Paul Bragg & The Rise of Apple Cider Vinegar

Paul Bragg lied about his age to sell the health food lifestyle

The hosts reveal that Paul Bragg was born in 1895, not 1881 as he claimed. He pretended to be 15 years older than he actually was so that people would marvel at how youthful he looked, attributing his appearance to his health food lifestyle and apple cider vinegar.

"It's all crumbling down. That is off in our show. Okay, so this is a photo that says 26-year-old Bragg with a class in 1920. He had them convinced that he was 41. The thing that I kept thinking about with all of this stuff, he's lying about roughly 15 years of his life, right? Depending on what date you go with. He offered three different birth years for himself over the course of his life and multiple different locations to different press outlets, right? But the thing that I keep coming back to is if you think about what a 26-year-old looks like and then you think about what a 41-year looks like yeah it's you have to want to believe that yeah so much god it's such a simple grift though i can't believe how basic it is just tell people you're 40 when you're 25 i have these moments where i'm like do i respect this i don't to be clear i don't but i'm so this is like when someone figured out that you should put salt on caramel yeah yeah yeah so that's the whole thing that's like the quote-unquote evidence for all of his claims it's like look at this look at this 40 year old he looks like he's 25 yeah So my word, there's a quote from a fantastic three part piece from Maui time called in the name of the father. And that piece reads, quote, that means his 1976 death came at the age of 81, not 95. Of course. Remember, the packaging of the food says life extension specialist. Right. God. This dude died at 81, which is only a few years older than the average American life expectancy at this point. It is really incredible that nobody was just like, wait, sorry, how old are you? Like, what? Come on. You said you were 40. Come on. Right on right because like if i was hanging out with a 25 year old who was claiming to be 40 i feel like i could sniff it out yeah i'd be like you can't name any of the characters from saved by the bell you don't love poison by bell biv devel like there are very simple questions that we could ask to get to the bottom of this. What are your opinions on New Jack's swing as a genre? Go. So that is not the only lie that he told. And it's not the only lie that Patricia told. Okay. Please enjoy the next quote from In the Name of the Father, this outstanding Maui timepiece. Patricia must have used the words, my dad, in reference to the late Paul Bragg at least a dozen times during the course of our interview. But he was not her biological father. What? According to her California birth certificate, she was born Patricia Pendleton at Oakland's Peralta Hospital. Patricia's use of the Bragg name comes from her marriage to Robert E. Bra bragg a chiropractor and son of paul bragg that makes paul bragg patricia's father-in-law okay so she married into this family right and then for no real reason invented the story i don't think anyone would particularly care honestly if she's the non-biological daughter i i mean yeah it seems like a weird own goal this is the natural foods world equivalent of like what is the relationship between jack and meg white another thing that a 40 year old would know and would baffle a 25 year old wait what the white who? So in this Maui timepiece, this is the sort of bombshell drop paragraph. But the lead up to that is this reporter goes, oh, hey, I was checking into it. You know, I've been doing some research for this piece. I didn't actually find any records of a daughter born to Paul Bragg. Amazing. And she goes at first she goes, oh, yeah, he adopted me. It wasn't I wasn't his daughter by birth. I was his daughter by adoption. So he adopted me. And then the reporter comes back and is like, I didn't see any adoption records. And then she goes, oh, yeah, actually, I married into the family. OK, I was his son's wife. They were married for a few years and then got divorced right oh paul and i basically like really hit it off and he feels like my dad and i call him my dad and he was a family friend going way back and like every time she gives him one of these like partial or just fully false explanations she tells this reporter you don't need to check into that i'm not some Hollywood celebrity."

The mother in apple cider vinegar cannot survive in your gut

Despite marketing claims that unfiltered ACV with "the mother" is a probiotic, the acetic acid bacteria that comprise it cannot survive in the human gut and its main component, cellulose, is not digestible. The University of Chicago School of Medicine says ACV's vitamin profile is similar to apple juice.

