Doctor Reviews: Keto ACV Gummies - Dr. Brian Yeung, ND (2024)

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What’s the difference between Goli, Keto Blast, Biolyfe, and Via Keto gummies? Trick question, they’re all exactly the same.

These four gummies are all the exact same apple cider vinegar gummies that are marketed under different names. There are even more aliases for these keto ACV gummies, but these four seem to be the biggest.

So with that out of the way, the question one needs to ask is do these apple cider vinegar gummies do anything for weight loss or keto? And how practical is it to take ACV in gummy form?

Let’s comprehensively review these “keto” apple cider vinegar gummies, and see if they hold up to the hype.

Ingredients of Keto ACV Gummies

Let’s first take a look at the ingredients. Here are the doses per gummy, as listed on their bottles.

Goli, Keto Blast, Biolyfe, and Via Keto gummies all have the exact same doses per gummy, just that some of the bottles list the doses for 2 gummies rather than just 1 gummy.

The recommended dosing for them all is 2 gummies, 3 times a day, so that’s a total of 6 gummies a day.

Whenever supplements add any ingredients into their product, there are three very common issues:

1. The doses they use are way too small to be effective
2. They aren’t using the active compounds
3. The ingredient itself has not reliably shown any beneficial effect in humans.

When we analyze these ingredients, we’re going to see which of these issues they have.

Apple Cider Vinegar and weight loss

The claims around apple cider vinegar and its potential benefits on weight can be summarized into 4 major points, all of which when looked at practically, are not really of much help at all.

1.) Blood sugar control

First is the claim that acetic acid, the active component in apple cider vinegar, can mildly help with controlling blood sugar levels.

While some studies do find this is true, acetic acid is found in regular white vinegar, meaning that there is no additional benefit of the more expensive apple cider vinegar over the far cheaper regular white vinegar.

2.) Appetite and digestion

Second is the claim that apple cider vinegar and its acidity helps with appetite and digestion.

Vinegars like ACV tend to stimulate digestion, and increase appetite. So if you’re trying to lose weight, that’s probably the last thing you want to do.

Also, stomach acid is way more acidic than apple cider vinegar, and your body produces one and a half liters of it, so if you’re taking 1-2 tablespoons a day, it’s not going to help with digestion at all.

3.) Probiotics in mother

Third is the claim that the probiotics found in the sediment (mother) of apple cider vinegar might be helpful.

The amount of sediment found in ACV is very small, and most of it is made of fiber and leftovers from manufacturing, not probiotics. So realistically, even if the probiotics were helpful, you’re getting an absolutely minuscule amount of probiotics, certainly not enough to be beneficial for health.

4.) Energy

Fourth is the claim that the sourness of apple cider vinegar can help perk you up and improve energy.

This claim is mostly anecdotal, and if you find it does, then it’s likely that the sour flavor is helping you, not necessarily the apple cider vinegar.

Some people find this to be the case when mixing lemon with coffee. There’s nothing special about the lemon, but perhaps the sourness of the lemon being added to coffee helps to make the lemon coffee seem to perk you up more than regular coffee.

How much ACV do you get?

Now these claims are made with people taking the apple cider vinegar raw, from liquid form, and most people take around 2 tablespoons per day. But how much apple cider vinegar do you actually get from these gummies?

The average tablespoon of apple cider vinegar is about 15 grams. Two tablespoons of liquid is therefore 30 grams.

Their website claims each gummy has 500 mg. That means you need to eat 60 gummies a day to ingest the equivalent of a normal daily dose of 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. That’s the whole freakin bottle. Every day.

If you were insane and did that, you’d also be consuming 210 grams of starch and sugar, adding up to a whopping 720 calories per day. There is no way you can realistically get a useful dose of apple cider vinegar from these gummies.

We can also calculate how much apple cider vinegar we are actually getting in each gummy.

The average weight of a single drop of apple cider vinegar is 50 mg. Each gummy has 500 mg, and therefore provides about 10 drops of apple cider vinegar.

Yeah, that’s way too little to do anything for anyone. But the bigger problem for those trying to lose weight is that each gummy comes with 4 grams of sugar and starch that provides 12 empty calories.

