Eva Buto

Managing Editor

This post was originally published on September 24.

The British Medical Journal recently retracted their famous study linking apple cider vinegar with weight loss.

The study itself, titled Apple cider vinegar for weight management in Lebanese adolescents and young adults with overweight and obesity: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, followed 46 men and 74 women for twelve weeks. In their press release, the authors wrote that “at daily quantities of 5 ml, average weight fell from 79 kg to 74 kg, at 10 ml this reduced from 79 kg to 72 kg, and at 15 ml, average weight dropped from 77 kg to just over 70 kg.” This directly linked apple cider vinegar consumption with an increase in weight loss. The participants quoted lower blood serum glucose, triglycerides and cholesterol, as well as increased satiety. The clinical trial, which was published in March 2024, and quickly garnered worldwide attention. According to the BMJ’s website analytics, the article was cited by 187 news outlets and highlighted by 338 platforms.

The experiment itself was retracted due to flaws in its design plan. Statisticians could not recreate the findings of the study upon attempting to do so. Multiple errors in data analysis and extrapolation were also found. It is currently unpublished on the BMJ website: searching it up online leads to a notice that it was retracted. The idea was immediately popular because it was simple, cheap, and low effort. However, nutrition often does not operate on those principles. Dr. Helen Macdonald, Publication Ethics and Content Integrity Editor at BMJ Group, called for people to stop spreading this misinformation. She said,: “Tempting though it is to alert readers to an ostensibly simple and apparently helpful weight loss aid, at present the results of the study are unreliable, and journalists and others should no longer reference or use the results of this study in any future reporting.” The idea was immediately popular because it was simple, cheap, and low effort. However, nutrition often does not operate on those principles. 

The editor-in-chief of BMJ, Professor Martin Kohlmeier, commented on the difficulty of conducting good clinical trials for the field of nutritional science: “These are relatively unusual in nutritional research as they can be challenging to undertake because of the numbers of participants and time needed to obtain meaningful results.” When studying a subject as complex as the human body, it can take multiple years to produce reliable data.