"Elizabeth Hurley is like, I drink it every day day it tastes disgusting is what she keeps telling the press apple cider vinegar has been used in folk healing for ages but in the u.s its biggest boost of popularity in the last century mostly came from paul bragg oh yeah wrote a whole fucking book about Right. He suggested it for weight gain, for weight loss, for heart disease, for quote unquote female troubles, for hair loss, for kidney issues. It was genuinely like this is like celery juice levels of claims. Right. Basically, the evidence for some of those claims is overblown based on very limited studies by today's standards, based on the evidence we have today. Most of those studies have been small and most of them have only been in rats. Of course. Most of those claims have no evidence at all. Right. Some of them are overblown. Most of them, the evidence is non-existent, right? There are also quite a few claims that Bragg made and that have caught on more recently about sort of the gut health aspects of apple cider vinegar, that it's good for your microbiome, blah, blah, blah, blah. Love it. Bragg's in particular prides themselves on selling unfiltered apple cider vinegar. It has on the package. It says with quote unquote, the mother, the mother, as in kombucha refers to this sort of yeast bacteria colony that's produced during fermentation. Apple cider vinegar is touted as a major source of probiotics, but Michael, there is one catch. This is from an outstanding piece written by a food historian for Epicurious of all places. Get some recipes, get some history. Delightful. So the piece is called How Americans Became Obsessed with Drinking Apple Cider Vinegar. And here is what they have to say about this claim about probiotics. And what about the mother? Why is she such a big deal? Technically, a vinegar mother is not a probiotic as the acetic acid bacteria that comprise it can't survive in our guts. Its main component, cellulose, is not digestible. Shockey and Smith point out that there could be benefits to its consumption that have yet to be measured or quantified. But many artisanal vinegar makers don't include the mother in their products because it doesn't contribute anything to the flavor. Yeah, basically, there's no there's no reason to think this does fucking anything. But the people who are debunking it have to be like careful because you can't prove a negative. You can't prove that something doesn't have magical health benefits because how would you even do that? Well, and also I feel like the real fucking chestnut in that paragraph is it's a probiotic, but that probiotic can't survive in your body. Yeah. It's not the gut health stuff. It's not as easy as just like drink bacteria and then you'll have like new bacteria in your tummy. No, and the science is way too fucking new to even know most of how it works, right? It's bonkers. Yeah, we don't know that stuff. Here's the other thing I'll say about apple cider vinegar. I won't say it. The University of Chicago School of Medicine will say it. Quote, aside from probiotics, apple cider vinegar has a vitamin profile similar to apple juice. Hey, so we're drinking grape juice and apple juice on maintenance phase. Resveratrol and probiotics. We're finally becoming influencers, Aubrey. We're finally giving out individual health advice. Drink apple juice and grape juice. There is evidence of some of the claims related to apple cider vinegar and its health benefits. There is limited evidence that drinking apple cider vinegar after a meal may help people with diabetes moderately lower their blood sugar. But there's nothing definitive. It specifically does not, according to the University of Chicago School of Medicine, help manage hypertension, which is a claim that has been made about that. It does not do that. It also can erode the enamel of your teeth. There have been some wild case studies about tooth decay of people who have like been drinking straight apple cider vinegar all the time. And it is specifically very bad for people with kidney issues who may struggle to process all of the acid. Oh, okay. The University of Chicago School of Medicine is quick to point out that it's antimicrobial. So if you use it in a salad dressing, it kills the bacteria on your salad. You're welcome. Yeah, that's great. Okay. So you're unprobiotic-ing yourself by doing this. It's just interesting to dive into the science on this stuff and go, oh, this thing that everyone I know has been yelling about for a full decade is just a weird, it is a house built on a foundation of sand. It really feels like if you try to piece together the timeline in chronological order of these things, what it sounds like to me is that a guy who's just like a carnival ass grifter basically made up this thing about apple cider vinegar. And then other people have since looked into it. And like by coincidence, they have found that maybe there's a couple of benefits to this thing just because like, I don't know, it's an edible substance. So it probably has some benefits and some drawbacks like everything else. then people are now like using that to backfill like oh yeah the guy like the decades-long liar guy like he was actually right but like on what basis would he have said this at the time and like what he's telling folks is a scientific explanation for what they were already