Green Tea Extract: “Good or Bad for Kids”
by Roberta Gonzales
October 21, 2009
Green tea extract is a dietary supplement that has been approved by FDA and continues to be widely promoted. You may think twice about green tea for your kids after a research published in October 2009 found that part of the weight loss suggested in previous studies may be due in part to bone loss. Not good news for kids who consume large amounts of green tea.
The research published in the Journal of Nutrition showed two sets of young growing male mice—a wild lean type and an obese type (lacking fat hormone, leptin, to suppress eating). Since green tea has been raved to have weight loss benefits, researchers wanted to find out if the weight loss was substantially from fat loss or from bone loss. The results showed that weight loss occurred with both sets of mice when treated with green tea extract. Most alarmingly, overall bone loss was a main factor to weight loss. Thus it was suggested that large consumption of green tea extract may slow bone growth for young boys. Caution? Most probably.
Footnotes:
Urszula T. Iwaniec,, Russell T. Turner,,Sung I. Koo5, Rouminder Kaur, Emily Ho, Carmen P. Wong and Richard S. Bruno; “Nutrition and Disease-Consumption of Green Tea Extract Results in Osteopenia in Growing Male Mice”; Journal of Nutrition, doi:10.3945/jn.109.107201,Vol. 139, No. 10, 1914-1919, October 2009.
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