SodaSlim Ingredients: All Five Botanicals on the Front Panel

Caffeine anhydrous is caffeine with the water removed, which makes it a powder rather than a change of substance. In the body it is indistinguishable from the caffeine in coffee.

It is the only ingredient on this panel that does something within the hour. A 2019 dose-response meta-analysis of caffeine and weight found the effect scaled with the amount given rather than appearing at any dose, which is precisely the property that makes an unstated amount unhelpful. The reference point for healthy adults is 400 mg a day from every source, equivalent to about 6 mg per kilogram of body weight in a 65 kg person.

Two practical consequences. First, your coffee and this capsule cannot be added together, so the safer assumption is that the capsule is not negligible. Second, the withdrawal literature means stopping abruptly after two months may produce a headache that has nothing to do with the other four botanicals.

Green coffee is the same bean before roasting. Roasting destroys chlorogenic acid, which is the compound the extract is standardised for, so a green coffee extract and a cup of coffee are different products from the same plant.

The mechanism proposed is interference with glucose absorption. A crossover study found chlorogenic acid altered gut hormone secretion and glucose tolerance acutely, and a trial of chlorogenic-acid-enriched coffee measured a 6.9 per cent reduction in glucose absorption against a control.

For body weight the evidence is thinner than the marketing suggests. The 2023 meta-analysis pooled preparations delivering at least 500 mg of chlorogenic acid a day. An eight-week randomised trial in metabolic syndrome gave 400 mg of extract twice daily. And the single most famous green coffee trial, Vinson 2012, was retracted by its journal two years after publication — a fact this website prints because leaving it out would leave the story standing.

The aromatic compound responsible for the smell of raspberries. At supplement scale it is made industrially; extracting it from fruit would cost more than the bottle.

The 2021 pharmacological review is candid about the state of the field: the interest comes from cell and animal work, and the compound is marketed at doses well above anything tested in people. The most informative study is a mouse feeding trial in which animals on a high-fat diet ate less on raspberry ketone but did not lose fat beyond what the reduced eating explained. A separate stem-cell study shows the compound is biologically active, which is not the same as being useful.

There is no randomised human trial of raspberry ketone for body weight, so there is no amount to print in the right-hand column of the table below. The mouse work used percentages of the diet by weight, which does not convert into a capsule. This desk records the refusal rather than filling the space.

A small South Asian fruit whose rind contains hydroxycitric acid. The proposed mechanism is inhibition of ATP-citrate lyase, an enzyme in the pathway that builds fat from carbohydrate.

That idea was tested properly. The JAMA trial randomised 135 overweight adults to 1,500 mg of hydroxycitric acid a day or placebo for twelve weeks, both groups on a high-fibre, low-energy diet. Both lost weight; the difference between them was not significant, and neither was the difference in fat mass. A later Brazilian trial gave 2.4 g of extract a day as 800 mg three times and looked at blood lipids rather than weight.

A review of hydroxycitric acid safety and efficacy surveys the field, and a case report describes liver injury attributed to a garcinia product. One case is not an incidence rate; it is the reason the ingredient is discussed on side effects as well as here.

The most-studied name on this panel, and the one whose evidence is most often overstated in one direction and dismissed in the other.

The respiratory-chamber trial that began the modern literature gave ten healthy men 90 mg of EGCG with 50 mg of caffeine at each of three meals and measured a 4 per cent rise in 24-hour energy expenditure with a fall in respiratory quotient — more fat burned as fuel. Caffeine alone at the same 50 mg did nothing, which is the finding that made catechins interesting. A later meta-analysis confirmed the dose-dependence.

On the scales the result is smaller. The Cochrane review found the weight change small and not clinically important, and a meta-analysis of weight loss and maintenance found a modest effect. A meta-analysis of leptin and ghrelin looked at the appetite hormones directly, and a mechanistic review sets out the proposed pathways. Safety is a real question at extract strength rather than tea strength, and it is handled on the side-effects page.