K3 Spark Mineral is a weight loss supplement sold on Amazon. It’s manufactured by a brand called Zelso Nutrition, and the brand claims that this supplement “promotes ketosis” and can cause the body to “utilize fat for fuel.”
But is ketosis really necessary for weight loss? Are the ingredients in K3 Spark Mineral proven in medical studies to cause weight loss? Does it contain any harmful ingredients? And how do real customers rate it?
In this article we’ll answer all of these questions and more as we review every ingredient in K3 Spark Mineral, share real customer reviews and give our take on whether or not this supplement is likely to cause weight loss.
We’ll start by documenting an ingredient discrepancy on the brand’s Amazon listing that’s a serious consumer safety issue in our opinion.
Different Ingredient Labels
The ingredients label above is shared by a real user of this supplement in an Amazon review (which explains the poor quality).
This ingredient label is entirely different from the ingredient label in one of the K3 Spark Mineral product images.
The above label appears to be the accurate ingredient label given that it’s on a real product shipped to consumers, but this is a serious oversight by Zelso Nutrition and a red flag about the brand’s competency and values in our opinion.
There is no plain-text ingredient list on the products Amazon listing, which is in violation of Amazon’s dietary supplement policy and is again a consumer safety issue.
Consumers deserve to know, and have a right to know, every ingredient in a dietary supplement. We strongly recommend that consumers avoid dietary supplements with unclear ingredients, and we urge Zelso Nutrition to update their Amazon listing to reflect the accurate set of ingredients.
Ingredient Review
For the most part, the ingredients in K3 Spark Mineral are just a blend of foods rather than potent, extracted botanical compounds that are more common in weight loss supplements.
Food ingredients like pumpkin seed, oat bran powder, cayenne pepper and licorice root may be nutritious but we cannot identify any medical studies suggesting they’re effective for weight loss. They’re also included at such a low dose to render them effectively pointless in our opinion.
The total dose of all of the ingredients in K3 Spark Mineral is 500 milligrams (mg), and the average ingredient dose is 45 mg. The first active ingredient is oat bran.
To give a sense of how small a dose of 45 mg of oat bran is, according to the USDA, one single cup of oat bran equals 95,000 mg of oat bran. The oat bran dose in K3 Spark Mineral is 2,100 times less than the amount you’d get from one cup of oat bran.
K3 Spark Mineral contains senna which is a laxative ingredient that we recommend avoiding for health reasons. A medical review published in the LiverTox journal documented that senna can cause liver injury when used in high doses for too long of a period of time. What’s considered a high dose was left undefined.
Cascara sagrada bark has also been shown to cause liver injury as we documented in our review of ZuPOO, another supplement which contains this ingredient.
We cannot identify one single ingredient in K3 Spark Mineral that we consider effective for weight loss, and it contains two ingredients with questionable health effects.
We do not believe that K3 Spark Mineral is likely to be effective for weight loss, and we recommend that consumers avoid this supplement and its manufacturer entirely.
Does K3 Spark Mineral Cause Side Effects?
Based on its ingredients, we consider K3 Spark Mineral somewhat likely to cause side effects. Senna is a laxative ingredient, so this supplement may cause users to experience an uncomfortable urge to use the bathroom, and they may experience diarrhea.
Because K3 Spark Mineral contains two separate ingredients shown in medical research to cause liver injury in some patients, we believe there is a small risk of more serious side effects like liver pain or injury.
K3 Spark Mineral has never been tested in a legitimate clinical trial which would report on side effects and their respective percentages, so all we can do is estimate based on its ingredients.
Real Customer Reviews
K3 Spark Mineral is sold on Amazon which is the most objective resource for real customer reviews in our opinion.
The product has been reviewed over 1,000 times at the time of writing this article, and has an unimpressive average review rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, which is one of the worst average ratings of any weight loss supplement we’ve reviewed on Amazon to date.
The top positive review from a verified purchaser is written by a user named “Marcelo Cordoba” who claims the supplement was effective for weight loss:
“I took them for a month, 1 in the morning 1 at night and i lost 22 pounds…They worked great i had tons of energy…I definitely recommend this product”
The top negative review from a verified purchaser comes from a user named “Kim Adkins” who gave K3 Spark Mineral a 2-star rating, and who is the person that shared the image of the real ingredients that we highlighted above:
“Ingredients shown in the picture are not the ingredients that came in my bottle. Bogus product…Not the ingredients shown on Amazon”
Are “Keto” Weight Loss Supplements Really Necessary?
As we referenced in the intro section to this article, many of the health claims made by Zelso Nutrition about their supplement involve ketosis, which is a metabolic state where the body adapts to burning fat instead of glucose for energy.
We have not come across any convincing medical research suggesting that ketosis is necessary, or optimal, for weight loss. It may be beneficial for patients with certain health conditions like type 2 diabetes, because it can stabilize blood sugar levels, but we consider it to be a red flag about a supplement company’s legitimacy when they make uncited health claims about “keto” helping weight loss.
Weight loss is a simple thermodynamic process. Calories ingested versus calories burned. Whether or not an individual is burning glucose or fat for energy, if they consume fewer calories than they ingest they will lose weight (outside of extremely rare medical conditions).
We recommend that consumers disregard the “keto” claims made about this supplement, because the brand provides zero proof of them.
Our Weight Loss Supplement Recommendations
There are several weight loss supplements with significant clinical backing in terms of both efficacy and safety.
We recommend dietary fiber as a safe and effective weight loss supplement, especially when combined with caloric restriction.
A landmark medical study found that moderate caloric restriction (750 calories per day below baseline) combined with dietary fiber intake (a minimum of 20 grams per day) caused an average weight loss of 16.03 pounds over 6 months. That’s a potential pace of 32 pounds per year of weight loss in overweight individuals simply by adding fiber to a moderately restricted calorie diet.
The fiber supplement we recommend is SuperGut Fiber Mix. It contains a clean and effective formulation: a blend of three different types of unflavored dietary fiber and zero additive ingredients. It can be mixed into liquids or foods. Interested consumers can check out SuperGut fiber at this link to the product page on their website.
We recommend using two fiber mixes per day, which provides 16 grams (g) of total fiber. Diet should provide the remaining fiber necessary to meet the 20 g minimum threshold.
Medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) oil is another dietary supplement which has been shown in clinical trials to cause weight loss.
MCT oil is quickly absorbed by the body and increases metabolic rate, which causes fat loss. A meta-study on MCT oil documented weight loss of 1.12 pounds over 10 weeks. This equates to a potential annualized weight loss of 5.84 pounds with MCT oil supplementation.
We recommend Bulletproof MCT Oil as our top MCT oil product, because it has a clean and effective formulation. The only ingredient is MCT oil derived from coconuts, and the product has no questionable additives. Interested consumers can check out Bulletproof MCT Oil at this link to the product page on their website.
The effective dose range of MCT oil for weight loss (based on the medical review) is 1.7 g to 10 g per day. Bulletproof's MCT oil provides 14 g in one tablespoon, so around two-thirds of one tablespoon should be a maximally-effective dosage.
Where to Buy K3 Spark Mineral
Consumers are often curious about which online retailer has the best prices for a dietary supplement, as prices can often vary.
At the time of writing this article, the only place that consumers appear to be able to purchase K3 Spark Mineral is Amazon. We would typically link to the product listing but we will not in this case as we strongly avoid use of this supplement.
The manufacturer’s website (Zelso Nutrition) is currently down, and the supplement does not appear to be available for sale on Walmart.
