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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

I thought this part was interesting, in the Discussion:

> Park et al reported that daily consumption of 200 mL of pomegranate vinegar for 8 weeks significantly reduced total fat mass in overweight or obese subjects compared with the control group without significantly affecting body weight and BMI.

If total fat mass decreases without significantly affecting body weight or BMI, that suggests a change in composition, doesn't it?

The pomegranate vinegar study they reference is this one: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17564...

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If BMI is unaffected, wouldn't that mean muscle loss as well?

You'd think you'd want BMI to be affected.

BMI is purely a weight/height calculation. If BMI is unchanged that just means total weight is unchanged — meaning, if fat was lost, muscle must have been gained.

> If BMI is unaffected, wouldn't that mean muscle loss as well?

For a given person, BMI is equivalent to weight (because height is fixed). If fat went down, but weight/BMI stayed the same, that would indicate an increase in the non-fat components of body weight.

Nope BMI is just a "weight to height" ratio ( https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/bmitool... )

This can lead to some funny errors in edge cases, like Mr.Universe Arnold being morbidly obese according to BMI

my reading is no change in mass but less fat, meaning gained muscle instead of muscle loss...

That's what I was thinking when I read it, but it seems strange that it isn't explicitly mentioned.

It also seems quite surprising to me that drinking pomegranate vinegar would increase muscle. Makes me wonder if there's something I'm missing.

Which doesn’t really make sense, as drinking ACV alone will definitely not result in a body recomp/the addition of muscle (every meat head lifter, myself included, would be drinking a few bottles a day in that case).

It could have changed their height...

... I'll see myself out.

They're misquoting Park et al. The PV study reduced visceral fat. If you take anything (including coffee) that results in lipolysis, and then don't burn the newly freed fats off with activity, it just goes (re-deposits) somewhere else. Specific to the PV paper, it resulted in a redistribution of the fat from VAT to SAT.

TL;DR: Pomegranate vinegar shifts fat from omentum to subcutaneous tissue. It does not increase muscle mass.

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