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It’s Jane, your high school friend who hasn’t spoken to you for 20 years.

And before you can say “Hey, you used to bully me lol” she’s dropped a lengthy text about the new weight loss shake she wants to sell you. Yep, Jane is living her #bestlife, and it turns out YOU can too – all you gotta do is sell your soul buy this drink!

It’s happened to us all, right? We all know a Jane.

And the latest weight loss product to enter this arena is Revital U Smart Coffee, which claims it can help you drop unwanted body fat by simply chugging down a cup of product every day (no exercise, no diet, nothing!). Just like everything before it, they proclaim it to be “the best weight loss supplement ever developed!”…

Today I will decide if that’s TRUE.

But before we do that, I’ve gotta make something clear. All of my reviews are completely science based and totally impartial. What you’ll get here are the facts – not some fake ‘review’ written by a sales affiliate who hits you with a pitch to “join the team” at the end. Heck, when you finish this the only decision you need to make is whether you really wanna accept that friend request from “Jane”!

Consider this the most comprehensive Revital U Smart Coffee review on the entire internet.

I’m going to answer ALL of the big questions, including:

• Does Revital U Smart Coffee Work? (Will it help you lose weight?)
• Should We Call Regular Coffee “Supid Coffee” From Now On?
• Is Revital U Smart Coffee Expensive?
• Is Revital U Smart Coffee Safe?

The Problem With Products Like This…

Weight loss shakes, drinks and capsules are aimed at a market which wants results NOW and doesn’t have time to break down the claims being made.

This allows bad science to thrive.

We’ve seen it before with Juice Plus, Herbalife, and many others.

As such, we have pages and pages of salespeople claiming they’ve lost weight without reducing their calories and without doing any form of exercise, which would of course break the law of thermodynamics. (14)

There are zero clinical studies in the history of the human race to support the possibility of doing this, but it doesn’t matter because the “what if?” factor is often all they need to get someone to part with their hard earned cash, particularly if they’ve been unsuccessful in attempting to lose weight in the past.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m saying Revital U Smart Coffee is hot garbage (not yet, at least).

It means I’m saying it’s NOT a miracle drink. It isn’t going to melt body fat, nor can it over-rule a poor diet. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways it could potentially help with weight loss.

Let’s take a look at what’s in the tub.

I’ll show you the formula below. The two main ingredients here are caffeine (100mg) and chromium (200mcg). Caffeine will boost energy output, leading to a greater calorie burn throughout the day, while chromium is included because it has appetite suppressing benefits, so you eat less s**t (and therefore consume less calories… TA-DA!).

It also gives you a blend of amino acids and herbs, but the formula is hidden behind a proprietary blend which means they are unlikely to be sufficiently dosed to provide any real benefits.

REVITAL U SMART COFFEE REVIEW – DOES IT WORK?

In a nutshell; NO.

Your local Revital U salesperson would love for you to believe that their “magic drink” is causing your weight loss success, but the truth is YOU ARE.

You see, if you show me somebody who has lost weight with Revital U Smart Coffee, I’ll show you someone who has lost weight by controlling their calories (whether they were aware of it or not).

“But what about those so-called ‘fat burning’ ingredients, Russ?”

Yeah, not so much.

Any increase in calorie burn from 100mg caffeine would be minimal at best, and the appetite suppressing benefits of chromium are only unlocked if you actually have a chromium deficiency (otherwise you don’t need to supplement it), which most people do not – even then, you’d want a daily dose of around 1000mcg per day which is 5x higher than the dose in a cup of Smart Coffee. (10, 11, 12, 13)

Sure you could have a mighty 5 scoops, but your tub would be empty in less than a week, and this would also go against Revital U’s own advice to “just have 1 scoop per day.” So don’t do that.

Now about that “fat burner” tag. Supplement companies often label ingredients like caffeine and green tea extract as “FAT BURNERS”, even though there’s several decades of academic research proving they only play a small role in the fat burning process (no matter how small, the fact that it exists means they can legally say it). It might lead to a few extra calories being burned throughout the course of an entire day, but it’s certainly not a silver bullet – and shame on the people who tell you otherwise! (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

Also, how much ENERGY will you derive from 100mg caffeine?

In a world where most people smash energy drinks and sip coffee like it’s going out of fashion, that’s a pretty small dose. In a 2012 meta-analysis published in the Strength & Conditioning Journal (which looked at more than 70 clinical trials on caffeine supplementation for performance improvements), researchers concluded that we need a minimum 2.1mg per kg body weight to see ANY training benefits at all. That means a person weighing 175lbs requires a “low end” dose of 168mg caffeine, which is markedly higher than the dose provided by Smart Coffee. (9)

As for the inclusion of amino acids and herbs… the term “hit & miss” comes to mind.

