Weighting for Godot

The wait for a weight loss bioactive marvel demands patience, risk tolerance, and investment, while many industrial players prefer to eschew patience and mitigate risk by resigning to commodity platforms that are often unsustainable.

ByAnthony Almada, B.Sc., M. Sc.

Oh the multinational obsession with weight loss—a prodigious consumer base enduring unmet or underserved needs, an increasingly slothful population obsessed with ingestive hedonism, and an evangelism-driven continuum of therapeutic and prophylactic promises. A self-perpetuating machine with food, beverage, and dietary supplement value chain contingencies either reinforcing the corpulence and complacency with sedentary life options and/or reinforcing the hope that an easy and effective solution does indeed exist.

The imminent entrance of the drug orlistat, a lipase inhibitor (and thus a fat-derived calorie absorption antagonist), onto the prescription-free shelves of drug stores may offer an inflection point, namely the impact of an Rx to OTC switch of one of the few approved weight loss drugs. The side effects of this drug have circulated through late night comedy and variety shows. The real world effectiveness—to be discerned from efficacy—should be a most interesting population-based data set. But the allure of “natural,” despite the bastardization of this term that serves as the very buttress of the “nutraceuticals” industry, continues to suffuse through the shelves, pages and words.

The enchantment of a mechanism: increasing metabolic rate (thermogenic), decreasing absolute carbohydrate absorption (“starch blocker”), increasing satiety, or decreasing appetite. What worth have they if they LACK a demonstration of WEIGHT, or especially, FAT loss? The hailed and crowned catechin in white, green, and oolong teas—EGCG—has shown anti-obesity promise in studies with genetically “pure” strains of rodents, but does it work in humans? In the second study done to date with near pure EGCG, 300 mg/day in overweight postmenopausal women undergoing a 12-week exercise program proved no better than placebo in its impact upon body composition, abdominal or subcutaneous fat, or fat burning (oxidation) during exercise (presented at the 10th International Congress on Obesity, Sydney, Australia, September 2006). As in the first study, these results temper the zealous exaltation of EGCG as an adipose antagonist, given the available evidence.

In another study presented at this same meeting, a single dose of 300 or 600 mg near pure EGCG (administered to 10 overweight-obese men) was indeed shown to exert short-term (two separate 4 hour intervals—not a continuous 24 hour period) increases in fat oxidation but the magnitude of increase was notably less than that achieved by 200 mg of caffeine. Moreover, the combination of 300 mg near pure EGCG and 200 mg of caffeine was not robustly superior to that of 200 mg of caff-eine alone.

Natural products that assert their presumed efficacy by increasing satiety—in effect delaying the return of hunger—also are saddled by a paucity of any compelling data that demonstrates weight/fat loss. The Hoodia enchantment—promulgated by those that have NO human data on their actual Hoodia material/extract, and citing a lone clinical study whose details are ensconced in confidentiality agreement language—rides a horse that does not perform like its presumed parent. The Hoodia extract named P57, the subject of issued U.S. and pending international patents assigned to Phytopharm PLC, and now licensed to Unilever, is the botanical equivalent of the ultra trace element unobtainium. IF any of the commercially available Hoodia extracts demonstrated the remarkable appetite suppression effects of Phytopharm’s patented Hoodia extract—a drop in calorie intake of over 33% within 2 weeks of using 1800 mg of the patent extract, twice daily—wouldn’t we be seeing dramatic weight loss among our friends, family and colleagues?

The dynamics of the weight/fat loss market landscape have changed radically. The dilution and erosion of marketshare in previous boom cycles (that are invariably hinged to ingredients, starting back as far the first weight loss sham product: kelp, lecithin, vitamin B6, and apple cider vinegar) has fostered a patent frenzy. Searching for international patent applications that claim Hoodia one finds over 30. What the science-driven market and IP pioneer can employ as an exclusionary tactic against the top follower company(ies) is a patent invalidation strategy that does not rely upon invention obviousness, anticipation or exhuming esoteric prior art, but rather demonstrating that a patented (or patent pending) invention simply does not work for its intended use. This strategy, if correctly executed, can impart multiplicative benefits. Weight and see. (For more information on these and other weight loss/management ingredients, turn to page 92.) NW

Disclosure: Mr. Almada received royalties from the sale of a patented, clinically validated green tea extract manufactured and marketed by Indfrag Ltd.