Lotus leaf tea has the effects of reducing blood fat, cholesterol and weight. Alkaloids in lotus leaves have the function of reducing blood lipid, and are often used in the treatment of obesity in clinic.

Rumor:

It is not reliable for lotus leaf tea to lose weight quickly.

When searching for "lotus leaf tea" in Baidu, there will be many articles and videos about lotus leaf tea to lose weight. In fact, lotus leaf tea is not reliable to lose weight.

First of all, after any substance enters the human body, whether it plays a beneficial physiological function or produces harmful toxic effects, it must reach a certain intake. At present, the scientific research on the weight loss of lotus leaf tea is still at the level of animal experiments, and there is no rigorous and scientific evidence of human experiments, and there is no report on how much people can lose weight. Therefore, the producers of lotus leaf tea don't tell how much to drink every day to lose weight. Obviously, it is impossible to achieve the function without talking about the dosage. Moreover, when brewing tea, the dissolution of effective components will not be 100%, and the dosage of effective components will be reduced.

Secondly, weight loss is one of the 27 functions of health food in China. If you claim to be able to lose weight, you should have the logo of health food, and the instructions should have the consumption and health care functions. There is no health food approval, which means that these products have not passed scientific evaluation to prove that they have weight loss effect at the recommended dosage.

Finally, from the perspective of energy conservation, to lose weight is to consume energy in fat, which requires energy consumption to be greater than energy intake. Energy consumption includes basal metabolism, physical activity and food thermal effect. For a relatively stable human body, the basal metabolism is basically constant. If the diet is relatively fixed, the food thermal effect is relatively constant, and the only thing that can be changed is physical activity. Therefore, increasing energy consumption mainly depends on increasing exercise, while reducing energy intake requires adjusting diet structure. It is unrealistic to rely on drugs to reduce energy intake and increase energy consumption without changing lifestyle.

At the same time, we need to know that any rapid weight loss method, even if it is to strengthen exercise to increase energy consumption, will also cause damage to the body, cause endocrine and metabolic disorders, and also cause an increase in ketone acid in the body, which will lead to ketoacidosis in severe cases. Therefore, a weekly weight loss of 0.5~ 1Kg is the safe weight loss speed. As for lotus leaf tea, because there is no scientific research to determine the dose that can effectively lose weight, there is no safety toxicological evaluation at this dose. We don't even know whether it will cause damage to the body when the intake can lose weight. Therefore, it is suggested that when choosing weight loss products, you should choose products with health food signs and try not to pursue rapid weight loss.

Rumor expert: He Jiguo Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, College of Food Science, China Agricultural University.

Review expert: Director and researcher of Risk Communication Department of han hongwei National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center.

Producer: Popular Science China-Scientific Refutation