Clusiaceae
Garcinia gummi-gutta
Garcinia cambogia · Malabar tamarind · Kudam puli
- Part used
- fruit
- Native range
- The Western Ghats of southern India and parts of Southeast Asia
- Morphology
- An evergreen tree to twenty metres bearing a small yellow to reddish fruit with deep vertical lobes, resembling a small ridged pumpkin. The dried rind is used.
- Also known as
- Garcinia cambogia
What is in it
Evidence
One of the most heavily marketed weight-loss supplements in the world and one of the most thoroughly negative literatures in this collection. Meta-analyses find weight change of well under a kilogram against placebo, of no clinical relevance, and the better trials find nothing.
Safety
A leading identified cause of herb-induced liver injury in Western case series, including cases of acute liver failure requiring transplant and deaths. The US Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network has ranked it among the most frequently implicated single ingredients. Serotonin syndrome is reported in combination with serotonergic drugs. Mania has been reported.
Interactions: Serotonin syndrome risk with SSRIs and other serotonergic drugs; Additive liver risk; May lower blood glucose
Regulatory: Permitted as a listed ingredient in Australia. Multiple regulators including the FDA have issued liver injury warnings.
How the traditions classify it
Three systems, rating the same plant. Where they disagree, none of them is correcting the others — they are separate frameworks that arrived at their categories independently.
Historical use
A culinary souring agent in Kerala and Sri Lanka, used in curries and in fish preservation. It has no significant traditional use for weight loss, which is the only thing it is now sold for.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.
Worth knowing
Garcinia is the clearest case in this collection of a marketing category creating a hazard out of a condiment.
In Kerala it is a souring agent for fish curry with a long culinary history and no medicinal reputation to speak of. The weight-loss claim originates in laboratory work on hydroxycitric acid and an inhibited enzyme, was amplified by American television, and produced a global supplement market.
The trials found essentially nothing. The liver injury reports have kept arriving — the US Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network ranks it among the most frequently implicated single supplement ingredients, with cases of acute liver failure and transplant.
So the pattern runs the opposite way to most entries here. This is not a traditional medicine that turned out to be risky; it is a food that was turned into a medicine by marketing, and then turned out to be risky.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.