Will Apple Cider Vinegar Help Me Lose My Menopausal Belly?
Jan 13, 2023I recently read a very interesting story about Katy Perry and her love affair/obession with apple cider vinegar.
When she was younger, a woman named Patricia Bragg (yes, that Bragg, of Bragg Organics), who attended that same Santa Barbara church as Katy, recommended that Katy drink apple cider vinegar to help soothe her vocal cords. Katy Perry quickly adopted this habit and has been a big fan of apple cider vinegar, ACV, since.
On Katy’s first date with her partner, Orlando Bloom, they bonded over their mutual love of ACV and were both carrying reusable water bottles with the ACV inside!
The couple loves ACV so much that they decided to buy into the Bragg company as part of an investor group in 2019. So now, every photo or article that Perry is in, she can turn into a great marketing opportunity for her to cash in.
So is Katy Perry and Orlanda Bloom onto something?
Should we all be investing in and consuming apple cider vinegar to help us lose weight and “vigor?”
Let’s see what the science says!
Let’s dive into, Will Apple Cider Vinegar Help Me Lose My Menopausal Belly?
Or lose weight at all, really?
In the flashy world of weight loss, fads come and go. Some fads are rediscovered every few decades and rebranded as the “new thing,” all with one purpose: to make money.
Apple cider vinegar as a weight loss aid is such a fad.
Apple cider vinegar itself, has a wonderful origin story that reaches back thousands of years into antiquity and has nothing to do with weight loss until very recently.
Apple cider vinegar, ACV, is made by adding bacteria and yeast to apple juice. The yeast eat up all the sugar from the apples and produce ethanol. At this point, you have hard apple cider. Then a special bacteria family called acetobacteraceae comes in to eat the ethanol and create acetic acid. The acetic acid the tang and zip you taste in any vinegar.
All vinegars, malt, white distilled, rice, white wine, red wine, all use this process. But the starting liquid solution is different depending on the vinegar.
So how did the cheap, brown vinegar made from apples become so famous?
Marketing of course!
The fad we are living in now start in 1959 from D.C. Jarvis, a Vermont country doctor who advocated for regular consumption of the vinegar in his book Folk Medicine. In the 1970’s as America began to grow more counterculture roots, a man named Paul Bragg came on the scene in Hollywood, California and published multiple booklets promoting raw, unpasteurized ACV as a health drink.
Bragg’s “The Apple Cider Vinegar Miracle Health System,” recommends a daily dose of ACV as a cure for all that ails you.
Need to lose weight? Apple Cider Vinegar!
To thin? Apple Cider Vinegar!
ACV was also recommended to treat baldness, kidney ailments, heart disease, “female troubles,” mood disorders, skin issues, ear infections, warts, colds, and “stamina.” The list goes on!
Bragg also was the one who made “The Mother” a thing. It’s not a thing, it’s marketing.
“The Mother” is the slimy goo of yeast, bacteria and cellulose that ferments the sugars. By the time the vinegar is bottled, the Mother is usually killed off and no longer active. Plus, even if it wasn’t killed and remains ”live and raw” as some bottles proclaim, the bacteria aren’t helpful. They are not probiotic bacteria. They are killed by your digestive enzymes and can’t survive our GI tract.
Yes, there are tiny amounts of minerals in the Mother, but you can get those minerals from anywhere.
So here we are in 2022 and from the help of Paul daughter-in-law, Patricia Bragg and celebrities like Katy Perry (who went to church with Patricia) it’s having a fairly big moment again. I even have a bottle of Bragg’s in my cupboard right now.
Have we tested these health claims?
We have science now, right?
What doest the science say? Does it back up the claims for weight loss or not?
Here is what we think we know about apple cider vinegar and weight control:
- The active ingredient is the acetic acid itself. And you need 800-900 mg per TBSP as an effective dose to do anything.
- Apple cider vinegar as a supplement, gummy, or tablet never works. It’s not enough acetic acid and contains sugar! ( Only 10-70 mg acetic acid.)
- Apple cider vinegar does not help digestion or ease heartburn or GERD symptoms.
- In very small studies of groups of 12-15 people, apple cider vinegar liquid may reduce the rise in blood sugars after eating if taken with a meal, but not consistantly.
- Apple cider vinegar does not decrease insulin resistance.
- Apple cider vinegar may promote small amounts of weight loss ~4 lbs because it makes you queasy and eat less and slows down how fast your meal leaves your stomach, so you feel fuller longer.
- Apple cider vinegar does not go into your bloodstream and burn body fat in any direct way. It only works when you take the actaul liquid with every meal because it can affect how your digest the meal.
- Do not drink AVC if you have gastroparesis, trouble swallowing or are on potassium lowering medications. It may erosion of tooth enamel and chemical burns to skin. Consult with your doctor if you have Type 1 Diabetes or take medications to lower blood sugar.
So, no, the science does not support ACV as the key to lasting weight control and glowing health. Bummer.
The biggest take home message from the science is do NOT under any circumstances buy and consume ACV gummies, capsules or tablets. Absolute waste.
Consuming one tablespoon of ACV at every meal diluted in eight ounces of water isn’t a magic elixir as portrayed on the internet.
It is a distraction from actually fixing the root cause of your excess weight problem in a real and lasting way. Drinking ACV makes you feels like you are doing something, but you are not doing anything at all, meanwhile you don’t seek out a meaningful and real solution to your problem.
Apple cider vinegar and most weight loss supplements in general understand one core truth of humans and their behavior. It’s called the Motivational Triad. We want to seek pleasure, avoid pain and expend the least amount of energy, time, or money doing those two things.
So ACV, supplements, and protein powders hit this core truth when we are at our most vulnerable. Feeling ashamed and powerless about our weight, we turn and listen to the gimmicks promising the easiest, cheapest path of least resistance.
You deserve more that just marketing from another gimmick.
You deserve to know the difference between marketing and nutrition. You deserve a simple sustainable healthy eating pattern that only uses real food that is easy to do.
We can still seek pleasure, avoid pain, and expend the least amount of energy possible.
But let’s not go after the quick hits.
Let’s seek the pleasure of being able to wear anything in our closets that we want. Let’s seek the pleasure of having natural energy and great lab results. Let’s seek the pleasure of eating great food that we know is nourishing and not damaging.
Let’s avoid the pain of chronic disease. Let’s avoid the pain of not enjoying our body. Let’s avoid the pain of shame around our weight.
Let’s expend the least amount of energy duct-taping diets together. Let’s expend the least amount of mental energy worrying about what we should be eating. Let’s expend the least amount of money buying supplements and powders each month.
If you are ready to stop duct-taping gimmicks together and finally get real lasting control over your weight, it’s time to join the Freese Method 12-Week Group Coaching Weight Loss Program. You’ll get clarification on all the things “gimmick” and all the things “real.”
Well done everyone, I hope today was clarifying and uplifting to for you to know you are not missing out of some secret of the universe. If the science advances or changes, I’ll let you know and I’ll update my position.
Remember, you are a woman who can lose weight, achieve glowing health, and know the difference between marketing and nutrition, we just need to repair your metabolism first with the Freese Method Program.
Sources:
Bragg, Paul; Bragg, Patricia. Apple Cider Vinegar – Miracle Health System. Goleta, Patricia Bragg Books LLC, 2008.
https://extension.wvu.edu/food-health/cooking/apple-cider-vinegar-myths-facts
https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/apple-cider-vinegar-history
Solaleh Sadat Khezri, Atoosa Saidpour, Nima Hosseinzadeh, Zohreh Amiri,
