Tespo claims to rid of “unnecessary ingredients” and deliver “a better way to take, absorb, and manage your daily vitamin routine.” While this sounds great, the lack of research out there is upsetting. We dove into the ingredients and side effects to get a better understanding of how this product works.
To get to the bottom of the conflicting research, our team then scoured the internet for medical studies, trials, and information on the formula. There must be something supporting this new vitamin supplement. Finally, we took everything we found and shortened it to bring you the hard truth on this vitamin company.
What is Tespo?
To begin with, Tespo is a vitamin and supplement company, although, right now if you search for this name you’ll see the word “dispenser” more than you would “supplement.”
That’s because everything else seems to be taking a backseat to their claim to fame: The Tespo Dispenser.
This dispenser turns powdered nutrients into liquid vitamins – all by a push of a button. Ingredients found in the multivitamins include:
- Vitamin A
- Green Tea extract
- Taurine
- L-Theanine
- Thiamine (vitamin B)
- Organic Stevia extract
Does Tespo work?
Advances in Nutrition — “Specifically, thiamine deficiency was found in 15.5–29% of obese patients seeking bariatric surgery. It can present with vague signs and symptoms and is often overlooked in patients without alcohol use disorders.”
Proceeding of the Japan Academy Physical and Biological Sciences — “Many of the beneficial effects of green tea are related to the activities of (−)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), a major component of green tea catechins.”
Molecular Vision — “Taurine serves a wide variety of functions in the central nervous system, from development to cytoprotection, and taurine deficiency is associated with cardiomyopathy, renal dysfunction, developmental abnormalities, and severe damage to retinal neurons.”
Tespo Products
Let’s take a minute to look at some of what this company is offering. Aside from the dispenser, they sell a variety of vitamins – already packaged and ready to go. If the product is acting like a Keurig, the vitamin packs would be like the coffee pods. That’s exactly what these are called
- Joint health
- Immune system
- Bone health
- Eye and heart health
- Skin hydration
- Monthly cost – $30
L-Theanine
L-Theanine is thought to modulate aspects of brain function, so the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition set out to find some evidence. They wrote that “L-theanine, at realistic dietary levels, has a significant effect on the general state of mental alertness or arousal. Furthermore, alpha activity is known to play an important role in critical aspects o attention, and further research is therefore focused on understanding the effect of L-theanine on attentional processes.”
Also called vitamin B, thiamine is found in foods like cereal grains, yeast, nuts, beans, and meat, and is typically used with other B vitamins. Thiamine is known to boost the immune system and has been used to treat digestive issues, ongoing diarrhea, and poor appetite, according to MedlinePlus.
Tespo Benefits
Tespo claims quite a bit of benefit, so we wanted to hover over them for a moment and highlight some of the key promises of this vitamin company. According to the company, liquid vitamins are easier to digest than solids. They point out that liquid vitamins are rare, but do exists – at a price. This company claims to offer the benefits of a liquid, for a fraction of the price.
They are right about one thing – other supplements do cost more and provide less, so the question is: Is this a supplement company that provides benefits that are typically more expensive for a lower cost, or are they lying to us?
In addition to that, we couldn’t find a single stitch of evidence linking this product (or the formulas) to any of the claimed benefits. It’s not posted anywhere on the site and digging through reviews and studies proved to be a waste of time.
Final Words
The Daily Beast quoted Pieter Cohen, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, saying that “If you’re eating heavily processed or farm-to-table food, you don’t need a multivitamin. No healthy American needs to supplement their diet with a multivitamin,” going on to say that, “Products like this are part of a sleek advertising push to encourage people who don’t need multivitamins to join the vitamin craze. Spending more time at home cooking your own real food is the best way to go.”