Does apple cider vinegar really work for weight loss? What diet experts say – MyCyberBase

A new research study that appeared to provide a scientific basis for Victoria Beckham’s apple cider vinegar approach to keeping slim was greeted with excitement this week.

The Spice Girl has spoken of how she has a couple of spoonfuls of the vinegar each morning and has claimed it helps her to stay in shape.

And the new study suggested there could be something in this.

It reported that people who drank between a teaspoon (5 millilitres) and a tablespoon (15 millilitres) of apple cider vinegar a day – diluted in a glass of water – lost around 6 kilograms in 12 weeks.

This compared to less than 1kg of weight loss among the placebo group.

Lead research author Rony Abou-Khalil, from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik in Lebanon, said the results suggested that apple cider vinegar “could be a promising anti-obesity supplement that does not produce any side effects”.

But scientists not involved in the research say that while the results certainly warrant further investigation, the study is too flawed to draw any firm conclusions – urging considerable caution with the results.

To start with, they question the researchers’ conclusion that the weight loss was entirely due to vinegar consumption, arguing that the results could have been skewed in all sorts of ways.

“There are some substantial problems in this study, which would make the conclusions drawn questionable,” said Helen Truby, professor of nutrition and dietetics at The University of Queensland.

One of the biggest issues is that the study – carried out in Lebanon and published in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health – was very small, only including 120 people.

Furthermore, it only looked at people aged between 12 and 25, many of whom were still growing. This makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions, not only about the effects of the vinegar on some of those individuals but also about society as a whole, scientists say.

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Another difficulty of the research is that seven per cent of the participants were already on a diet when the trial started – which could have had a large influence on their results as they may have already been losing weight.

This problem is compounded by the fact that lifestyle and diet – and any changes to them – were not disclosed.

Meanwhile, their use of any weight loss medications was not included in the study.

Daisy Coyle, a Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, in London, said: “One missing piece from this study is how participants’ diets influenced the outcomes.

“While participants kept diet diaries, specific details on calorie and/or macronutrient intake were not reported in the study. Ideally, all outcomes would have accounted for dietary intakes, especially given that 7 per cent of participants were on a diet at the beginning.

“This study was also small, short in duration and only focused on young and overweight individuals. We can’t extrapolate the findings to the broader population or draw conclusions about the long-term efficacy of apple cider vinegar.

“Also while included participants reported no side effects in the short term, they did exclude individuals who experienced heartburn from the vinegar. It is important to consider potential longer-term side effects of apple cider vinegar, such as the impact of its acidic nature on dental health.”

Rosemary Stanton, a Senior Visiting Fellow in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of New South Wales, said: “Some people in the study were as young as 12. Some may have still been growing and this would affect their weight.

“We are also told that ‘subjects consumed their normal diets throughout the study. The contents of daily meals and snacks were recorded in a diet diary’. But no details are given so we have no idea whether some may have been consuming less – or changed the amount they were eating during the study,” she said.

In fact the BMJ, which published the research, was so mindful of the potential of this research to be given more weight than it deserved that it included a cautionary quote in its press announcement of the study.

“Whilst in this study design the intervention has demonstrated feasibility and effectiveness serving to encourage further trials designed to assess scalability and wider applications, at this stage caution should be exercised regarding the generalisability of the conclusions drawn on the independent effects of apple cider vinegar on the outcomes observed,” said Shane McAuliffe, Senior Visiting Academic Associate at NNEdPro Global Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health in Cambridge, which co-owns BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health with BMJ.

“Further research in this area would need to include detailed reporting of dietary recall or nutritional intake to explain any potential confounders and future explanatory trials would further elucidate mechanisms of impact on biochemical markers (lipids and blood glucose) in addition to weight loss.”

Or, to put it another way: “The results reported here are remarkable but would need to be reproduced in a more rigorously controlled environment before any confidence could be placed in their conclusions,” said Professor Truby.

“It would be wonderful if a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar caused substantial weight loss, but with the complexity of obesity and its management that we grapple with, sometimes, if something seems too good to be true, it often is,” she said.

All of which is to say that it’s still far from clear how effective apple cider vinegar is for weight loss.

There have been a handful of studies in humans with vinegar consumption leading to weight loss, reduced body fat and decreased waist measurements.

One theory is that the vinegar slows down the speed at which the stomach empties, making people feel fuller for longer. It might also potentially affect people’s metabolism, for example by acting on enzymes involved in digestion.

But these studies are also very small. As the new BMJ study that is the subject of this article points out: “Unfortunately, the sample sizes and durations of these studies were limited, necessitating larger and longer-term studies for more robust conclusions.”

Claim: Apple cider vinegar can help with weight loss
Conclusion: More research is needed to support the claim