We looked, and the evidence does not back the claim: either it was tested and did not hold up, or nobody has tested it and nothing that was tested supports it.
The 2023 study behind 'sweetener damages DNA' is real, competently run and industry-free — and every experiment in it happened in a dish. Its own authors write that the health effects 'are not yet known'. That sentence did not make the coverage.
13 caffeine trials and 606 people, but by our reading of the review's references seven gave the caffeine with ephedra or ephedrine, barred from US supplements since 2004, and an I-squared of up to 94% means nearly all of the spread between their results is more than chance would produce. Meanwhile the famous green coffee claim of 17.7 lb 'with or without diet and exercise' came from a study whose weights were altered. It cost $3.5 million and was retracted.
Across 21 studies, the people who lifted and did cardio still built a large amount of muscle — less than lifting alone, but nowhere near losing any. The cost is real and it depends on how much you do, and running causes it while cycling mostly doesn't.
Twenty-one trials longer than eight weeks, screened from 23,441 records: a trend toward benefit, and a confidence interval that includes zero. Then the FTC found the marquee study's subjects had been told to diet and exercise — while the press release said they hadn't.
Fifteen women, a ventilated hood, and 100 g of celery: digesting it cost 13.76 of the 16 calories it delivered. That is 86% — far closer to free than we first said. It is still not negative, and the researchers said so themselves.
Oxidise 10 kg of fat and 8.4 kg of it is exhaled as carbon dioxide. Eccrine sweat is water, sodium and chloride — lipid is not a meaningful constituent. You cannot sweat out something that is not in the sweat.
The only randomised trial of a corset for weight control watched compliance fall from 100% to 10% in nine months — the authors said it 'could therefore not be evaluated.' There is no mechanism, and the one measured effect of abdominal compression is worse reflux.
Cold exposure does raise the calories you burn, and over weeks of daily cold air one study trimmed fat mass slightly. But the research used hours of cool air, not a three-minute plunge — and no study shows a cold plunge takes fat off.
A 2026 review found no randomised trial of a tea sold for detox or weight loss, and neither did we. The mechanism is a laxative, and even four to six litres of diarrhoea cuts calorie absorption by only about 12%. The liver damage, though, is documented.
The checklist this page always promised, finally on the page. It sorts your answers into what the ECSS/ACSM consensus says must be excluded first — energy intake, iron, thyroid, infection, mood — and refuses to give you a score, because that consensus found no marker good enough to be generally accepted.