"Calorie- Burning" Sodas: The Truth

Green tea can boost your metabolism, but not enough to get you into a bikini.

Two new green tea drinks—Celsius and Enviga—claim they’ll help you burn calories. The manufacturer of Celsius says 12 ounces can burn up to 75 calories in four hours. And Enviga, from Coca-Cola and Nestlé, claims three cans a day can burn 60 to 100 calories.

The premise: Caffeine and ECGC, a highly active antioxidant in green tea, are supposed to work together to boost your metabolism. Celsius adds ingredi­ents such as ginger to extend the calorie burn.

Do they work? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s widely accepted that caffeinated tea boosts your metabolic rate because caffeine is a stimulant. But no specific, independent studies have been done on the impact of these drinks on weight loss.

Even if green tea does boost your metab­olism, New York University nutrition and food studies professor Marion Nestle, PhD, doubts products like Enviga and Celsius are worth it: “I think this amount (of calories) is too small to make a difference. Peo­ple don’t gain because they eat 60 to 100 extra calories; they gain because they overeat hundreds of calories a day.”

Bottom line: These two drinks probably won’t slim down anything but your bank account. (A month’s supply of Enviga is about $130.) There’s more to come, too: This September Pepsi will release a drink called Tava, which they claim isn’t meant to be a weight-loss aid, but it does contain chromium, a supplement believed by some to reduce body fat.

Sound too good to be true?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the state of Connecticut seem to think so. The CSPI, a nonprofit consumer-watchdog group, has filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola and Nestlé, calling statements about Enviga fraudulent. And Connecticut’s Attorney General has launched an investigation into the beverage’s claims.