Double Shot, our opinion on a controversial pill

Double Shot is a slimming product offered for sale by Swiss-based Biotula GMBH. It’s a formula of 2 pills (red pill and blue pill) which promises its users a loss of no less than 8 kilos a week, WITHOUT ANY DIET! WITHOUT WORKING OUT! (sic).

So you can see why we’d like to do a little research on a product that makes such promises. We’d really like to know how it works? What effective ingredients make it possible? How does this dual-pill formula work? We went in search of some answers, which we’d like to share with you today…

Double Shot, a double pill for equally enhanced results

Double Shot, as you can see from its official website, comes in 2 bottles of 30 pills each. Each bottle contains a different colored pill:
Pill blue : tracks down, flushes out and eliminates the fat you’ve already accumulated,
pill red : removes up to 90% of the calories you take in!

And that’s all there is to it!

Yes, that’s all the information we get on this website… What about the composition of the pills? How they work? What about dosage? Contraindications and side effects? Scientific studies?…

Unfortunately, all these questions remain unanswered, prompting us to deliver our verdict prematurely at this point in the review: we don’t recommend this pill, and we’ll tell you why.

Double Shot is a product that didn’t pass the TP test

Here are our reflexes when investigating any product:

1. we seek to identify the product’s product ingredients, in order to predict its efficacy or otherwise. Working on the ingredients (origin, scientific evidence, dosages, etc.) enables us to come up with substantiated answers;
2. we scan the web for useful information about the product’s product manufacturer/seller. What about its reputation? Its authenticity? Its integrity? Its responsiveness?
3. we examine the website itself. Official or not? Security of URL, owner, country of origin? Data security? Security of financial transactions? Authenticity of content? Authenticity of images and illustrations?
4. we check the value for money, in relation to product composition and sales promises.

Very important to know :
The authorities responsible for regulating the market for slimming products do not skimp on sanctions when it comes to claims made by manufacturers/sellers. Some claims are strictly forbidden to be displayed on pain of amendment.

For example: on certain products, with certain ingredients, it is forbidden to advertise that product X or ingredient Y burns calories, or makes you lose kilos.

It really isn’t that simple!

What’s not to like about Double Shot

Quite simply, all the points we’ve just mentioned are not answered on Double Shot’s official sales site.

1. The ingredients of Double Shot

There’s no mention of any ingredients in the body of the text! However, on the image of the bottles, it’s hard to distinguish the following phrases:
Blue pill: herbal supplement with chromium.

Red pill: herbal supplement with zinc and vitamin B6.

Which herbs exactly? And what is the pharmacological dosage of the various ingredients?

Important note :
These ingredients are also present in several products already tested on our website (over 300 product reviews), but no manufacturer or seller has ever claimed to lose 8 kilos without sport or diet, using these same ingredients!

It’s only by moving towards a order simulation of a pack, that we come across more detailed information, by clicking on the product in the shopping basket. Here’s the information displayed:
Description
Herbal supplement with chromium – 1 box of 30 capsules
Herbal food supplement with zinc and vitamin B6 – 1 box of 30 capsules
Take 1 green-red capsule and 1 white-blue capsule a day with a full glass of water before breakfast or lunch.
Additional information
Net weight
Red capsules: 10.03 g per box
Blue capsules: 9.69 g per box
Ingredients
Red capsules :
shell (gelatin of bovine origin, colorants: titanium dioxide, iron oxide, indigotine), dried extracts of meadowsweet flowering tops*, green tea leaves** and cherry stems*, fillers: microcrystalline cellulose and maltodextrin, prune powder (carrier: maltodextrin, acidity regulator: citric acid), zinc oxide, emulsifier: magnesium stearate, anti-caking agent: [nano]silica, pyridoxine hydrochloride.
*on maltodextrin base, **contains caffeine (approx. 4.5 mg per day)
Blue capsules :
shell (bovine gelatin, colorants: titanium dioxide, iron oxide, indigotine), acacia fiber, apple pectin powder, guarana seed powder*, chitosan powder (shellfish), dried garcinia fruit peel extract 60% hydroxycitric acid (carrier: maltodextrin, hydroxycitric acid), fillers: microcrystalline cellulose and maltodextrin, emulsifier: magnesium stearate, anti-caking agent: [nano]silica, chloride hexahydrate.
*Contains caffeine (approx. 1.36 mg per day).
Nutritional information :
Red capsules :
dried extract of meadowsweet flowering tops: 60mg
dried extract of green tea leaves: 60mg
dried cherry stem extract: 50mg
prune powder: 20mg
zinc: 8mg 80% V.N.R.***
vitamin B6: 1.16mg 82.8%V.N.R.***
Blue capsules :
acacia fibres: 50mg
apple pectin powder: 50mg
guarana seed powder: 35mg
chitosan powder: 35mg
dry extract of garcinia fruit peel: 35mg
of which 60% hydroxycitric acid: 21mg
chromium: 25mcg 60% V.N.R. ***
*** R.N.V.: Reference Nutritional Values
Distributed by
Pleasure Research Centre, PB 68, 2650 EDEGEM
Warning
Keep out of reach of young children. Do not exceed recommended daily dose. Not recommended for children, adolescents, pregnant and breastfeeding women, or for people with allergies to salicyclic derivatives. Food supplements should be used as part of a healthy lifestyle and not as a substitute for a varied, balanced diet.
Store in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place away from light.

