Is It Oolong Tea or a Fat-Burning Tea Scam?

by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer and Certified Nutrition Specialist

I'm sure you've seen tons of really clever ads all over the internet for all of these "Wu-tea" products claiming to be the miracle cure to fat loss.

I must admit, there's some savvy marketing behind these sites... they even claim things like "as seen on Oprah" and try to claim all sorts of celebrity endorsements.

Here's the deal...

Most of these new tea products on the internet claiming to be a miracle cure for fat loss are just oolong tea. Some brands may have other teas mixed in too, but most I've seen are just oolong tea.

Now I will say that oolong tea does have plenty of studies behind it that show it may have some minor benefits in helping to aid fat loss in a couple of different ways, including a slight metabolism boost through the thermogenic effect, and some studies also indicate it can slightly increase the % of fat calories burned.

A word of warning about these "miracle tea" sites... many of them are blatant scams, and aren't even selling the high quality oolong that they claim to be selling.  I do know the owner of this oolong tea company, and I trust their sourcing of the highest quality oolong tea.

However, I'm still not 100% convinced that you can't get basically the same benefits from oolong tea that you might be able to buy cheaper at perhaps Whole Foods or another health food store.

But with all of this said, is there REALLY any major fat loss effect from drinking oolong tea?

Well, the answer is...  slightly.

If you've read my Truth about Six Pack Abs manual, then you know that I do recommend including a mixture of green tea, white tea, oolong tea, and black tea in your daily schedule to possibly help a slight bit with fat loss and your metabolism.

But, the fact of it is that drinking tea is not going to "miraculously" transform your body or "melt off body fat".  It CAN have a slight thermogenic effect and possibly help you burn a slight bit extra calories daily.  Plus, there are tons of other benefits too, many of which are due to the high antioxidant content of teas.

However, let's get real... whether you drink tea or not isn't one of those major factors in how fast you're going to burn off body fat... it's just a very minor detail.  The real factors are your lifestyle as a whole, your type of exercise program and intensity, the quality of your diet, and your mindset... all of which we focus on regularly in this newsletter and in my Truth about Abs program.

So what I'd recommend is...

Most of these "miracle fat loss teas" on the internet are overhyped, and any effect you do get is going to be minor. Now I'm not saying that there can't be a cumulative effect if you do a lot of these little tips and tricks combined together, and I've always said that green and oolong teas are certainly part of that.  So if you do choose to use oolong tea, find a good quality brand at your local health food store, or try my friend's brand at this oolong site. 

Regardless, I do recommend including white, green, black, and oolong teas (as well as other types of tea such as yerba mate, rooibos, etc) in your diet for their numerous health benefits and antioxidants, but just be careful not to be scammed by overhyped claims on websites that you don't know.  Remember, if the claims seem wildly overhyped, it's probably too good to be true.

If you liked today's topic, this is just a sample of the dozens of nutrition topics that we talk about in our program -- The Fat Burning Kitchen

Mark Dilworth, BA, PES