Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello SB Community!

Your time is greatly appreciated.

My daughter has designed an awesome project where she compares the effectiveness of porcine pancreatin lipase, a commercial (green tea) fat burner, and a natural concoction (apple cider vinegar, cayenne and honey) that is known for its fat burning properties.

Questions:
1. Will corn oil (plant) and melted lard (animal fat) have pretty much the same results?
2. How best do you think we should test for the breakdown of the fat (glycerol and fatty acids): by weighing the separated contents or by pH?
3. How long do you think we should leave the preparation before we can see testable results.

This seemed less ambitious when we started...

Hi,

Your project idea is a good one but if I am reading your proposal correctly, you are planning to test the effects of ‘fat burners’ on fat directly. If you read about the compounds in green tea, for example, you will find that they can stimulate the body’s metabolism to burn fat or reduce fat deposition: http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/featu ... -green-tea

Green tea extract does not ‘burn’ fat by itself; it stimulates your body to burn it faster or more effectively. So, adding green tea extract to fat would have no effect.

An enzyme like lipase can break down fat in the test tube but you cannot eat lipase and have it break down your body’s fat. The lipase would be digested before it got to your adipose tissue. The body has its own lipase enzymes that are involved in fat metabolism, but these are synthesized within cells and are closely regulated.

The way compounds like green tea extract or diet drugs are tested is by giving them to humans or animals and measuring their effects on weight loss. In humans, however, the weight-loss compounds are always combined with a program for eating less and exercising more.

So, if you are interested in testing ‘fat burners’ you will have to find out from your school or science fair coordinator whether you can use volunteers as subjects. Maybe you could find people who are using fat burners and have them keep a weight-loss diary and fill out a quality of life questionnaire after a period of weeks to assess the effectiveness. If you wanted to administer specific compound to human subjects you would get into a complicated area requiring approval by an institutional review board, consent forms and medical privacy plans. Giving questionnaires to people who are already using a product should be much easier provided your school allows using human volunteers in science projects https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ects.shtml

Let us know what you want to do and we will try to assist you in developing a workable project.

Sybee