Chocamine™ is “a proprietary, patent pending¹ cocoa extract that has the taste, smell and proven health benefits of chocolate without the sugar, fat and dairy of chocolate candy.” The claims go on to say that Chocamine is the only chocolate supplement that:

• Normalizes the appetite
• Regulates cravings
• Promotes sustained energy

And then you have the weight loss spin: “[the Chocamine ingredients] include proven, safe, and natural non-ephedra² thermogenic compounds.” Oh and, by the way, Chocamine also contains mood and performance enhancing substances.

Basically the maker of Chocamine says they have formed a unique and “synergistic” (buzz word) blend of various chocolate components…

The Company Behind Chocamine

Chocamine is made by a company called RFI Ingredients, founded in 1989 by Jeff Wuagneux who is still the acting president and CEO. The company has a long track record, which is reassuring. They certainly aren’t fly by night. Their position in the supply chain is basically to provide the raw materials to companies that are paid to encapsulate the raw materials into pills. Those companies then sell the pills usually to a retailer, who in turn sells the pills (at a markup obviously) to you.

Exactly what does Chocamine Contain?

• Methyl-xanthine alkaloids, with a high concentration of:
  • theobromine
  • theophylline
• Adrenergic amines
• “Dietary minerals”
• “Important amino acids”

Good grief. Vagary brought to new heights right before our eyes.

An alkaloid is an amine and an amine is an organic compound that contains nitrogen as its key atom. An alkaloid 0that you may have heard of: morphine. Alkaloids are produced by plants and in the case of Chocamine, we’re talking for a second about Theobromine. Theobromine is simply an alkaloid from the cocoa plant. It’s part of the methylated xanthine group. Members of this group include caffeine, paraxanthine, theophylline and theobromine — known for their stimulative effects.

So…our first bullet point boils down to a stimulant. If you’ve ever noticed that a chocolate bar gives you a bit of a rush, it’s probably from what we’ve just discussed above. Chocamine could give that to you without the side effects (calories) of eating several chocolate bars.

As far as the adrenergic amines? The term adrenergic basically means that these amines are related to nerve cells where adrenalin (epinephrine) acts as a neurotransmitter. All boiled down, we’re talking possibly about some compounds (amines) that have some sort of adrenaline effect.

I feel like I’m just the blind leading the blind right now. We don’t have any research to validate RFI’s claims for its Chocamine ingredients. They cite Hedrei and Gougeon, 1997 at the end of a sentence that appears to be referring to the “important amino acids” that are included in Chocamine. In citing that study they make the claim that it (again, I’m guessing they’re referencing the important amino acids) promotes lipolysis (the breakdown of fat cells). I couldn’t find the study and they don’t mention amounts of anything so if there were some studies out there we wouldn’t be able to show support there anyway.

On top of the fact that Chocamine is a black hole (see update below) as far as actual ingredients, quantity of those mysterious ingredients, and the research that supposedly went into those ingredients, the actual end buyer of this raw material ingredient may very well put Chocamine in part of their proprietary blend. So we wouldn’t even know how much of this mysterious ingredient they’re actually including.

UPDATE (1/19/2008): I was able to find a profile of what is in Chocamine and it doesn’t alter my conclusion on the product. It’s basically a stimulant, containing caffeine (80mg) and theobromine (120mg) among other things previously mentioned. This supplement profile was as of February 2006, so it may have changed since then, but it’s probably still close nonetheless. Thanks to 1Fast400.com for the info.

Is Chocamine Effective?

Who knows? If Chocamine’s in a diet pill you’re considering, I wouldn’t put any more weight on it than I would a caffeine (caffeine review here) stimulant. If there’s some diet pill company out there that’s touting it as the end-all-be-all ingredient I’d run for the hills. Oh, and let me know so I can put them on my list of diet pills to review.

1. I looked everywhere for a patent application about cocoa, chocolate, RFI Ingredients, etc. and couldn’t find a shred of anything. It’s very easy to say “patent pending” in an attempt to make the compound appear more official/effective [↩]
2. companies will always say non-ephedra to make you think that you had to say non-ephedra because the effects you’ll feel will be so ephedra-like that you’ll think it was ephedra when really it wasn’. I see this all the time. [↩]