People have been asking me forever to do a Q Sciences review. For all of you, you’re welcome. Sometimes these things take awhile because, and I’m going to be really honest here, I’m just not in the mood to conquer yet another nutrition MLM selling their ‘proprietary Harvard doctor-developed groundbreaking miracle scientific’ weight loss supplements.
*eye roll*
Q Sciences has a weight loss line, which is what I’m going to explore in this post.
As soon as I got to the Q Sciences website, I noticed the ‘opportunity’ tab – a dead giveaway for an MLM. Multi-level marketing companies like to frame their sales as ‘opportunity,’ even though the majority of people who sell MLM products make nothing or next to nothing.
This is a well-documented fact.
Q Sciences Weight Loss
The Q Sciences weight loss line resembles the weight loss lines of most nutrition MLMs. Each company has a gimmick – Thrive has its patches, Plexus has its pink drink, Modere has its Trim diarrhea on a spoon, and Q Sciences…well…Q Sciences is sort of basic.
Except for the spray. Yup, you heard that right. Let’s get right into this.
Q Sciences Q Boost is the company’s weight loss spray. Q Sciences claims that Q Boost ‘supports a healthy metabolism,’ ‘helps control cravings,’ ‘promotes exercise recovery,’ and ‘provides a quick burst of energy.’
Q Boost delivers ‘active ingredients’ sublingually, aka under your tongue. The company believes that this delivery method is more effective than pills. That only counts when the ingredients of the spray are effective in the first place *ahem*
Can a spray (or any supplement, for that matter) control cravings?
And the claim that it can ‘support a healthy metabolism’ – does that mean that a normal, varied diet does NOT support a healthy metabolism?
What IS a healthy metabolism, anyhow?
Read my post everything you need to know about metabolism, here.
I’m ranting a bit here, because the ‘support a healthy metabolism’ line is something I’ve seen in several MLM claims. I believe it’s used instead of ‘boosts metabolism,’ which is a claim that can get companies into trouble with the FTC, since they can’t prove it.
Also: no supplement ‘boosts’ metabolism all that effectively, especially not enough to burn fat or cause weight loss.
Q Boost is pretty standard stuff for a nutrition MLM supplement – B vitamins, garcinia, Q10, carnitine, chromium. You’re supposed to take 8 sprays of Boost 15 minutes before meals in order to ‘suppress appetite’ and ‘support an increased metabolism.’
‘Support.’ Very vague.
The problem? There’s no evidence that any of these ingredients do any of this.
Think about it rationally: how would a spray of B vitamins and a couple of other ingredients work to suppress your appetite?
We get all of these nutrients in a varied diet, and this ‘supports metabolism.’ We don’t need to supplement them.
Nutrients such as carnitine and B vitamins may have an effect only if we’re deficient in them. That’s the case with a lot of vitamins and minerals – you typically only see a positive effect with supplementation if you’re starting from a place of deficiency.
L-carnitine is made by our bodies, and it does play a part in metabolism. But studies have shown that it’s not very effective for weight loss, and taking it won’t boost metabolic rate.
Again, notice that Q Sciences doesn’t make that claim anyhow – they leave it up to interpretation by claiming that L-carnitine ‘is critical for energy formation and an active metabolism.’
They know exactly what they’re doing: the average person will extrapolate that information into ‘L-carnitine boosts metabolism.’
Who wouldn’t want a faster metabolism? Q Sciences likely knows that this will sell product.
The same is true with garcinia. Q Sciences Q Boost spray has garcinia in it, which the company claims ‘contains Hydroxycitric Acid (HCA), which is known to support appetite control.’
Really?
Probably not, according to the research.
I know I say this all the time, but I’m going to say it again: if products like these worked, the diet industry would cease to exist.
Also, it’s disordered AF to use an ‘appetite suppressant.’ The best way to suppress your appetite is with food!! Hunger is a normal bodily cue that should be honored, not ignored.
Just like you’d never ignore the urge to pee, you shouldn’t ignore your hunger. Both are innate messages from your body that it needs something. Hunger cues aren’t going to go away. If you ignore them for the short-term, you’ll still have them in the long-term. You don’t want to wrestle with your hunger for the rest of your life. Please eat.
As far as the rest of the ingredients in Q Boost, B vitamins are readily available in food. There’s very little chance that you need to take more of them.
As an aside, wouldn’t you feel weird spraying this stuff into your mouth in public? Yeesh.
