Many people believe that the intake of caffeine helps to reduce appetite, which in turn helps lose weight. This is not so as a recent study has revealed that caffeine, usually known as a weight losing diet, speeds up metabolism rather than the former.
Diet supplements that claim that caffeine reduces weight have been proved wrong by a recent study published in the Journal of Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics co-authored by Carol DeNysschen, Chair of the Department of Health, Nutrition, and Dietetics at SUNY Buffalo State College.
In the Study, researchers recruited 50 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 50, and one day a week for three weeks, asked them to come to the lab in the morning to drink either some caffeine-infused juice or a placebo. The drink either contained no caffeine, caffeine equivalent to a 4-ounce serving or caffeine equal to an 8-ounce coffee. The participants were not told which drink they received each time, but by the end of the experiment, they had each received all three of the drinks.
Thirty minutes after drinking the juice, the participants were presented with a breakfast buffet, where they were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. Then, they were sent home and instructed to document everything they ate throughout the rest of the day using an online tool. They also recorded their appetite levels throughout the day.
The researchers said, “When people were given the lower-dose caffeine drink, they ate around 10 per cent less at the breakfast buffet, on the average, than when they were given the caffeine-free drink or the higher-dose drink. After drinking the low-dose beverage, the participants ate around 650 calories, on the average, at the breakfast buffet; after consuming the caffeine-free beverage, they ate 721 calories, on the average; and after having the high-dose drink, they ate 715 calories, on the average. No one’s reported appetite for breakfast seemed to change, based on how much caffeine they had.”
Outside of the lab, the researchers found no significant differences in participants’ appetites or the amounts of food eaten throughout the day, based on the amount of caffeine they drank. They also found that the participants’ body-mass indexes had no effect on their appetite or how much they ate.
After the experiment, the authors said, “Caffeine may have a small effect on food intake, shortly after drinking it, but the effect quickly wears off; this suggests caffeine has weak, transient effects on energy intake and does not support caffeine as an effective appetite suppressant.”
Instead, the study “reinforces the importance of good eating habits and not relying on unsupported weight loss aids or unhealthy practices.”