Lots of sites are running stories about the Baylor study that suggested that drinking a glass of low sodium vegetable juice promoted weight loss in the subjects of a study.
I’m sure the sales of V8 have spiked in the last couple of weeks. But let’s dissect this…
1: The study was sponsored by Campbell’s, makers of V8 vegetable juice.
2: Campbell’s has been doing most of the media campaign to promote the study results.
3: Study participants who drank vegetable juice as part of a calorie-controlled diet for lowering blood pressure lost an average of just 4 pounds during a 12 week study, 3 pounds more than the people who didn’t drink V8 juice. Anyone who has dieted knows it’s possible for people to fluctuate nearly that much in a week (it’s less than 1.5 liters of water) and the high potassium levels in vegetable juice help you better regulate your bodily fluid levels, so a portion of that could merely be water weight from better potassium levels.
4: When I have contracted at Microsoft, they offer free V8 juice along with the free sodas. I’d drink 2-3 six-ounce cans of V8 juice a day when I’d be on contract there, but I’d still gain weight. I can probably attribute the weight gain to overall bad eating habits during those periods, but I also drank V8 five days a week during those periods too.
A problem with studies like this is that they try to make insignificant results sound significant. Three pounds over twelve weeks needs a bigger study with stricter controls and more stringent tests to prove that it’s 3 pounds of actual fat loss, not just water weight. It also needs to be studied in the context of a diet where people are trying to lose a pound a week or more, not where the “control” group’s weight loss rate averages out to four pounds a YEAR and the test group’s weight loss rate averages out to 17 pounds a YEAR.
Furthermore, unless everyone on the diet had to eat every morsel on their plate, there’s also the factor of all the diets where you drink a glass of liquid before a meal to fill up your stomach and help control your appetite. If the study group was drinking their V8 juice before a meal and then maybe not finishing the whole thing, while the control group didn’t drink a similar amount of water at the same time, that could skew results as well.
Remember when Snackwells came out? The public went nuts over fat-free chocolate cookies. People sang their praises and gained weight because they thought fat-free meant they could eat more cookies. Some people thought they could just eat a whole bag. It took people a while to realize they were still cookies, they still had lots of sugar, and they were still fattening.
My problem with this study is that people might think that vegetable juice is a magic bullet, much like “fat free” once was. IF there is a significant effect to be had from drinking vegetable juice, it’s as part of a low-calorie diet. You cannot substitute a V8 for good food choices, portion control, or exercise. If you’re doing all those things, then according to this study, you might lose another 1/4 pound a week. That could mean the difference between 52 pounds and 65 pounds over the course of a year. But you might get the same effects if you drink a glass of water before dinner or take a potassium supplement.
My view is that if you like V8 and would want to drink it anyway, go for it. But if you’ve never been a big fan, don’t go rushing out and buying a case at Costco. The study results just aren’t conclusive enough, in my opinion, to justify taking action based on a press release from Campbell’s about a study they sponsored.
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