Our opinion on this practice:

It would have been more direct and interesting to put this information on the start page. Why force users to first enter a shopping cart to order, long before they have a complete idea of the product? We don’t like that kind of approach!
What’s more, once on the shopping cart, the line for the gift product is already filled in, at 0 euro of course. It’s a Scientec-Nutrition fat mass calculator. We tried to find this product on the famous brand’s official website: nothing!

2. The manufacturer or seller of Double Shot

By the way, this isn’t the first time we’ve made the acquaintance of this company. It’s also behind another product we’ve already reviewed: KeikoSlim, a product that promises a loss of 6 to 8 kilos in a week. A family resemblance?

When we tested KeikoSlim, we discovered that it was a controversial product. In fact, it has been singled out by FACUA, a Spanish consumer protection organization, which has called for KeikoSlim to be banned from sale in Spain and Europe on the grounds that it contains thyroid and sex hormones.

To find out more, read on: Keikoslim, or how to get a geisha waist in 4 weeks!
Another thing, back in March 2018, a reader asked us about Double Shot and about a certain Dr. Jonathan Brent. At the time, we didn’t have a test of Double Shot, but a little preliminary investigation by our team had found some answers that say a few things about this product!

A official press release from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the USA mentions, in July 2014, a fine of US$500,000 imposed on the Quebec-based company “Freedom Center Against Obesity”, for fraudulent and misleading advertising during a sales campaign in the USA for a “slimming” product named: Double Shot!

The FTC even refunded some 11,500 checks (worth a total of $464,000) to customers who had fallen victim to fraudulent campaigns to sell the product in the USA. A FTC press release explains the case.

Here are two other sources reporting on this fraud: Source 1, Source 2.

3. The Double Shot website

This website, the product’s official showcase, seems to us to contain a number of inconsistencies that don’t represent much sign of “trust”.

The images

The photo of Dr. Jonathan Brent and that of Marisa P. (the lady in the example), come straight out of Stock image banks on the web.
In web marketing, it’s not forbidden to use stock photos of people to illustrate statements or testimonials. However, it is customary and ethical to clearly state somewhere on the site in question that the image is used for illustration purposes.

On the Double Shot site, everything suggests that the photo of the man in the white coat refers to Doctor Jonathan Brent… but this is not the case.

NOTE: Double Shot’s product name has been associated with more than one doctor’s name: Dr. Jonathan Brent, Dr. Joseph Breechman, and Prof. Michel Julliard! Clearly, when faced with such dubious information, the product in question cannot be trusted.

The same is true of the photo of the strong young lady who claims to be Marissa. We did an image search on Google and found the same photo all over the place. Once again, the manufacturer or seller of Double Shot does not specify that the photo is not genuine.

The secure URL

Score one for the website! Its URL does indeed have HTTPS protocol access. This generally means that financial transactions made through this site are protected. In our opinion, this is due to the presence of PayPal as a payment method in the shopping cart. As we all know, PayPal doesn’t allow its API to be easily linked to any site.

3. Value for money

The first Double Shot package costs 44.00 euros. These are 2 bottles of 30 pills each.

When we go back to the list of ingredients in this product, we find many well-known ingredients, especially in powder or pure extract form. From experience, we know that the powder extraction process for slimming ingredients is a fairly costly operation. The end justifies the means: to retain all the active ingredients, you need cutting-edge technology. By way of example, freeze-drying is one of those processes that costs a lot, but delivers just the right results.

So many pills, with so many components, at such a price… we’re still reluctant to believe it.

Why are we wary of such a product?

For us, it’s clear! Once we come across obvious inconsistencies in the information gathered on the web, we can’t recommend a given product.

When we can’t clearly identify the manufacturer behind a pill, we have reservations about the authenticity of the product, and therefore the authenticity and integrity of its claims.

Finally, and most importantly for us, when we find official documents attesting to the reputation of a particular manufacturer or seller, our verdict is equally direct and clear: we do not endorse the product.
Double Shot fits perfectly into this logic, following our investigation. See for yourself!