Yerbe maté is used in South America to make tea and soft drinks. Some believe it helps with weight loss. Is there any data?My niece, Lynette, sent me a box of yerbe maté tea. She works at the Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS)/Bronx Zoo, and part of her job is to help organize symposia where researchers discuss the work they do around the world. Since I could not attend the symposium on Tierra Del Fuego, she sent me a box of tea from South America instead. It sat in my cupboard for 2 years until an article on yerbe maté was published in the scientific journal, Obesity. Mice given the tea gained less weight and had improved cholesterol levels. I asked around at work where many of the employees are of Hispanic descent. A male colleague from South America had no idea what I was talking about. I should have known better than to ask a man. So, I asked a lovely patient, a woman from Uruguay. She perked right up. Yes. Woman in Brazil, Argentina and her own country use this tea to lose weight and to lower their cholesterol levels. Well! Now we know the secret to all those beautiful, South American bikini bodies. But, what is the data?
Maté tea and maté soft drinks are popular in South America, where many believe maté “burns fat.” Not surprisingly, the researchers who conducted this study are from 2 universities on Brazil. They looked at the effect of maté tea on weight gain and obesity in mice.

To do this, researchers took 3 groups of young mice. The first group ate “standard” mouse chow and gained a “standard” amount of weight as they matured. The second and third groups were fed a high-fat diet and grew up to be rotund adult mice. However, the high-fat group supplemented with maté tea gained half as much weight as the high-fat group not given maté tea. As an added bonus, their livers contained 30% less fat. (This is good: fat in the liver is bad.)

The researchers also did some experiments looking at the metabolism of the mice given the tea. It seems as though yerbe maté interferes with the metabolism of dietary fat, perhaps in the same way orlistat (brand name, Alli®) does.

So, if you are trying to control your weight, drinking a cup or two of maté tea every day is a possibility. Yerba maté has more anti-oxidants than green tea, and is as high polyphenols as red wine!

Like so many things in life, don’t go overboard. Don’t buy maté extract pills, since we do not know the effect of high doses in the body over time. And, if you are sensitive to caffeine, don’t drink maté late in the day. Some versions of the tea contain a pretty hefty dose of caffeine and may keep you awake at night.

For more general information about yerbe maté, go to the Wikipedia web page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerba_maté. You will also see that there is some concern about cancer and yerbe maté. It might only if the leaves were fire-roasted, or if you drink the tea boiling hot, which would damage the sensitive lining of your throat and esophagus. But, I think it also points out something that many researchers (and I) believe. If you overuse anti-oxidants, they turn into an oxidant. You do more harm than good to your body.

Martins, F, et al. Maté Tea Inhibits In Vitro Pancreatic Lipase Activity and Has Hypolipidemic Effect on High-fat Diet-induced Obese Mice. Obesity (2009) Vol 18 (1)

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