programme in the same arm, nothing in either result belongs to the ketone.

Named here because it is on the bottle, described here as what it is.

The rind of a small South Asian fruit, extracted for hydroxycitric acid, which inhibits ATP-citrate lyase in the test tube. That enzyme sits on the pathway from citrate to fat, so the proposed story is that blocking it reduces fat synthesis and raises satiety. It is a tidy story with a long trial record behind it.

The trial record is the problem. The JAMA trial randomised overweight adults with a mean BMI around 32 to 1,500 mg of hydroxycitric acid a day or placebo for twelve weeks, with both groups on a high-fibre, low-energy diet, and found no difference in weight or fat mass. That is the largest, best-known test of this ingredient, and it is negative.

A 2011 meta-analysis pooled nine trials and found a statistically significant difference of 0.88 kg favouring hydroxycitric acid, with its own conclusion calling the magnitude small and the clinical relevance uncertain. It also noted that gastrointestinal adverse events were twice as common in the treated group in one included study. A 2012 safety and efficacy review adds that most human studies were small, short and never ran past twelve weeks. A 60-day trial in obese women used 2.4 g a day of a 50 per cent hydroxycitric acid extract and reported a triglyceride change rather than a weight one.

There is a safety signal here that a responsible page names rather than files away. The Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network published a case series of garcinia cambogia products, alone and combined with green tea, causing moderate to severe liver injury: 91 per cent of those patients were hospitalised, one required a transplant and one died, with injury appearing between 13 and 223 days after starting. A 2024 case report describes fulminant liver failure after garcinia use. These are rare events against very large sales, and they are also the reason this website says plainly that new abdominal pain, dark urine or yellowing of the eyes means stopping the capsule and being seen.

Worth noting that this product pairs garcinia and green tea in one capsule, which is the combination that series names.

Leaf extract, standardised for catechins, of which epigallocatechin gallate is the one that gets named. It has the largest evidence base of the five and the most sobering headline number.

The Cochrane review of green tea for weight loss split its trials by geography because they would not pool. Across six studies conducted outside Japan in 532 participants, the mean weight difference was 0.04 kg, with a confidence interval running from −0.5 to 0.4. The eight Japanese studies ranged from 0.2 kg to 3.5 kg in favour of green tea and were too dissimilar to combine. Nothing about that reads as a weight-loss agent.

A 2009 meta-analysis of eleven studies found catechins significantly decreased body weight by about 1.3 kg and helped maintain it after a loss period, and reported something useful about this exact capsule: the effect appeared blunted in people with a high habitual caffeine intake, above 300 mg a day. Combining catechins with more caffeine is not obviously additive.

On metabolic rate specifically, a meta-analysis of eight randomised trials concluded that EGCG moderately raises energy expenditure and lowers respiratory quotient, and that 300 mg is the dose at which the effect appears. A review of the proposed mechanisms covers the rest.

The safety figure is the one to hold beside the missing label number. A systematic review of 159 human intervention studies identified the liver as the target organ, found hepatic adverse events occurring in a dose-dependent way with large solid bolus doses rather than with brewed tea, and derived a safe intake level of 338 mg of EGCG a day for adults taking it as a solid dose. A capsule that does not print its EGCG cannot be checked against that figure either.