Tonalin CLA Review

CritiCalorie's Top Diet Pill Pick
Do we ever rate a diet pill positively?. Yes (rarely). Why aren't we recommending Tonalin? We're looking for clinically-researched ingredients, at the right (that means clinical) dosage. There are a few diet pills that have chosen this better route, and our favorite is Apidexin. You can read our review or go to the official site.

Tonalin CLA Review

Tonalin CLA is made by Natrol with the claim to “help you reduce your body fat and increase muscle retention.” We reviewed Tonalin a while back, as it’s included as an ingredient in a few diet pills we recommend. All in all, we like Tonalin. It’s been supported by research.

We’ll recap quickly what Tonalin does in relation to weight management:

Tonalin is not a stimulant.
Tonalin is a CLA, or conjugated linoleic acid, a naturally occurring fatty acid in meat, eggs, cheese, milk, etc.
Tonalin (CLA) limits the uptake of dietary fat by your fat cells.

From our Tonalin Review:

“Conjugated Linoleic Acid Reduces Body Fat in Healthy Exercising Humans” – the gist of the study is that the CLA group saw a decrease in their body fat from 21.3% to 17.0% with a few pounds reduction in body weight. You may wonder why the body weight loss wasn’t more when their BFP dropped by 20%? The probable reason is that their lean muscle increased.

So What Does Natrol’s Tonalin CLA Have to Offer?

Tonalin CLA contains 1000 mg (1 g) of a “Tonalin Proprietary Blend”. The blend consists of:

Conjugated linoleic acid
Oleic acid
Palmitic acid
Stearic acid
Linoleic acid

1g of Tonalin is on the high end for Tonalin dosage, which allows us to give Natrol’s Tonalin CLA a thumbs up in that regard. However…

Tonalin CLA

Tonalin CLA, while relatively inexpensive, isn’t as “aggressive” as other alternatives. Could it be improved by containing some thermogenic compounds? Sure. But for those that are looking for a more gentle approach (less stimulants) than Tonalin CLA may be a good choice. While Natrol claims that Tonalin CLA helps build muscle, that is patently false. It has nothing to do with muscle building.

Update (4/8/2008): Criticalorie was contacted by Steven Spitz, Vice President and General Counsel for Natrol where the following four issues were raised (you can read the letter in full here if you’d like):

Our Tonalin review failed to inaccurately describe the product claims. Natrol makes the claim that Tonalin CLA helps retain muscle whereas we said they claimed it helped build muscle. Some research from the Tonalin website stated the following: “CLA group had greater increases in lean tissue mass and greater losses of fat mass and percent fat compared with the placebo group.” We failed to find this research supporting CLA when we first reviewed Natrol’s Tonalin and regret the error.
Our Tonalin review presented Natrol in a disparaging manner based on false information. (See #1 above).
Our Tonalin review included an unsubstantiated superlative claim. We make recommendations based on the information we find about various products — not based on “reliable research comparing the relative benefits of each product” (see the letter above). We have changed the wording above to no longer be a “better alternative”, but simply an “alternative”.
Our Tonalin review failed to properly display intellectual property. We weren’t sure exactly what was was about, but surmised that it had to do with the image of the Natrol Tonalin product at the beginning of this review. We’ve removed the image.

We would like to also mention how agreeable the letter was overall, and complement Natrol on their amiable, professional approach in highlighting our errors and/or missteps.