calorie-burning beverage?

I'd heard about Enviga, the new green tea carbonated beverage from Coca-Cola and Nestle. But I'd never actually had the opportunity to try it until I was in Florida on vacation. Leave it to my teenage son, who considers himself an expert on energy drinks, to find it in the cooler of the local 7-11 store.

Enviga says that it "invigorates your metabolism to gently increase calorie burning" by 60-100 calories per day if you drink three cans per day. Each can contains 12 fluid ounces of the lightly carbonated, not-too-sweet green tea beverage with only 5 calories because it's sweetened with aspartame and asulfame K. Each serving contains 100 mg caffeine (about the same as a cup of coffee) and 90 mg of EGCG, the antioxidant in green tea that raises metabolic rate.

So will this stuff work? Will it increase your metabolic rate so that you burn an additional 60-100 calories per day just by drinking carbonated green tea? Maybe. Research studies show that taking 125-500 mg of EGCG per day MAY slightly increase metabolic rate. You get 270 mg EGCG from 3 cans of Enviga.

My take: Enviga isn't as sickly sweet as many beverages. I like green tea, and having it available in a carbonated beverage is a cool idea. If you purchase beverages during the day - bottled water, vitamin waters, cola, iced tea, etc. - then switching to Enviga may be helpful. I wouldn't count on dropping lots of pounds overnight, though. If the only thing you change is drinking Enviga instead of another beverage, it could take 1-2 months to lose a pound. You could do the same thing by walking 20 minutes per day. And THAT will also help protect your heart.

I think I'll stick to water.

Lynn