This so-called “fat burning matrix” is a proprietary blend combination of choline, l-theanine, rhodiola rosea and garcinia cambogia.

These are all safe ingredients, and some of them are genuinely pretty good, but it hurts Revital U’s credibility to conceal the formula behind a proprietary blend. This is a known supplement industry loophole which allows manufacturers to fairy dust their products with insufficient doses and then make bogus claims about what the product can do.

(Rest assured, if an ingredient is fully dosed they will tell you!)

For example, we could add 1mg caffeine to a bottle of water and call it an “energy drink” – because caffeine does have links to increase energy, even though this dose would be completely useless and wouldn’t unlock those benefits.

It’s a shady business, so heed my warning:

Any company using a proprietary blend in this day and age is flat out lying to you.

And this is something which Revital U do (in detail) on their sales page.

In the ingredient glossary on their website, Revital U claim that choline supports mental focus, increased energy, better cognitive health, and reduced food cravings. This is all true, but what they conveniently don’t mention is that it takes a daily dose of 500mg-2000mg to see those benefits, with a reduction in cravings only seen near the top end of this scale. (15, 16, 17)

Next up is l-theanine. This is a favourite ingredient of mine because it has an uncanny ability to combat the “caffeine crash”, but it’s somewhat redundant in Smart Coffee because you will not get much of a crash from 100mg caffeine anyway. It simply allows the brand to make claims about “clean energy” and “no crash”. (18)

Next we have another favourite of mine; Rhodiola Rosea. This herb has been shown to drastically improve mood while lowering perceived exertion during exercise, allowing you to train slightly harder than normal. You’ll need a dose of around 100-200mg to see those benefits, but unfortunately Revital U have hidden the dosage so I can only imagine that’s because it’s below the required threshold. (22, 23, 24)

Finally, we get Garcinia Cambogia.

Consider this ingredient the supplement industry’s “next big fat burner”… of 1998. Early studies (in rats) hinted at potential use as a fat loss supplement, but in the years since then it has been universally debunked as all human trials failed. It turns out we don’t work the same way. To get around this, Revital U instead choose to play heavily on the appetite suppressing benefits of hydroxycitric acid (HCA; which is located inside Garcinia Cambogia), but any lingering hopes for HCA being an effective appetite suppressor were chalked out in a series of well-conducted trials way back in the early 2000s. (19, 20, 21)

Is Revital-U Smart Coffee Expensive?

Surprisingly so.

The product costs pennies to make, but a one month supply is retailed at £49.99. Ouch!

You could get both of the key ingredients (caffeine & chromium) on their own for considerably less.

Don’t believe me?

Link. Link. Done.

This is not simply a case of Revital U being greedy, but instead being very smart. They’ve adopted a similar home based business opportunity (MLM) to the one which Juice Plus used to grow at an exponential rate a few years ago, and the elevated price tag covers the product development cost while also ensuring sales reps are paid for sharing the product with their friends.

(Hence your message from “Jane”)

This feature has enabled Revital U to grow pretty fast as a company, but they have also inadvertently opened the gates of hell.

I’ll explain…

As you can see in my breakdown above, we DO NOT have a miracle weight loss product here – and in fairness to Revital U, they don’t really claim otherwise. Sure, they over-hype some of the potential benefits of Smart Coffee, but I’ve definitely seen worse.

The real problems come from sales reps looking to take advantage of the lucrative affiliate rewards on offer.

Heck, as you can probably imagine, if you encourage unqualified sales affiliates to start dishing out nutrition advice to the masses with potential financial rewards for how many they sign up, it doesn’t take long before it turns into the f**king Wild West.

A quick scroll through social media will reveal posts containing all kinds of weird weight loss sorcery from f**knuckles who will quite literally say anything to clinch a sale.

Check out the corker below:

Really?! They never created a negative energy balance?

If this was true, this particular sales rep would not be trying to sell coffee to her pals on Facebook, but instead be on her way to collect a Nobel Prize for being the first human to ever defy the law of thermodynamics. We are literally hardwired that way. It’s kinda like someone saying they have a product which can help you live without oxygen. (14)

Oh, and I’m just getting warmed up with these motherf**kers…

Aside from the bogus advice, another shady tactic is to invent fake qualifications in order to position themselves as an authority and gain the trust of customers.

Cast your mind back to pushy parent at your kids’ school who started selling detox drinks (there’s always one) and suddenly calls herself a ‘wellness coach’…

Stuff like this drives me INSANE.

In this instance, the person who made those crazy weight loss claims above rather marvelously called themselves a ‘Smart Coffee Consultant’.

The f**k is one of those?

Well, I can tell you what it’s NOT… it’s NOT a qualification which enables you to hand out nutrition advice to strangers.

So please be careful out there… it’s mental!

SMART COFFEE – THE FINAL VERDICT

Revital U have not necessarily made a terrible product.

