Does Ceylon Cinnamon Help With Weight Loss?

Does cinnamon help you lose weight, and does Ceylon cinnamon do it better than the supermarket kind?

Two reviews of the research found a small effect, about a kilogram or less. A 2025 trial of Ceylon cinnamon itself found a small drop that was not statistically significant. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health still says it is unclear whether cinnamon helps with weight loss at all.

We grow and sell cinnamon, so a clear yes would suit our business. We would rather tell you what the research actually says.

This is general information and not medical advice. Cinnamon is not a weight loss treatment. If you are managing your weight, are pregnant, or take any medication, talk to your doctor before adding cinnamon supplements.

What the reviews found

In 2020 a review in Clinical Nutrition pooled 12 trials with 786 people. On average, the people given cinnamon ended about a kilogram lighter than the control groups, with waists about 2.4 centimetres smaller (Mousavi et al. 2020). Its authors concluded that cinnamon could be recommended as a weight-reducing supplement.

In 2022 a later review brought seven earlier reviews together (Keramati et al. 2022). It found a smaller difference in weight, about two thirds of a kilogram. The change in waist size was not statistically significant.

So the reviews point the same way, and the difference they found is small. Both describe cinnamon given as a supplement, which is not the same thing as a spoon of cinnamon through your porridge.

What about Ceylon cinnamon itself?

Neither review’s summary separates Ceylon cinnamon from other kinds. The clearest trial we found of Ceylon cinnamon and weight was published in 2025. It gave 140 people with type 2 diabetes either capsules of Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, or a placebo for 90 days (Lira Neto et al. 2025).

The cinnamon group lost 0.8 kg on average. The trial found that change was not statistically significant, and the same was true of waist and hip size.

That is one trial, in people with diabetes. It does not settle anything either way. It does mean we cannot tell you Ceylon cinnamon helps with weight, and we will not.

Why NCCIH is not convinced

NCCIH puts it plainly. “It’s unclear whether cinnamon supplementation is helpful for diabetes or weight loss.” It adds that many studies are hard to interpret “because it’s often unclear which species or part of the cinnamon plant was tested” (NCCIH).

That second point matters to us. Ceylon cinnamon and cassia are different species with different chemistry. When a trial does not name its cinnamon, nobody can tell you whether the result carries over to Ceylon cinnamon.

And cinnamon water?

In Google’s search data, cinnamon water is searched several times more often than the phrase cinnamon weight loss. On 29 September 2026 we searched PubMed for trials of cinnamon water and weight. We found none in people. The two results were a study in rats and a study of cells in a dish.

The closest human trial we found used cinnamon tea, and it measured blood sugar after a sugary drink rather than weight. Its tea was made from Cinnamomum burmannii (Bernardo et al. 2015), a different species from Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum.

So cinnamon water is a drink, and it can be a very nice one. We would not drink it expecting to lose weight.

If cinnamon becomes an everyday habit

This part is about what is in the jar rather than the waistline. Most supermarket cinnamon is cassia, and NCCIH notes that “some cassia cinnamon products contain high levels of coumarin”. Germany’s food safety institute, BfR, works out that a 60 kg adult reaches the tolerable daily intake of coumarin at about 2 g a day of cassia high in coumarin (BfR).

Of Ceylon cinnamon, NCCIH says it “may contain a trace amount of coumarin”. So if cinnamon is part of your daily routine, Ceylon cinnamon is the sensible one to use. We go into this properly in the coumarin question.

At home, a spoon of powder goes through porridge or yoghurt, and a stick goes into the rice while it cooks. We do it because the food tastes better, not for our weight.

If you came here from Thomas DeLauer’s video on belly fat and GLP-1, we went through that claim in its own article. For the blood sugar research, see cinnamon and blood sugar.

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Sources: Mousavi et al. 2020, Clinical Nutrition - Keramati et al. 2022, Journal of Food Biochemistry - Lira Neto et al. 2025, Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem - Bernardo et al. 2015, Journal of Diabetes Research - NCCIH: Cinnamon - BfR: coumarin in cinnamon