The study promoting apple cider vinegar for weight loss was a complete berth

Anyone who has tried to lose weight knows that there is no shortage of fashionable products or foods accelerating supposedly accelerate your slimming. One of these announced foods, apple cider vinegar will now have less credibility behind it, because a clinical trial pretending to show that its weight loss success has just been removed by the publisher.

BMJ Group announced the retraction of the study this afternoon. Originally published last year, the little try allegedly showed that people who drank apple cider vinegar daily lost more weight than checks over a period of three months. The publisher has cited several factors, including incredible data, such as reasons to draw the study.

“However, it is a question of alerting the readers of an ostensibly simple and apparently useful weight loss assistance, at present, the results of the study are not reliable, and journalists and others should no longer reference or use the results of this study in any future report,” said Helen Macdonald, Publication Ethics and Content Integrrity Editor of BMJ Group.

Too beautiful to be true

Lebanon researchers conducted the study, published for the first time in March 2024 in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health. The trial would have involved 120 adolescents and young overweight and obese adults. Volunteers were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: three groups were invited to drink different doses of apple cider vinegar (diluted in the water) once a day in the morning, while the fourth was invited to drink a placebo liquid.

The trial would have worked for 12 weeks and, at the end of the study, the researchers said that people drinking apple cider vinegar lost much more weight than those of the placebo. On average, people taking apple cider vinegar would have lost between 13 and 17 pounds, and those who drank the most apple cider vinegar also tended to lose more weight than other groups – a potential sign that the ingredient really improved the chances of weight loss of people (in medicine, this is called a dose -response effect). People with apple cider vinegar have also improved their blood sugar levels, triglycerides and cholesterol.

It was not long long before external scientists started to raise red flags on the statistical analysis which underlie the results of the study. The BMJ group initially found it good to publish some of these criticisms alongside the study itself, a common practice in science. But after a more in -depth examination, they determined that it was not a simple disagreement on certain figures here and there, but something more worrying. They enlisted statisticians to examine raw data and to try to reproduce the results of the study of this data.

In the end, external experts were unable to reproduce the analyzes of the authors; In addition, they identified other summary things. They determined that the data contained “incredible values” and found potential evidence that the participants were not really randomized in their group as claimed. The authors also did not proactively register their test before carrying out them – a common precaution against the subsequent data adjustments required by the BMJ group – and did not explain their sufficiently depth methods, determined the editor.

The study authors, according to the BMJ, argue that statistical oddities were only honest errors in the way they presented, exported or calculated the data. But they nevertheless agree with the publisher’s decision to withdraw the work.

Gizmodo contacted the authors of the study to comment but did not receive an answer at the time of publication.

The point of view of weight loss

Even before this retraction, however, there was really not much evidence suggesting that the apple cider vinegar – or a single food, moreover – can overeat your attempt at weight loss.

Yes, people can certainly lose weight, even a lot, thanks to healthy changes in their diet and lifestyle. The much more difficult part is to maintain this weight loss for a sustained period, which is why many, otherwise most people end up finding the weight. New options like GLP-1 therapies have facilitated the treatment of obesity, although these are not miracles without drawbacks.

Unfortunately, the long -term successful weight loss remains a challenge, and no amount of apple cider vinegar will change this reality.