Firstly, the initial study cited is terrible. Seriously bad. If for no other reason than they had a control group...BUT DIDN'T TEST WEIGHT REDUCTIONS BETWEEN-GROUPSpic.twitter.com/tWrKVbxI3c
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Firstly, the initial study cited is terrible. Seriously bad. If for no other reason than they had a control group...BUT DIDN'T TEST WEIGHT REDUCTIONS BETWEEN-GROUPSpic.twitter.com/tWrKVbxI3c
Which transforms the study quite oddly from a double-arm RCT into an observational cohort study
They also didn't control for multiple comparisons after running ~40 t-tests, which in layman's terms means that these results are essentially meaningless as hell
Here's the full graph, which Dr. Fung left out. You'll notice that there are almost as many statistically significant differences in the placebo control as there are in the intervention arm, which is exactly what you'd expect if you run 40+ t-tests because that's how stats workpic.twitter.com/2NiEG11yoK
Anyway, the article then goes on to talk about a 2009 non-systematic review/meta analysis and how it demonstrated that green tea is effective for weight losspic.twitter.com/Q3rvOJUyO2
Rather than go into detail about why this 2009 review wasn't great (spoiler: it was pretty bad), I'll just go to a more recent Cochrane review on the subject It found no benefit http://www.cochrane.org/CD008650/ENDOC_green-tea-for-weight-loss-and-weight-maintenance-in-overweight-or-obese-adults …pic.twitter.com/Sjo2WRamIb
There is then a lot of discussion in the article about catechins, caffeine, and Asian vs Caucasians, but honestly why bother. If the best evidence indicates no difference between green tea and placebo...
...then any theories about WHY green tea causes weight loss are pretty much worthless. Because it doesn't.
So, essentially, Dr. Fung appears to be extrapolating from one awful study and a decade-old, out of date non-systematic review to make claims for green tea as an obesity preventative
In other words, he's claiming that green tea can make you lose weight using what I would describe as terrible evidence
When you look at GOOD evidence, it appears that green tea does nothing for obesity at all
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