Trust me… I’ve seen worse!

At least Smart Coffee shows potential by containing useful ingredients like Rhodiola Rosea and l-theanine, albeit in too small of a dose to be maximally effective, but like I said, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

However, that doesn’t mean I can give it a great review…

Smart Coffee is grossly over-priced and several key nutrients are critically under-dosed (for this price you’d want them to be bang on!), and then there’s the absolute s**tshow of bogus advice being bandied around by uneducated sales reps looking to cash in on people who are desperate to lose weight.

That’s why it joins the famous “one star club”.

And I’m sure this review will be met with uproar from sales reps “consultants” (sounds less scammy, see?) who claim that Smart Coffee really can help you lose weight by defying human physiology, and that it really can “energize you from within”… so that’s precisely why I cited 24 clinical studies to back up everything I’ve said in this review.

Thanks for reading it.

References:

1. Cook C., et al. Acute caffeine ingestion increases voluntarily chosen resistance training load following limited sleep. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. (2012)
2. Del Coso J., et al. Dose response effects of a caffeine-containing energy drink on muscle performance: a repeated measures design. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. (2012)
3. Mora-Rodríguez R., et al. Caffeine ingestion reverses the circadian rhythm effects on neuromuscular performance in highly resistance-trained men. PLoS One. (2012)
4. Childs E., et al. Subjective, behavioral, and physiological effects of acute caffeine in light, nondependent caffeine users. Psychopharmacology (Berl). (2006)
5. Kim T. W., et al. Caffeine increases sweating sensitivity via changes in sudomotor activity during physical loading. J Med Food. (2011)
6. Hursel R., et al. The effects of green tea on weight loss and weight maintenance: a meta-analysis. Int J Obes (Lond). (2009)
7. Westerterp-Plantenga M.S. Green tea catechins, caffeine and body-weight regulation. Physiol Behav. (2010)
8. Diepvens K., et al. Obesity and thermogenesis related to the consumption of caffeine, ephedrine, capsaicin, and green tea. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. (2007)
9. McCormack, W. P., et al. Caffeine, Energy Drinks, and Strength-Power Performance. Str Con J. (2012)
10. Pittler M. H., et al. Chromium picolinate for reducing body weight: meta-analysis of randomized trials. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. (2003)
11. Attenburrow M. J., et al. Chromium treatment decreases the sensitivity of 5-HT2A receptors. Psychopharmacology (Berl). (2002)
12. Docherty J. P., et al. A double-blind, placebo-controlled, exploratory trial of chromium picolinate in atypical depression: effect on carbohydrate craving. J Psychiatr Pract. (2005)
13. Anton S. D., et al. Effects of chromium picolinate on food intake and satiety. Diabetes Technol Ther. (2008)
14. Howell S., et al. “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. (2017)
15. McGlade E., et al. Improved Attentional Performance Following Citicoline Administration in Healthy Adult Women. Sci Res. (2012)
16. Killgore W. D., et al. Citicoline affects appetite and cortico-limbic responses to images of high-calorie foods. Int J Eat Disord. (2010)
17. Moreno H., et al. Chronic dietary choline supplementation modulates attentional change in adult rats. Behavioral Brain Research. (2013)
18. Haskell C. F., et al The effects of L-theanine, caffeine and their combination on cognition and mood. Biol Psychol. 2008.
19. Heymsfield S.B., et al. Garcinia cambogia (hydroxycitric acid) as a potential antiobesity agent: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA. (1998)
20. Kim J.E., et al. Does Glycine max leaves or Garcinia Cambogia promote weight-loss or lower plasma cholesterol in overweight individuals: a randomized control trial. Nutr J. (2011)
21. Mattes R.D., Bormann L. Effects of (-)-hydroxycitric acid on appetitive variables. Physiol Behav. (2000)
22. Edwards D., et al. Therapeutic Effects and Safety of Rhodiola rosea Extract WS® 1375 in Subjects with Life-stress Symptoms – Results of an Open-label Study. Phytotherapy Research. 2012.
23. Wiegant F. A., et al. Plant adaptogens increase lifespan and stress resistance in C. elegans. Biogerontology. 2009.
24. Spasov A., et al. A double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study of the stimulating and adaptogenic effect of Rhodiola rosea SHR-5 extract on the fatigue of students caused by stress during an examination period with a repeated low-dose regimen. Phytomedicine. 2012.

Who Is Russ Howe PTI?

Russ has been a personal trainer in the UK since 2002, and provided both training advice and full programs on this website since 2011.

His work has been featured in Men’s Fitness magazine, and the content on this website led to him being voted one of the world’s top 50 fat loss coaches by HuffPost.

Russ spends his time coaching men and women inside the legendary Powerhouse Gym, South Shields, and writing training tips for the 114,301 members of his popular free training e-mail (join it below).