No, cucumber, ginger, lemon and water mix won’t make your tummy flat

A mixture of cucumber, ginger, lemon and water will give you a “flat tummy in a few days”, claims a message posted on Facebook.

It describes how to prepare and take the mixture, ending with: “Repeat this for 6 day or more and thank me as soon as possible.”

The Facebook page, simply named “The Professor”, is run from Nigeria and described as the “home of traditional spiritual solutions and herbal mixture therapy”. It has published several unverified health cures and treatments.

But can taking this mixture make your tummy flat in just a few days? We checked.

Science doesn’t support remedy – see doctor instead

Abdominal fat, or increased belly fat around the waistline, can be due to age, eating too many calories, less physical activity or little to no exercise at all.

We asked Andrew Uloko, a professor of medicine in the faculty of clinical sciences at Nigeria’s Bayero University, whether the remedy described in the message would flatten the stomach.

Uloko said that while the ingredients had beneficial nutrients, there was no evidence that a mixture of them would have that effect.

“Abdominal fat is not healthy, because it is a type of abnormal fat distribution that increases the risk of the individual to a lot of noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol problems, and heart diseases,” he said.

He added that there were time-tested methods for reducing abdominal fat. These include a healthy lifestyle, eating healthy food, regular physical activity, cutting down on fatty foods and calorie-dense meals, reducing meals containing sugar to the barest minimum and cutting down on animal fat as much as possible.

Uloko said it would be best to consult a qualified doctor on how to reduce belly fat.