2023-08-16 18:13:00
With the summer, this “trick” came out again. But there is a tidal wave: nearly 21 million posts on the subject have been posted! It is true that it looks very innocent this challenge which claims to help people lose weight but especially to burn belly fat, the one that accumulates and leaves so difficult thanks to a few drops of lemon in a coffee .
But when we know that one in three children in Belgium is overweight, we can wonder how many of them have thrown themselves headlong into the preparation of this miracle elixir.
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How to nutritionally justify that adding lemon to coffee could help with weight loss? “We can’t”, insists Cécile Bétry, doctor and nutrition researcher “there is absolutely no scientific basis for saying that there would be a benefit for significant weight loss aimed at slimming”.
Lemon has no miracle power. “Adding lemon to your water makes it taste better, which helps you stay hydrated. Plus, drinking water before a meal can promote satiety, which will make you eat less,” suggests dietitian Samantha Cassetty. “If you eat less, it can lead to a calorie deficit necessary for weight loss. But it’s a marginal effect that affects very few people”.
And yet, the false trick has spread so much that it has become an urban rumor and many Internet users have wanted to testify to amazing weight loss, around the hashtag #CoffeeLemonChallenge… Just to be part of it! Like this TikTok user, who claimed to have lost eight pounds in two weeks.
This beverage, considered a miracle, is also not innocent: specialists in nutrition and eating behavior warn against this trend, which can be dangerous and initiate compulsive eating disorders, especially among adolescents. “On the application, drinking the beverage daily while filming your weight loss has become a challenge, videos of American doctors have even been hijacked, to make believe that practitioners approve of this method”, deplores Professor Pierre Dechelotte, president of the Francophone Society of Clinical and Metabolic Nutrition states that “coffee, whether hot or cold, has never caused weight loss.”
What is this new challenge on Tik Tok which has already claimed several victims?
And above all, this challenge once again points to weight as the enemy to be fought… However, researchers from the University of Laval had been able to show that “social media constitute an interesting platform for people who want to know more about the good eating habits or looking for support to lose a few pounds. But in practice, they have a negative effect on women’s body image. In adolescent girls, for example, spending more than two hours a day on it is associated with a higher risk of dissatisfaction with one’s weight and a greater desire to lose weight”.
The propensity to idealize thinness and to compare oneself to others is far from ancient history.
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