Calcium pyruvate has gotten a lot of attention lately, being touted as a fat blaster extraordinaire by Dr. Oz and by other medical and health professionals. Supposedly there has been research pointing to calcium pyruvate’s effectiveness in mobilizing storage fat as a fuel source. The general recommendation is to take 1000 milligrams before each meal for a period of one week to jump start the body’s utilization of fat.

Here’s the big problem with such a claim. It’s completely bogus. In order to reap the fat blasting benefits of calcium pyruvate, you would need to consume 30 grams per day. That’s a pretty massive dose, and pretty expensive to boot. It would be a rare person indeed who would be willing to spend the serious coin necessary and take the massive amounts of capsules each day just to gain such a fat torching benefit. I know I wouldn’t do it. Calcium pyruvate is also very poorly absorbed, so when you load your body with high doses, you can expect to spend a LOT of time in the restroom dealing with a very uncomfortable aftermath. Also, if you are crapping out most of the supplement, you are just wasting money and wreaking havoc on your digestive tract to boot.

The main reason why calcium pyruvate is a recent hot topic is because Dr. Oz made a big deal about it, proving that media hype can make just about ANY supplement appealing because people want to believe in anything that is offering promise as a magic weight loss pill. Magic wand in a supplement? I don’t think so. I recently was told by a client that she was going to begin taking this supplement, despite my very unenthusiastic review of it. All I can do in such a situation is throw my hands up and say, “Do what you want, but I’m not recommending or endorsing this.”

The take home lesson here is don’t believe the hype when a new supplement comes on the horizon, especially one that promises to zap storage fat.