Sometimes something is too good to be true. As one Quick Fix Against one of the greatest health problems of our time: overweight. In 2024 scientists from Lebanon seemed to have discovered a home-garden-and-kitchen remedy that the kilos are flying off.
If you pull the wallet, you will come a long way with a few spraying Ozempic. But if you don’t have that money, you can also simply mix a little apple cider vinegar through your glass of water every morning – a sour liquid that arises by having apples ferment.
Success guaranteed, the Double -blind, randomized study published last year in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health. 120 Obese youth from Lebanon participated in the study. They received a placebo or 5, 10 or 15 milliliters of apple cider vinegar mixed by their glass of water for 12 weeks. They drank that on an empty stomach for breakfast. After 0, 4, 8 and 12 weeks, their glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides (blood fats) were noted via a tube of blood, the participants were weighed and their abdominal circumference was measured.
The results were groundbreaking: everyone who drank apple cider vinegar dropped out. And the more apple cider vinegar there was in their water, the more extreme the weight loss. The researchers gave all kinds of possible explanations for that. Apple cider vinegar would stop the storage of fat in the body, suppress hunger or increase energy burning.
Whatever the case, it turned out to be too good to be true, because the study was withdrawn because the results were not reliable. That feature BMJ known on Wednesday.
Unproducted
It started in the comments section under the article. In the months after publication, fellow researchers already went wild on the design of the study. “The statistical analysis seems to be inadequate,” said a scientist who also pointed out that no participant had detailed data included in the study. Nobody could reproduce the research – a proven method to check whether a study has been properly set up and carried out. An computer scientist herself was counting. He let go of a number of statistical tests on the data that, according to colleagues, should have been used from the field. The conclusion: No significant results.
The integrity committee of BMJ went to work and came to the same conclusions: the investigation could not be repeated in a thorough way, the dataset was full of ‘irregularities’ and the specific data of the 120 participants ‘require further independent investigation’.
“No matter how tempting it is to point out readers of this simple and apparently effective way of losing weight,” wrote one of the members of the integrity committee, “the results of this study are unreliable and one should no longer refer to it.”
The authors blame the errors because different versions of the research were changed and things were wrong in exporting the data. They nevertheless agree with the decision of BMJ.
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