What Is a Vinegar Diet?
The Chocolate Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Grapefruit Diet ... these are only a few of what the American Dietetic Association (ADA) calls "superfood" diets that promise dieters that a certain food has a magical effect on weight loss. The Vinegar Diet, more popularly known as the Apple Cider Vinegar Diet, is yet another diet strategy that touts the acidic properties of common apple cider vinegar as being a means for rapid weight loss.
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Lord Byron: The First Vinegar Dieter
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According to the ADA Fad Diet Timeline, the vinegar diet first surfaced in 1820, when poet Lord George Gordon Byron made it popular. Byron, both bulemic and anorexic, ingested copious amounts of vinegar and water daily in addition to his peculiar eating habits--which purportedly included drinking a cup of tea with a raw egg mixed in.
The Vinegar Diet Resurfaces in the 20th Century
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The vinegar diet resurfaced in the late 1950s, when D.C. Jarvis, a Vermont country doctor, wrote about the dietary advantages of apple cider vinegar in "Folk Medicine." Jarvis' book, chocked with homespun wisdom about age-old homeopathic remedies, advocated apple cider vinegar as a cure-all for head lice, aging, diabetes, high cholesterol and indigestion, as well as other maladies. Jarvis purported that ingesting vinegar daily causes the body to burn fat rather than store it.
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What Is the Vinegar Diet?
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The Vinegar Diet is quite simple. Dieters ingest two to three teaspoons of cider vinegar solution before each meal. Some dieters take cider vinegar diet pills that can be purchased through online vendors or at brick-and-mortar health food stores. The idea is that the acid in the vinegar will cause any food that is eaten to "burn" more quickly.
Does the Vinegar Diet Work?
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Because there have been no human studies that assess the benefits of vinegar on weight loss, the purported success of the Vinegar Diet is strictly empirical and largely found in testimonials on websites that promote either the diet or apple cider vinegar supplements. Like all fad diets, there are numerous variations of the Vinegar Diet. Some of the vinegar diets found on the internet give the dieter a daily menu and advise certain types of exercise, while others simply claim that drinking vinegar or taking vinegar tablets alone works successfully.
What the Experts Say
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Renowned nutritionist Elizabeth Somer wrote in her article "Vinegar and Weight Loss: The Sour Truth" that while taking vinegar before meals isn't physically harmful, it probably won't help with weight loss unless the dieter is also eating moderately and exercising. Somer points out that the Vinegar Diet has all the earmarks of other fad diets: It promises to "melt away" fat; ensures rapid, effortless weight loss of more than one or two pounds a week; and focuses on one food as a "secret formula" to losing weight.
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