The Q Sciences weight loss line includes a whey protein shake, Q Ultra Lean, that contains digestive enzymes.
A serving of Q Ultra Lean has 120 calories, 20 grams of protein, and is sweetened with sucralose. That’s all fine for a post-workout protein shake, which FYI you don’t need unless your next meal or snack is hours away.
The average person is fine just eating something after their workout, and skipping the protein shake. Some people like protein shakes though, so this one is fine.
But about those digestive enzymes: unless you have a specific issue with your enzymes – such as cystic fibrosis, for example, supplemental digestive enzymes are useless for most people.
I know, they’re in a lot of products. And you’re paying for something that’s probably not doing anything for you.
Next up is Q Science Q Trim. Q Trim is a Q Sciences weight loss product that smushes all sorts of typical MLM weight loss products into one: Q Trim is at once a fat burner, carb blocker, a appetite suppressant.
It’s like a triple whammy! But what’s in Q Trim, and what does the research say about the ingredients?
Like a lot of other ‘carb blockers,’ Q Trim contains white kidney bean extract, otherwise known as phaseolamin. This ingredient, which is not new, has been shown in some studies to cause starch malabsorption. This may lead to weight loss, but that’s not the whole story.
The reason why white kidney bean extract isn’t used more often and isn’t first-line treatment for fat loss is because its effects are highly variable. It sort of works, sometimes.
This 2020 review of studies found that the average weight loss from white kidney bean extract was 2.6 kg.
But many of the studies involved participants taking very high doses of the extract – over 3000mg – and the people who lost the most weight were the ones who ate the most carbs.
Some of the studies in the review were also performed by the companies that make starch blockers. This is always a fact that you want to recognize. Studies done by companies on their products most often result in positive results.
Even if white kidney bean is effective, because most of Q Trim’s ingredients are in a proprietary formula, it’s impossible to know just how much white kidney bean extract you’re actually getting.
Most MLMs use proprietary formulas, and this is the problem with them:
You may be getting far less than the effective dose of the active ingredients.
You may be getting far more than a safe dose of the active ingredients.
Proprietary formulas are a mystery that the company intentionally has you buy into. As a dietitian, I don’t recommend you do that.
The dose of Q Trim is 6 pills a day. Are you going to want to swallow those every day for the rest of your life?
Gulp. No thanks.
Q Trim also contains chromium, garcinia, and green tea extract, which all apparently promote weight loss, fat burning, appetite suppression, healthy blood sugar, and fat breakdown.
It’s funny that even though chromium has never been found to significantly impact blood sugar, cravings, or weight loss, pretty much every nutrition MLM in existence has claims around chromium and these effects.
Rationally speaking, if a supplement like this really worked the way this company says it does, everyone would take it and everyone would be at their happy weight.
So why is nobody really losing weight and keeping it off with MLM fat burners (or any other pill that’s sold by MLMs)?
You got it: because they don’t really work.
It’s a very common occurrence in the diet and wellness sphere: taking a small thread of truth, usually as weak research, and spinning it into claims that make potential buyers feel like they’re getting something effective.
Convincing people that your MLM company has discovered something incredible, that somehow, all of the scientists in the world have missed.
Does that make sense? No. No, it does not.
I guess that when you’ve got nothing else, those are the sorts of tactics you resort to. But the truth is that none of these ingredients are really all that helpful, and they’ve been around for years in hundreds of different weight loss products.
Also: It’s a huge red flag when anyone or any company claims that their product ‘burns fat.’
Q Sciences isn’t the most exciting MLM I’ve ever reviewed. Their product lines are fairly small, and there’s really nothing all that exceptional about them. They’re standard-issue nutrition MLM products with the typical dubious claims of fat burning, increased energy, and appetite/craving suppression.
I don’t recommend using any nutrition MLMs for supplements (unless you find a protein powder that you absolutely love) or for anything nutrition-based.
Here’s why:
Their claims often don’t stand up to current research or basic physiology.
From the fat burning to the appetite suppressing, it seems like nutrition MLMs like to
Their products aren’t superior to anything you’d get at a drugstore.
Their salespeople and ‘coaches’ often go out of their lanes to give nutrition and health advice that they aren’t qualified to give. There’s little to no oversight of what coaches post or say to people. This can be extremely dangerous.
The MLM model of sales targets women, and is a money-loser for most people who are involved.
Q Sciences review in short:
Just say no.