Tonalin Review

tonalin ingredientTonalin is simply a brand of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The claim is that CLA reduces body fat and preserves lean muscle (which is important when reducing your caloric intake as part of a moderate, balanced diet).

Is there research to back up the claims? Fortunately, there is. I’ll highlight two here that are a bit better known:

  • “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.
  • Another study, published in the International Journal of Obesity came to the conclusion that “CLA supplementation for 4 weeks in obese men with the metabolic syndrome may decrease abdominal fat, without concomitant effects on overall obesity or other cardiovascular risk factors.” It was mentioned that larger trials with longer durations would be desirable.1

There have been over 600 studies of CLA over the past 25 years and the results are promising. Why don’t more diet pills include CLA (Tonalin being a brand of CLA)? Because it’s more expensive than a bit of Green Tea (read my review of green tea, which actually is effective, there just needs to be enough of it) and some good-for-nothing Hoodia.

  1. http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v25/n8/abs/0801659a.html;jsessionid=BEEC4EB0FD89DF864FEF344A7D7D831F [↩]