Will the green tea in MetaBuz™ damage my liver - I read an ABC report suggesting that too much green tea can harm the liver.

Here is the ABC report http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-14/man-faced-death-after-taking-popular-weight-loss-product/7162378

FULL QUESTION: "Hi John, I love your product –MetaBuz™ and have been having it daily since October last year and .... .......... . .. ............

I hate to ask this question but the ABC did a story on a man than took a weight loss product and it resulted in liver failure and him having a transplant.

In the article it mainly points the blame to the supplement garcinia cambogia but if you read the full story it also includes Green Tea Extract.

In your listed  ingredients it states just Green Tea and I assume in a small amount.   I just wanted to check as feeling nervous and sorry to ask as I realise you are a scientist and I am sure everything is OK."

ANSWER:  This is a great question. Always do your own research and obtain multiple viewpoints. Never trust anyone with your health-own it and take care  with anything that goes into your body. A good scientific website can be googled at PUBMED.

The ABC media report is balanced and starts with shocking photos of a very sick young man. The last part of the article contains several paragraphs which bring some balance to these images. Read the article in full, right to the end, then do some more of your own independent research.

The product in this article has a stamp that says AUST L....  bottom right of the package. This means that it is a therapeutic listed good not a food.

This article is a little misleading as it confuses food and a TGA listed product. "Food" means that a product is in a form traditionally known to man as an edible food. "TGA listed product" means that the owner of the product is making therapeutic claims and the product usually has been altered from that of a food. The green tea extract in this reported product is just that - an altered form of green tea. The green tea extract is a substance that has been extracted by a process either chemical, physical, heat or some other method to extract and in this case concentrate a part of the original green tea plant.

So ask this question- does the properties or appearance of petrol that you put in your car, bear any resemblance to the crude oil that flows from the ground? Clearly, no!

The same might be true of a substance extracted, concentrated and purified from any plant or food- it may bear little resemblance to the food that it came from.

MetaBuz™ is a food made from traditional foods without extraction, concentration or purification. It is labelled under the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. The major ingredients are named first and at the time of writing, turmeric, cinnamon (Ceylon type) and fennel make up over 80% of the ingredients. There is no evidence that green tea is harmful at the levels in MetaBuz™. We have had no reports of adverse effects other than some people are very sensitive to caffeine of any sort.