Health experts have slammed a controversial weight loss product shilled by Amber Rose and Blac Chyna. It's called Boombod, and it claims to work in just days. "Clinically proven weight loss," says its slick website, calling on customers to "JOIN OVER 350,000 PEOPLE & SEE RESULTS IN A WEEK!" Kylie Jenner's best friends, Jordyn Woods and Anastasia Karanikolaou, are also paid to use it – as is singer Christina Milian. Boombod comes neatly packaged in sachets – you take one with a glass of water before meals, three times a day, in the hope it will reduce your appetite and "collect toxins" that sweep out your body.

Which all sounds great, but according to experts, that's a load of dog shit. Interviews with leading weight loss doctors, nutritionists, and clinical medicine professors reveal Boombod is actually ineffective as hell – and in their opinion, you would be wasting $40 by buying a pack of it, even if Amber Rose is paid to put her face on it.

How Boombod claims to work

An advert on Boombod's website explains what it sees as the challenges of weight loss. "Losing weight is not exactly easy," they say, because you're always hungry and overindulging on snacks. Luckily for you, Boombod has "the answer."

Just chug three of their sachets a day (at $40 for a seven day pack, that's two bucks per sachet) – morning energizer, afternoon motivator and night rejuvenator. It contains "the natural super-fiber glucomannan," which they breathlessly say "has been used in Far Eastern cultures for centuries."

This, according to their explanatory video, is how it works: "Turns into a gel in the stomach, reducing the room for food without bloating. The gel sweeps through the digestive tract, collecting food particles & toxins performing a cleanse without laxative effects."

Or as Amber Rose was paid to tell you: "Boombod got this waist snatched."

Except Boombod will not get this or any other waist snatched! Their miracle ingredient, glucomannan, has not been conclusively linked to weight loss in any credible or recent medical studies.

The science behind glucomannan, the key ingredient of Boombod

Glucomannan is full of fiber – fiber stays in your stomach and keeps you feeling full. A high fiber diet will also help you shit. According to Dr Joseph Feuerstein, director of integrative medicine at Stamford Hospital and Columbia professor, that's pretty much it.

"It's lipstick on a pig," he told babe, describing Boombod. "Same old shit, new spin, new marketing, same product. Nothing new, nothing clever, nothing revolutionary."

And there's really not much out there to suggest glucomannan causes weight loss. In fact, according to our Dr Feuerstein, the best studies out there say glucomannan does not cause weight loss. And the studies that say glucomannan does cause weight loss are trash.

Boombod says its product is "clinically proven" and touts on its site that glucomannan is recognized by the European Food Safety Authority. We asked Boombod several times if they could tell us about the science behind their product, and they saw our messages but never responded.

So we went to the EFSA directly, and asked for their work on glucomannan. They linked us to this paper, which contained research based on studies, some of which date back to the 1980s and were tested on just 20 people. From this, they concluded: "Glucomannan helps controlling body weight and contributes to weight management in the context of an energy-restricted diet."

Even that European report says no longterm studies have ever been done about glucomannan on body weight – nothing beyond than 12 weeks. Meanwhile Boombod encourages you to chug down their magic bean powder for at least four weeks (they show photos of thinner and thinner women for one, two, then four weeks, suggesting the longer you drink it the skinnier you get).

The problem about those studies has actually been written about by American researchers. A recent paper in Journal of Obesity, which tried to find a link between glucomannan and weight loss, said: "These trials have been limited by weak designs, small sample sizes, heterogeneous diagnoses, variable formulations and dosages of glucomannan, and short duration of follow-up."

Oh, and the results of their own glucomannan testing in that Journal of Obesity study? "Did not promote weight loss in overweight and moderately obese individuals."

Boombod isn't even the first "weight loss" product containing glucomannan that's been criticized. A powder promoted by British reality TV stars called Slimming Sprinkles was profiled by The Guardian last year for its dubious health claims.

But let some of the YouTuber reviews for Boombod speak for themselves. (You'll have to sift through a lot of videos claiming to be "HONEST REVIEWS" but are in fact sponsored by Boombod, like this one by a vlogger called Lucy Jessica Carter – who is she kidding when she labels her video honest?)

This one is legit:

"I felt like I was eating as much food as I would eat when I was not on Boombod. I don't feel like it made me crave less food… Overall, Boombod didn't actually work for me."

Or this one, where the product looks to me like undrinkable pink slime, as it does to the person gagging it down:

Yvette d'Entremont, the former analytical chemist and current bullshit debunker known as Science Babe, described Boombod as a "bottle full of broken promises."

"The likelihood of this thing working is the same likelihood of a Kardashian turning on a lightbulb and it turning into a lightsaber," she told us. "Anything that's over the counter isn't going to do much."

Nutrition expert Mitzi Dulan put it bluntly in an email: "I would save your money on this product unless they can provide independent research that has been done using their product and showing effectiveness."

We sent multiple messages to Boombod before publishing this article, which they opened and did not answer. My extremely unscientific guess that has not been peer-reviewed by anyone is that they're probably busy with constipation from all the shit they're full of.

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@hshukman