Ky. Attorney General settles claim against Enviga

Attorney General Jack Conway has announced an agreement in principle with Coke, Nestle and Beverage Partnership Worldwide (BPW) resolving questionable claims that Enviga, a green tea beverage, will burn extra calories resulting in weight loss.

Under the agreement, the companies will add disclosures to Enviga, and any similarly formulated product, to disclaim any weight loss benefits and note that weight loss is only possible through diet and exercise. The companies will also pay $650,000 to the 26 states involved in the settlement. Kentucky will receive approximately $15,800 of this amount. Final settlement documents will soon be tendered to the Franklin Circuit Court for approval.

In 2007, the states’ attorneys general, led by Connecticut, began an investigation into questionable express and implied claims that drinking Enviga will burn more calories than it contains thereby resulting in weight loss.
“My office will not tolerate misleading claims that prey on consumers’ intentions to improve their health,” General Conway said.

Specifically, marketing claims for Enviga purported that consuming three cans in a day would result in increased calorie burning by up to 60 to 100 calories per day. However, the study cited by the companies ran for only three days and consisted of a small group of normal weight, healthy 18-35 year olds. While a number of study participants did experience some additional calorie burning, they did not experience weight loss.

The study investigated 31 people consuming Enviga over a period of 3 days. The study claimed that the high caffeine (and caffeine like substance) content in Enviga sped up the metabolism and caused the participants to burn more calories from fat rather than carbohydrates, up to 60-100 extra calories per day. However, it has been extensively researched and proven that pure caffeine as a supplement will have the same effect over that time period, thus rendering the content of Enviga (aside from the caffeine) to be mostly irrelevant to the "negative calorie" claim. Furthermore, research has shown that caffeine sensitivity drops exponentially over time. Like with all stimulatory drugs and agents, the same dose of caffeine is no longer equally effective over time, requiring higher and higher doses in order to provide the same effect. The 100 calories burned per day will drop to 0 in a period of a few weeks, unless dramatically more caffeine is utilized. The net conclusion of these observations is that the extrapolation from a 3 day time period onto a permanent 60-100 calorie weight loss per day is completely unjustified.

The limited results of the study and the absence of any evidence that consuming Enivga results in weight loss, prompted the attorneys general to question the implication that people in the general population would experience the same calorie burning as those healthy 18-35 year olds in a controlled setting.

The settlement reached between the state attorneys general and the companies requires that in any marketing of Enviga, or a similarly formulated beverage, that uses the terms “the calorie burner,” “negative calories,” “drink negative,” or makes any claims explicitly or implicitly that consumers will burn calories by drinking the product, there must be a clear and conspicuous disclosure that the product does not produce weight loss without diet and exercise.