Raspberry Ketones – Effective Weight Loss or Effective Marketing?

Raspberry ketones are probably familiar to anyone who follows the Dr. Oz show, or actually weight loss trends in general. Pure raspberry ketone has been shown to inhibit fat storage in mice, but does that support the wisdom of taking a raspberry keytone supplement?

As much as I am on board with the idea of using nutritional supplements, there are times when I question whether the research actually supports some of the conclusions made by experts in the weight loss field.

Antioxidant Benefits

To be sure raspberries, in fact almost all berries have very beneficial antioxidant compounds that promote health in a variety of ways.

Compounds in berries such as tannins, anthocyanins, and phenols, are synergistic, which means they work better together than alone. They help support proper gene expression and act as antioxidants protecting against damaging oxidative stress.

Here is a quick breakdown on those compounds and their effects:

flavonoids – have antioxidant, antihistamine, and antimicrobial properties – they protect against free radical damage and help prevent heart disease, cancer, stroke, and asthma

anthocyanins – recent evidence indicates they are anti-inflammatory, and may even protect the brain and nervous system from degeneration.

tannins – tannins have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, and show potential antibacterial, antiviral, and neuroprotective effects as well.

stilbenoids – stilbenoids (resveratrol is one of them) may protect against diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

phenolic acids – these are polyphenols that have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties, offering protection against cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

These compounds and their effects are the real benefits to consuming berries as food or in their supplement form. Pure raspberry ketones are very expensive to isolate and extract, therefor a raspberry ketone supplement (if it is pure) will be very expensive!

Raspberry Ketones and Weight Loss?

There is weak evidence that raspberry ketones really help in weight loss. The only evidence of a scientific nature comes from animal experiments in which the ketones administered to test animals comprised up to 2-3% of their body weight! This is a massive dose and at the price of raspberry ketone supplements would be so expensive as to not be worth it!

I don’t like to discourage nutritional supplements, but this one doesn’t look like a winner in the weight loss department, based on the evidence that we have so far. I think it could be of value for the antioxidant benefits, but for weight loss you would be better of with something like green coffee extract ,which has demonstrated actual weight loss in properly conducted human trials.

Let’s look at the specifics of the study that sparked all the excitement……

An 8 week experiment conducted on rats to test the effect of raspberry ketones on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Note that this was not specifically a weight loss study! After 8 weeks it was shown that the rats given raspberry ketones had better blood lipid profiles and inflammatory markers.

The ketones protected against nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and dyslipidemia, which is another term for poor fat metabolism. The most you could say about the ketones is that they favorably alter fat metabolism in rats when given in high doses (up tp 2% of their body weight).