Fact Check: No, tea from fennel, cumin and lemon can’t help drop 10 kg of body weight
Although these ingredients are beneficial for guts, reducing 10 kg of weight is too much to ask.
By Sunanda Naik Published on 14 Dec 2023 12:01 PM GMT
Hyderabad: A post advising people to consume a tea made out of fennel, cumin and lemon juice in lukewarm water to reduce weight is being widely shared on social media.
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false.
According to Medical News Today, healthy weight isn’t about following a diet or how much you weigh on a scale. Rather, it involves a lifestyle with healthy eating habits, regular physical activity, exercise and stress management.
Factors like hours of sleep, age, genetics, diseases, medications, and environment may also contribute to weight management.
Apart from an unmanaged diet that leads to weight gain, several health conditions lead to an unrecognized gain in body weight such as kidney disease, insomnia, quitting smoking, cirrhosis, heart failure, thyroid disorder, Cushing’s syndrome, acromegaly and ovarian cancer.
Let’s look at the purported ingredients and their effects on weight loss.
Do fennel seeds help reduce weight?
No, they don’t. A study evaluating the potential benefits of fennel and fenugreek tea drinking to suppress subjective short-term appetite in overweight women found that drinking fennel tea and fenugreek tea might be helpful in appetite control by reducing further food intake in overweight women.
A longer trial with a larger number of subjects would be beneficial to evaluate the long-term effects (e.g. body weight, body fat etc.) of these teas on obesity treatment in conjunction with appetite control.
In addition, various parameters to evaluate appetite control, including hematologic outcomes would be required for future research.
Can cumin seeds contribute to weight loss?
Possibly, says Healthline. The report states that ‘cumin has the potential for helping you lose weight because of a unique active ingredient, thymoquinone, a naturally occurring chemical with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Thymoquinone can target free radicals in your body, assisting your body in cleansing itself of toxins. Cumin helps your cells respond to insulin and glucose, which keeps your blood sugar stable.
It should be noted that the effects of cumin can work together with a healthy diet and exercise to decrease fat deposits and reduce inflammation in your body. More research is needed.
How can lemons help you lose weight?
According to Medical News Today, ‘lemons may have become popular as a weight loss aid through lemon water diets. However, there is little evidence that lemon water diets work, and the main effects may be due to actually drinking more water rather than the lemons.’
A study has found that pre-meal water consumption led to a significant reduction in meal energy intake in the young. This suggests that this may be an effective weight control strategy, even though the mechanism of action remains unknown. But there is no evidence to back the fat-reducing properties of lemon as claimed.
If you are concerned about your weight and experiencing frequent fluctuations in weight, seek medical supervision.