Vitamin B12 and B9

The B vitamins, particularly B12, are essential vitamins used by the body for fat metabolism. Vitamin B12 is usually found in animal protein, like meat, milk, or eggs.

Supplementing vitamin B12 is often recommended for vegetarians or vegans, since they tend to be deficient. Deficiencies in these vitamins can impair fat metabolism.

However, the doses of B12 and B9 provided by these gummies are so minuscule that most children’s multivitamin gummies have more B vitamins than them. If you were really deficient in B12, I would recommend just taking a regular B12 supplement since these gummies do not provide enough.

Organic beetroot and pomegranate

The organic beetroot and pomegranate so proudly displayed on their webpage may seem great, but look at the doses. They’re measured in micrograms! Not milligrams, micrograms.

Micrograms are 1000 times smaller than a milligram. To get an idea of how small a microgram is, a single grain of granulated sugar is approximately 600 micrograms. A single grain!

Take one tenth of that grain of sugar, and you’d still have more organic beetroot or organic pomegranate than in one of these gummies. I think I can safely say that these microscopic amounts of vegetables aren’t doing anything for you.

Keto ACV Gummies Side Effects and Concerns

But could these gummies hurt you? Well it might, especially if you have blood sugar issues like diabetes or insulin resistance.

It would actually be harmful to your weight loss progress, since it adds empty calories and sugar into your diet.

Also, it may actually be more harmful for your teeth than regular candy, since it contains not only sugar, but acetic acid, which directly harms enamel.

Are Keto ACV Gummies effective?

All these branded keto apple cider vinegar gummies are essentially candies. That’s what they are, and the couple drops of apple cider vinegar they put into each one doesn’t change it all.

You just aren’t getting any meaningful dose of apple cider vinegar from them, and trying to do so would require you to eat the whole bottle, at which point the side effects would likely include diabetes.

So no, they aren’t effective at all, and don’t have any health benefits whatsoever.

In fact, taking these regularly would more likely harm your health, just like eating candy every day might.

At least it would most certainly negatively affect your weight loss progress. If you ate what the bottle recommends at 6 per day, you’re adding 72 calories per day from refined sugar and carbs. That’s like drinking half a can of co*ke every day.

They shouldn’t be classified as a health food, but unfortunately a lot of places like Walmart do, which is misleading and confusing for customers. Please just put them into the candy section, which is exactly what they are.

Also they don’t do anything for keto. In fact, they are worse for keto since keto diets require you to stay away from carbs and sugar. These gummies are literally carbs and sugar.

It’s like me trying to sell you a brand of cigarettes that I claim helps to increase your lung health.

That would be ridiculous, and that’s exactly what these “keto” ACV gummies are, ridiculous.

Same product, different name

Don’t be fooled. These so-called “apple cider vinegar” or “keto” gummies are all just the exact same piece of expensive gummy candy marketed under all these different aliases:

• Biolyfe
• Ez Burn Keto
• F1 Keto
• Gemini Keto
• Goli
• K3 Spark Keto
• Keto Blast
• Keto Flo
• OptiPlex
• Quantum Keto
• Select Keto
• Simpli Keto
• Super Slim
• Total Health
• Truly Keto
• Via Keto
• Vitality HQ Keto

The list goes on and they’re going to come out with new aliases in the future.

We can see when, and even where, these different aliases were marketed by comparing the search interest of the different brand names.

For example, Goli appears to be the longest running alias of these gummies, with search interest dating back to July of 2019.

Then in early May 2022, the alias Keto Blast appeared. It was quickly followed by the aliases Simpli Keto and Via Keto later in the same month.

Most recently in September 2022, these gummies appeared under the new aliases Biolyfe followed closely by Keto Flo.

Many of the aliases are marketed in the United States, but the main alias Goli appears to be all over the world, and Via Keto appears to be targeted towards Australia as well as North America.

So you can see what’s going on here. They’re creating new aliases almost once a month to see which ones catch on.

When the hype dies down for one of these aliases, they just create a brand new alias for the same crappy candy, pretend that it’s a health food and promise a bunch of misleading results, then market the hell out of it.

This marketing strategy works to some degree because when people see something new, they think it’ll be different, and are willing to try it, even though it’s just the same old thing being rebranded.

