Common cultivated mushroom key to fat-trapping ingredient new to U.S. market
Canadian raw materials supplier CK Ingredients has expanded its relationship with Spanish nutraceutical company Tradichem, which developed H20Slim, offering U.S. manufacturers the ingredient for calorie control.
“There's so much chatter about weight management in our culture,” said Colleen Madden, vice president of innovation at CK Ingredients. “I call it the 'Ozempic era' because it's completely changed the way that we think about glucose management.”
She added that despite the proliferation of GLP-1 agonists, she likes that nutraceutical companies can focus on more easy-to-understand physical mechanisms behind natural weight management solutions, such as H20Slim.
“This is something completely different that can get [consumers] to a more similar space,” Madden said.
How it works
Tradichem isolated the polysaccharides in Agaricus bisporus, the mushroom used in H20Slim, which have lipid-trapping properties when in contact with water. According to Tradichem, this process creates a cationic polymer which is harmless to the body and capable of trapping 80% of consumed fat through physical and electrostatic forces, eliminating the fat through bodily functions.
A 12-week double-blind study published in the American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research in 2020 demonstrated that “the water-soluble polysaccharides isolated from the common mushroom do have a direct impact on weight loss and waist circumference.”
The researchers also wrote that an analysis of total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol “seems to reveal that the mechanism previously suggested about the fat trapping properties of the water-soluble polysaccharides is linked to the weight loss effect.”
Consumers should wait five minutes prior to ingesting an H20Slim product before eating a meal, though Madden cautioned that people should consider using these products on “bad” dietary fats and not “good” ones.
“There are many aspects that make H2OSlim a unique ingredient,” said José Ángel Marañón, PhD, and executive vice president of Tradichem. “The soil for the harvest is one of the key ones.”
Marañón explained that the naturally high concentration of water-soluble polysaccharides is strongly related to the ground where Agaricus bisporus exists in Europe.
U.S. Consumers
Launched in Europe in 2018, H20Slim expanded to the Asian market during COVID-19 and is sold in China, Taiwan and Thailand, Marañón said.
By 2020, Tradichem had developed its proprietary blends to include H2OSlim Forte, H20Slim Carb, H20Slim Digest and H20Slim Detox to help in everything from blocking excessive carbs to regulating satiation.
“Our expectations for the U.S. market surpass the European one,” Marañón said. “We believe that market is able to better understand a science-based ingredient as H20Slim.”
Source: American Journal of Biomedical Science and Research
doi: 10.34297/AJBSR.2020.07.001205
"H2Oslim, the water-soluble polysaccharides from Agaricus bisporus, significantly reduces body weight and improves lipid parameters in overweight humans in a randomized double-blind vs placebo study"
Authors: Gemma Clemente-Ramos et al.
