Full-Tummy Feeling in a Shot
By LAURA JOHANNES
April 29, 2008; Page D3
An appetite-control product called SlimShots just started appearing on store shelves in the U.S. The package says the product will help you eat less by as much as 30% every day. Clinical studies show the product reduces food intake in a laboratory setting, but scientists say there is no proof it can help you lose weight in the real world.
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SlimShots, made by Royal DSM NV of the Netherlands and sold in the U.S. by IdeaVillage Products Corp. of Wayne, N.J., come in a small coffee-creamer-like container. The 20-calorie shot, already on the market in Europe, consists of an ingredient the manufacturer calls Fabuless, which is made of natural oat and palm oil. The U.S. version has added vanilla flavor and aspartame to appeal to the American palate. The product is meant to be taken at breakfast, either straight or with food or beverages, with an optional dose at lunch.
The product induces satiety by triggering a mechanism called the "ileal brake," says James Elliott, director of nutritional sciences at DSM Nutritional Products, a U.S. unit of Royal DSM. According to Dr. Elliott, the product is designed so that the oat oil keeps the palm oil from being digested until it reaches the ileum, or final part of the small intestine. The undigested fat in the intestine triggers the release of hormones that cause you to feel full.
The product's satiety effect kicks in about 2½ hours after a dose, according to IdeaVillage, and continues up to eight hours. The suggested retail price is $39.95 for 30 shots.
At least five scientific papers on Fabuless, funded by companies that had a financial interest in the product, have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Three papers reported that subjects given yogurt mixed with the appetite controller consumed 13% to 29% fewer calories at a buffet four hours later compared with when a control yogurt was eaten.
But a three-week study, published in 2006 in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no significant effect of the test yogurt on appetite or food intake, either at lunch buffets in the lab or self-reported at home. Part of the reason, theorized the researchers at the University of Ulster in Coleraine, U.K., is that the buffet lunches likely encouraged more eating because they were set up with 10 to 12 people eating together in a more sociable atmosphere than previous laboratory studies.
Perhaps the strongest case for Fabuless comes in a study published online in February 2007 in the International Journal of Obesity that found a Fabuless-containing yogurt helped women maintain weight loss after a six-week very low-calorie diet. The 50 participants lost an average of 17 pounds on the diet. During the 18 weeks following the diet, the group ate the test yogurt twice daily, at breakfast and at 4 p.m., and the participants regained an average of 2.4 pounds, compared with 6.6 pounds for a group eating a control yogurt.
Weight-loss experts say the results are interesting, but too preliminary to be meaningful. "If there's one thing we've learned from studies on weight reduction it's that a few months is not long enough to find out whether a product will be beneficial," says Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. A study of at least a year is needed, he says.
Even if a product makes you feel full, it doesn't always result in weight loss because you may eat more later to compensate for the calories you missed, Dr. Willett says. Many overweight and obese people ignore satiety signals anyway, scientists say, giving in instead to emotional triggers or social pressures to eat.
DSM's Dr. Elliott agrees the studies don't prove the product aids weight loss. "What we've been talking about is a feeling of fullness, or eating fewer calories," he adds. "It may or may not result in weight loss."
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