Tamarind

The sticky, sour pulp from the pod of Tamarindus indica, a legume tree. A food first: it is the sour note in Worcestershire sauce, in sambar and in pad thai.

Tamarind pulp is sour because it is loaded with tartaric and malic acid, and it carries potassium, sugars and pectin-type fibre. That combination is the usual explanation for centuries of use as a food that keeps things moving, and it is the part demonstrated in rats — at 1.6 to 1.8 grams of pulp extract per kilogram of body weight, which is grams per kilo, in an animal. It has not been shown in humans, and certainly not at 60 mg. In this sachet the osmotic and bulking work is done by 3,000 mg of psyllium, not by the tamarind.

Used traditionally to support regularity and digestive comfort. In BOTTOM LINE it sits as a supporting botanical beside the psyllium.

People who want the traditional digestive botanical in the sachet and understand it is the supporting act. Not for anyone taking aspirin or ibuprofen, not for anyone on glucose-lowering medication without checking first, and not for anyone buying it as a fat burner.

It comes in the BOTTOM LINE sachet, mixed into around 200 ml of water and taken away from meals and away from medication. Drink the whole glass — that is not optional, it is how the psyllium beside it works. The spacing from medication matters more for the tamarind than for anything else in the sachet.

Nothing attributable to the tamarind on its own. Whatever the sachet does for regularity over the first week or two, the psyllium is doing.

A randomised controlled trial at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Int J Prev Med, 2020) gave obese and overweight adults 10 g of tamarind pulp twice daily for six weeks against a control group, with both arms given diet and activity advice. There was no significant between-group difference in body weight, waist circumference, lipid profile, fasting glucose or blood pressure. A 2025 exploratory trial (Food Funct) gave 50 adults living with HIV and raised triglycerides 600 ml of tamarind juice daily for four weeks and reported a triglyceride fall at the higher pulp concentration — a cardiometabolic endpoint in a specific patient group, not a digestive one. Two small crossover pharmacokinetic studies, six healthy volunteers each, found tamarind fruit extract in a meal significantly raised plasma ibuprofen and its metabolites (PMID 14527090), and raised aspirin's peak concentration about 2.8-fold and its exposure about sixfold (PMID 8980919). Laxative activity has been shown in rats given 1.6–1.8 g/kg of fresh pulp aqueous extract and attributed to tartaric, malic and citric acid; a six-month chronic toxicity study in Wistar rats at up to 1,000 mg/kg/day found the pulp water extract well tolerated. A 2026 review of the plant concludes that most of its evidence remains in vitro and in animals, with human clinical data scarce. I found no controlled human trial of tamarind for regularity. Not supported: weight loss, fat burning, detox.