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Which Is Better for Weight Loss? Green Coffee or Green Tea Extract?

 

Who is guilty of having to have at least a cuppa coffee or tea to rewire your brain and thoughts after the night long sleep? Many of us plead guilty for not being able to function without the morning caffeine dose. Not just the regular pick-me-up, your morning drink may in fact aid in your weight loss efforts. Green coffee and green tea may already be part of your daily morning ritual, but they also come in supplement form as green tea and green coffee extract, which makes it even more effortless to prepare. If weight loss is your goal, is one extract better than the other? It's time to put these two green titans in a head-to-head battle to help maximise the effects by incorporating into your weight loss regimen.

 

Green Coffee Extract

Green coffee beans are the ones that have not been roasted yet. Unroasted raw coffee beans are rich in caffeine and chlorogenic acid1. The roasting process turns the naturally green coffee beans to brown/black colour and lessens the chlorogenic acid (CGA) in it. CGA helps the body in maintaining its blood sugar level and also keeps the metabolism rate in check. Since these coffee beans are not roasted, they have much higher levels of CGA as compared to other forms of coffee. The CGA also helps in burning fats faster. Caffeine was found to be a suppressor of fat absorption, while chlorogenic acid was found to be partially involved in the suppressive effect of green coffee extract that resulted in the reduction of hepatic triglyceride level2. Green coffee extract treatment significantly decreased body weight gain, liver weight and white adipose tissue weights with regulation of adipose tissue lipolysis hormones, like adiponectin and leptin3. It has a potential anti-obesity effect with lowering body fat accumulation by regulating adipogenesis and lipid metabolism-related genes and proteins in liver3. Green coffee extract is possibly effective against weight gain and fat accumulation by inhibition of fat absorption and activation of fat metabolism in the liver2.

Green Tea Extract

Green tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, has been endorsed as a healthy drink for centuries with likely health benefits ranging from enhanced antioxidant level to cardiovascular support. It is one of the most widely found ingredients used in weight loss supplements. The two components mainly responsible for green tea extract's health benefits are catechins, which deliver the majority of antioxidants benefits, and caffeine, which enhances thermogenesis and fat metabolism. Long-term consumption of green tea extract has been demonstrated to support modest weight loss, around 2-3 pounds, over a 12-week period4. While green tea extract clearly won't do all the work for you, research suggests that, when combined with exercise, it can support greater abdominal fat loss when compared to exercise alone, by increasing fat burning, and eventually leads to the reduced levels of triglyceride and free fatty acids5.

 

 

Comparison of Green Coffee Vs Green Tea

Both green tea or green coffee has some outstanding health benefits. They improve your health from within, flush out the toxins by stimulating hepatic activity, help burn fat through adipose tissue lipolysis and thermogenesis, and subsequently protect your heart from suffering the comorbidities of diabetes, dyslipidaemia and hypertension. Both of these have caffeine which acts as stimulant for energy boost, thereby improving exercise tolerance. Green tea extract which contains epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) works by increasing fat burning and boosting baseline metabolism. Green coffee extract, on the other hand, contains chlorogenic acid (CGA) which inhibit fat production and carbohydrate cravings by manipulating leptin hormone that suppresses hunger.

 

Sensitive to Caffeine?

Both green coffee and green tea have similar negative effects of caffeine, therefore it is important to make sure optimum consumption of the supplements to enjoy the health benefits while minimising the risks. Some of the common undesired effects of caffeine include increased heart rate, restlessness, trouble sleeping and upset stomach. These effects are seen more prominently in individuals who are hypersensitive to caffeine. L-carnitine works by transporting fatty acid to mitochondria for burning as a source of energy during exercise6. It does not contain caffeine, and it is produced naturally by the liver and kidney as well as stored primary in the skeletal muscle (98%). It is therefore widely accepted as fat burning facilitator. At the end of the 6 months treatment and 6 months study period, compared with placebo, the levocarnitine-treated centenarians (over 100-year-old) showed significant improvement in total fat mass reduction of 1.8kg7.

 

Conclusion

Be it green coffee or green tea, they assist in your fat loss programme in their unique mechanism of action, whether fat burning or suppressing fat production. The key is to consume green tea or green coffee extracts with a proper diet and exercise regime that suits your lifestyle to observe desired and lasting results.  

 

Reference:

  1. da Silveira Duarte SM, de Abreu CMP, de Menezes HC, dos Santos MH, Gouvea CMCP. Effect of processing and roasting on the antioxidant activity of coffee brews. Ciênc. Tecnol. Aliment., Campinas. 2005;25(2):387-393.
  2. Shimoda H, Seki E, Aitani M. Inhibitory effect of green coffee bean extract on fat accumulation and body weight gain in mice. BMC Complement Altern Med. 2006 Mar 17;6:9.
  3. Choi BK, Park SB, Lee DR, Lee HJ, Jin YY, Yang SH, Suh JW. Green coffee bean extract improves obesity by decreasing body fat in high-fat diet-induced obese mice. Asian Pac J Trop Med. 2016 Jul;9(7):635-43.
  4. Wang H, Wen Y, Du Y, Yan X, Guo H, Rycroft JA, Mela DJ. Effects of catechin enriched green tea on body composition. Obesity 2010, 18(4), 773-779.
  5. Maki KC, Reeves MS, Farmer M, Yasunaga K, Matsuo N, Katsuragi Y, Blumberg JB. Green tea catechin consumption enhances exercise-induced abdominal fat loss in overweight and obese adults. The Journal of Nutrition 2009, 139(2), 264-270.
  6. Malaguarnera M, Cammalleri L, Gargante MP, Vacante M, Colonna V, Motta M. L-carnitine treatment reduces severity of physical and mental fatigue and increases cognitive functions in centenarians: a randomized and controlled clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;86:1738-1744.
  7. Wall BT, Stephens FB, Constantin-Teodosiu D, Marimuthu K, Macdonald IA, Greenhaff PL. Chronic oral ingestion of L-carnitine and carbohydrate increases muscle carnitine content and alters muscle fuel metabolism during exercise in humans. J Physiol. 2011;589(4):963-973.

 

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