Appemine is a made up name for an ingredient that is contained in a nutritional supplement that is alleged to promote weight loss.  Appemine is not a single substance but a combination of three ordinary dietary supplements; green tea extract, cinnamon twig and galangal.  This secret ingredient is what is supposed to make Right Size smoothies help people to lose weight.

The reality is that these three ingredients posses dubious weight loss pedigrees and when combined to “make” appemine, aren’t magically better. Just as 1+1+1 does not equal 10, green tea extract + cinnamon twig + galangal doesn’t equal weight loss.

Let’s look at the most ineffective ingredient first, galangal.  Do a Google search and you will learn from both the organic and sponsored links that galangal is a spice that tastes and looks kind of like ginger and is used as an ingredient in Thai foods.  I learned that galangal is used as an ingredient in a favorite food of mine, Pad Thai.  Yummy!

However, you really have to dig to find any medicinal uses for galangal.  I found that this spice is used to ward off flatulence, bad breath and diarrhea (yay!) and other kinds of intestinal and digestive distresses, but found nothing promoting this Siamese ginger as a weight loss supplement.

Cinnamon twig sounds like it would be good in tea or hot chocolate but here’s what I found about this substance.  I can’t do any better than this passage that I found on NutritionalWellness.com, “Acrid, sweet and warm. In Chinese medicine, cinnamon helps release the Exterior and Disperses Cold. Good for Kidney Yang Deficiency. This condition is characterized by intolerance to cold; cold extremities; weakness and soreness of the lower back and knees; lack of libido; polyuria; loose stools; and/or wheezing.”

If you have Kidney Yang deficiency, you’re in luck.  If you want to lose a few pounds, sorry Charlie.

The final component of appemine is green tea extract (GTE).  GTE has a great track record if you define “great” as being credited for preventing cancers, heart disease, lowering cholesterol and helping people to lose weight.  But if you require proof in the form of solid, repeatable scientific evidence before willing to assign greatness to a supplement, than GTE won’t be a nominee for the Nutritional Supplement Hall of Fame.

You see, there’s a whole lot of “maybes,” “mights” and “we thinks” attached to the benefits offered by green tea coming from the sales and marketing side, while science just isn’t as optimistic.  Where one study offers promise for GTE in the fight against cancer and other diseases, there are studies that say, “Now wait just a minute, there.”  And when it comes to weight loss, it really is a stretch to claim that green tea extract can help people lose weight.

Appemine is just a marketing tool.

Right Size Weight Loss Smoothies advertise that thanks to the ingredient appemine people can quickly and easily lose weight by drinking two smoothies per day.  In the year 2010 nobody should be impressed but, sadly, people still buy this nonsense.

Calorie restriction results in weight loss, so substituting two low-calorie smoothies for two regular meals is most likely going to result in a caloric deficit significant enough to result in weight loss in a relatively short period of time.  There is no big mystery here.  Right Size Smoothies supposedly contain an ingredient that suppresses appetite. The reality is that most effective appetite suppressants are available by prescription only, or are lower-dose over-the-counter options of prescription medication, and the vast majority of OTC appetite suppressants just don’t work.

Appemine is just more weight-loss nonsense.

The active ingredient in Right Size Smoothies- appemine – is basically green tea extract.  Green tea extract is basically a stimulant that also has some anti-oxidant properties and is supposed to boost energy and burn fat…yadda, yadda, yadda.  The Right Size web site does not provide any valid, legitimate research to support claims of appemine’s efficacy.  As is the case with any stimulant-based weight loss/fat loss/energy supplement, there’s the possibility of adverse affects from taking too much or from piggy backing this supplement with your usual intake of caffeine.  So you really shouldn’t have three or four cups of coffee and then drink an appemine-laden smoothy, because you’re liable to suffer from a variety of unpleasant side-effects.

The Right Size web site provides all the de rigueur hype but none of the rigorous science to support the claims made about appemine.  What the site has is pseudo-science, jargon and a lot of puffery. And we also get the head of the company telling us how great his product is…Fail.

So to recap, there’s no legit clinical proof to support claims about appemine, including any info that controlled, standardized test have ever been performed, and there’s really nothing unique about Right Size’s active ingredients to justify its purchase. Actually, you can purchase green tea in many of its forms, as well as the other Right Size Smoothies ingredients, in most health food stores and via the Internet at a fraction of the cost.

The Right Size Diet/Weight Loss Smoothies program is just another example of snake oil, and as a result gets a Do Not Buy recommendation.