If you want to avoid buying into this again in the future, a good rule of thumb is to simply avoid any gummy supplements at all. Gummies are candies, and should not be considered a health food no matter what they put into it.

Overall review: Keto ACV Gummies

Reviewing Keto ACV Gummies by effectiveness for weight loss, I’m giving it an F. It’ll more likely hurt your weight loss, since eating candy everyday is just empty calories.

Reviewing Keto ACV Gummies by cost, I’m giving it an F. It’s a pretty expensive candy, and personally I like the taste of Wine Gums more. They’re cheaper too.

Reviewing Keto ACV Gummies for safety, I’m giving it a C. The sugar and added acetic acid of this candy makes it more harmful to your enamel than regular gummy candy if you don’t brush religiously.

Overall review, I’m giving Keto ACV Gummies an F. I would recommend you stay away from it.

Top alternatives to Keto ACV Gummies

If you’re looking to achieve similar effects, but better than those of Keto ACV gummies, I just take a quality ACV.

• ACV (caps) – 10 to 20 caps / day
• ACV (liquid) – 1 to 2 tbsp / day

Learn more about

• Apple Cider Vinegar for Weight Loss
• 6 Things To Look For On Supplements
• 5 Things to Know Before Buying Weight Loss Supplements
• Other weight loss supplements

Citations

“Apple cider vinegar”. Drugs.com. 29 May 2018. Retrieved May 1, 2022. https://www.drugs.com/npp/apple-cider-vinegar.html

Dworken, Harvey J (2016). Human digestive system: gastric secretion. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Retrieved May 1, 2022. http://www.britannica.com/science/human-digestive-system/Gastric-secretion

Hadi A, Pourmasoumi M, Najafgholizadeh A, Clark CCT, Esmaillzadeh A. The effect of apple cider vinegar on lipid profiles and glycemic parameters: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. BMC Complement Med Ther. 2021;21(1):179. Published 2021 Jun 29. doi:10.1186/s12906-021-03351-w

Khezri, Solaleh & Saidpour, Atoosa & Hosseinzadeh, Nima & Amiri, Zohreh. (2018). Beneficial effects of Apple Cider Vinegar on weight management, Visceral Adiposity Index and lipid profile in overweight or obese subjects receiving restricted calorie diet: A randomized clinical trial. Journal of Functional Foods. 43. 95-102. 10.1016/j.jff.2018.02.003.

Kondo T, Kishi M, Fushimi T, Ugajin S, Kaga T. Vinegar intake reduces body weight, body fat mass, and serum triglyceride levels in obese Japanese subjects. Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2009;73(8):1837-1843. doi:10.1271/bbb.90231

Launholt TL, Kristiansen CB, Hjorth P. Safety and side effects of apple vinegar intake and its effect on metabolic parameters and body weight: a systematic review. Eur J Nutr. 2020;59(6):2273-2289. doi:10.1007/s00394-020-02214-3

Santos HO, de Moraes WMAM, da Silva GAR, Prestes J, Schoenfeld BJ. Vinegar (acetic acid) intake on glucose metabolism: A narrative review. Clin Nutr ESPEN. 2019;32:1-7. doi:10.1016/j.clnesp.2019.05.008

Shishehbor F, Mansoori A, Shirani F. Vinegar consumption can attenuate postprandial glucose and insulin responses; a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 2017;127:1-9. doi:10.1016/j.diabres.2017.01.021

The Measure of Things. https://www.themeasureofthings.com/results.php?comp=weight&unit=gms&amt=0.0044&sort=pr&p=1

USDA https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/

Weikert C, Trefflich I, Menzel J, et al. Vitamin and Mineral Status in a Vegan Diet. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2020;117(35-36):575-582. doi:10.3238/arztebl.2020.0575

Attributions

jelly bear by ATOM from Noun Project

Pills by Pavitra from NounProject.com

Spoon by ANTON icon from NounProject.com

Supplements by Muhammad Taufik Sidik from NounProject.com

See also

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• Doctor Reviews: Kerassentials

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• Doctor Reviews: King Maker

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• Doctor Reviews: Primal Queen

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• Doctor Reviews: Dose for Your Liver

  Liver “detox” supplements like Dose for Your Liver offer vague promises to support liver health, but evidence for their efficacy is lacking.