THE SANE VIEW
It’s the Holy Grail of weight loss: a way to eat yourself thin with foods that melt away fat by boosting your metabolism. Green tea, spices, chilli and coffee are all claimed to contain compounds that kick-start your body into shedding fat. But is it true?
Celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, a well-known fan of green tea, seem to think so, as do millions of people keen to find a shortcut to losing weight. A search for the terms ‘weight loss’ and ‘teenager’ and ‘green tea’ on YouTube, for example, throws up an incredible (and worrying) 27,000 results – many of which are promotional videos for green tea brands. At the same time, media reports and health and wellbeing websites depict ‘metabolic enhancers’ such as green tea and chillies as an easy way to fight flab. “Turn up your body’s fat burn with these healthy foods,” urges one website. “Chilli peppers can boost metabolic rate by as much as 50 per cent,” declares the headline in a popular national newspaper.