The drink can boost weight loss without exercise or changing diet.
Apple cider vinegar can boost weight loss without exercise or changing diet, research finds.
People in one study who added two teaspoons of vinegar to their diet per day lost weight.
They achieved this without making any other changes to their diet or doing more exercise.
The vinegar also led to lower levels of triglycerides, which is an indicator of better heart health.
Whether or not the vinegar is of the apple cider variety, probably makes little difference.
To make the vinegar more palatable, it can simply be stirred into a glass of water, or any other drink, to help reduce the sharp taste.
Alternatively, it can be drizzled on a salad, added to a smoothie or used to add zest to another food.
Other benefits of vinegar include that it may lower blood pressure and help inhibit the spiking of blood sugar after eating.
For the study, 175 people in Japan were split into three groups.
One acted as a control and ate their normal diet, another group added a single teaspoon of vinegar per day, while a third added two teaspoons per day.
The results showed that after 12 weeks, those who had added two teaspoons had lost between 2 to 4 pounds in weight.
They also had lower triglyceride levels.
The other two groups did not lose significant amounts of weight.
The study’s authors conclude:
“The present study is the first to demonstrate that vinegar reduces body weight, BMI, and body fat mass in obese Japanese subjects.
Furthermore, continuous vinegar intake was found to lower serum triglyceride levels.”
Animal studies have previously found that acetic acid, the main component of vinegar, can reduce body fat.
The authors write of vinegar’s other benefits:
“Vinegar has a very long history, going back to Babylonia in 5,000 BC.
We have found that intake of vinegar lowers blood pressure, improves hypercholesterolemia, and inhibits postprandial hyperglycemia.”
The study was published in the journal Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Biochemistry (Kondo et al., 2009).
