There’s a new kind of diet pill available that works by basically putting you on a low carb diet, but without forcing you to give up goodies like french fries and pancakes. It’s called a “carb blocker,” and it works by blocking the digestion of the carbohydrates in the food you eat. Seeing as how giving up things is what people generally think of when they think of dieting, and giving up carbs is pretty much what a low carb diet is all about, this little diet pill could be a small wonder.

It’s actually a pretty simple recipe that makes this impressive effect possible. It’s a simple, natural compound that is extracted from white kidney beans called “phaseolamin.” What it does is to interfere with the stomach enzyme that breaks down starches into simple sugars, so that the carbs that you eat are never absorbed into your bloodstream. Of course, if they’re not absorbed, they can never be stored as fat! And if they’re not stored as fat, then you get skinny! It’s a good deal.

As far as diet pills go, phaseolamin has been tested fairly extensively. Remember, this is a natural compound extracted from kidney beans, so there are millenia of epidemiological data to say that small doses are safe. And, from the research that has been done over the last few decades, it appears that larger doses are also perfectly safe. Taking carb blockers appears to be just as safe for you as eating beans.

There is no evidence that carb blockers interfere with the absorption of other nutrients, and it is probably unlikely given that no major nutrients that I know of are ever bound up in the starchy parts of your food. Typically important nutrients are bound to fats and proteins, which you will still be absorbing with no trouble while taking carb blockers. All the same, if you’re going to use carb blockers over a very long period of time it couldn’t hurt to have your doctor check your nutrient levels periodically to make sure that everything is alright.

One last thing you should know is that carb blockers don’t have any effect on the absorption of sugar, so any sweet treats you eat will still interfere with your diet. If you eat a cake, for example, your will still absorb all the sugar from the frosting even though you are blocking out the carbs from the flour.

Finally, carb blockers are not perfect; they don’t block 100% of the carbs you eat. The actual effectiveness appears to be about 60%, which is still pretty good! Let’s take a look at what that means. It means that if you were eating 100 grams of carbohydrate per day, which is pretty low compared to the average American diet but not quite low enough to really be “low carb,” these carb blockers would pull you down to just 40 carbs per day. Forty carbs a day is definitely a very solid low carb diet that would ordinarily be quite restrictive. So you can see that carb blockers are not a total replacement for a low carb diet, but they are fantastic in combination with a restricted-carbohydrate diet.