Last updated: March 3, 2013
It seems African Mango
African Mango Diet Scam
If you believed everything you read about the African mango diet, you’d think that after just a few pills you could eat deep fried butter every day and still look like Heidi Klum. Some supplement companies only care about making money and will do anything to get you to buy their product. Here are some of the worst tricks of the big fat African mango scam.
Some companies only add a tiny amount of African mango extract to their supplement. When a new, fashionable weight loss pill comes along that everyone’s talking about, supplement companies want to get in on the action. But high-quality African mango extract is expensive to produce. So what do they do? They add a minuscule amount of the extract to their pills, along with lots of other ingredients, just so they can put AFRICAN MANGO EXTRACT on the label in huge letters to get everyone’s attention.
Watch out for products that don’t tell you how much African mango extract each pill contains. These kinds of products might say “with African mango” or “contains African mango” on the label instead of just “African mango extract”. So long as the product contains just a little of the extract–even 1mg, for example–legally, the suppliers are doing nothing wrong. But of course, taking a dose as low as 1mg of African mango every day certainly won’t help you lose weight!
You should only ever buy African mango products that tell you exactly how much extract each pill has.
The worst trick that some companies use is to give the amount of every ingredient put together and try to trick you into thinking that it’s the amount of African mango.
For example, if you saw a product called “Extra Special African Mango Extract With Apple Skin And Green Tea – 800mg”, you might well think that each pill had 800mg of African mango. But in fact, each pill might have 700mg of green tea extract, 75mg of apple peel extract and only a measly 25mg of mango extract. It’s just 800mg when you add it all together! A fair marketing tactic? Nope, that’s an African mango scam!
With African mango, as with all weight loss supplements, getting the dose right is essential if you want to get results. Remember, the participants in the study in Cameroon took 300mg of extract each day, once before breakfast and once before lunch. (For more about the evidence behind these products, check out the African Mango Weight Loss article.)
But if you look at popular online stores, supplement companies are selling African mango seed extract in quantities as large as 2000mg! If you took just one pill every day, you’d be taking almost 7 times as much as the subjects of the medical study!
You may be thinking “Well, if 300mg burns some fat, then 2000mg must burn lots of fat! Sign me up!”
Unfortunately, more does not always mean better when it comes to supplements. For many supplements, taking a lot more than the recommended dose can actually reduce the positive effects. It can also often cause unpleasant side effects, or even be dangerous to your health.
That’s why I only recommend taking a dose close to 300mg, and steering clear of any supplements that contain a massive dose in every pill.
Real African Mango
It’s also very important to choose a supplement with real African mango extract. Regular “mango extract” is not the same thing. Not only does it not work for weight loss, it’s many times cheaper. Anyone who tries to sell you a plan old “mango extract” as a weight loss product is trying to scam you!
Real African mango will always say Irvingia gabonensis or “IGOB131″ (the chemical name for the extract) on the label.
Does African Mango Really work?
So now you know how to avoid getting scammed with bogus African mango products. But does African mango really work?
Based on the available evidence, the answer is yes. Taking 300mg of African mango extract every day for 10 weeks helped people to lose over 28lb, lose body fat, shrink their waist size and even lower cholesterol levels. Click for more info about African mango weight loss.
Click to return to the African mango home page or head straight over to the African Mango Reviews article.
John is the founder of Supplement SOS. He has written about health and nutrition for a number of high-profile publications. He's particularly interested in the future of sustainable food production and optimizing food products for human health.