doing again this was part of an American folk healing tradition. Right. This offered people the sense that what they had already been doing was like a really good thing to do, not just for their own health, but for their own virtue and character. Right. Because of this sort of like deeply Christian language that Paul and Patricia Bragg use, it's not just a matter of caring for your body. It's a matter of, you know, your piety and your ability to resist temptation and like all of these sort of deeply, deeply Christian constructs. Right. He's selling people's pre-existing beliefs and behaviors back to them. And he's doing a thing that happens to this very day, which is getting very comfortable I'm not sure what that means. pre-existing beliefs and behaviors back to them. And he's doing a thing that happens to this very day, which is getting very comfortable muddling up people's perceived health with their character and morality and worth as people, right? All of that is getting dumped into the same bucket. Right. It's like a weird little kombucha of culture and capitalism and lies. And you just leave it there to ferment. I mean, what I can't get over is the specificity of apple cider vinegar. There's a million vinegars in the world. It doesn't make any sense that this would have magical properties. I'll tell you what. I love the taste of apple cider vinegar. Oh, my God. I use it in racional salads all the time. It's really good. Oh, my God. Salad dressing. It's the best. I also make shrub at home. Do you mean you're eating edibles? No. What's that? Edibles? No. Shrub is like a drinking vinegar. It's like you infuse vinegar. You add some sugar or sweetener of your choice and a bunch of fruit and let it macerate and then strain out the solids and you add that to like club soda or something it's extremely refreshing and delicious my parents always told me if you macerate you go blind that was abysmal i'm sorry are you ready for a little coda to the brag story yeah denow me first things first we're just gonna watch little clip. I sent it to you in the Zoom chat. Clip time. Let me know when you're queued up and ready. Why are we? Oh, no. Okay. I saw it's loading slowly. And it loaded this screen grab of Orlando Bloom on Jimmy Fallon. Get ready. And then the title loaded. I was very confused, but now I understand. The title of the clip is Orlando Bloom bonded with Katy Perry over apple cider vinegar. The crazy story. So I, when I met Katy, um, one of, one of our first dates, I was, she was, she had a bottle of water and when you pour it in the water, it makes it go kind of slightly off color. And we both have bottles of apple cider vinegar because I said, wait, what have you got in your water? And she was like, apple cider vinegar. I was like, no. We're made for each other. This is it. And then the really crazy part is that her mother had actually been part of a church group in Santa Barbara when she was growing up. And Katie got her first guitar from Patricia Bragg, who is now 90, who runs that company. And then the crazy part is that her mom said, you know, Patricia's getting up there and she wants to offload the company and she was about to sell it. And we were like, no, let us get in there. Let us help, let us find somebody. So we brought some people in. It was a lot of money. We brought some people in to help put the money forward and then we're going to kind of take it through to the next chapter of its life because we believe in it that much uh aubry do you ever feel like a plastic bag twisting in the wind hoping to start again that's how i feel now i don't understand what's happening your ears do not deceive you the new owners of braggs are katy perry and orlando bloom lego loss and i kissed a girl are now in charge of braggs old left shark herself and hot elf own a company together not only did patricia bragg and katie perry's family go to the same church according to one of the profiles of Patricia Bragg, so grain of salt, right? It was actually the church where Katy's parents were the pastors. Oh, okay. Right. This is now my emotions are all over the place. I don't know what to think about this shit anymore. It's wild. I was like, this is the most, this is a mad lib of a coda to this story I know. It's weird. It's like the end of Clue. It's like in the study with the candlestick. Like this celebrity and this other celebrity. I don't have a ton to say about Katy Perry or Orlando Bloom or Press Juicery. I have no analysis. I have no analysis to add here. I'm just like, okay. It's too weird not to talk about. Yeah. I just feel good that it's now in the hands of people who are much more qualified to prevent sickness crime."

ACV health claims are built on a carnival grifter's marketing

The hosts conclude that most ACV health claims originated from Paul Bragg, a decades-long liar who packaged folk healing traditions in pseudo-scientific language. While some modest benefits for blood sugar exist, there is nothing unique about apple cider vinegar compared to any other vinegar.

"Elizabeth Hurley is like, I drink it every day day it tastes disgusting is what she keeps telling the press apple cider vinegar has been used in folk healing for ages but in the u.s its biggest boost of popularity in the last century mostly came from paul bragg oh yeah wrote a whole fucking book about Right. He suggested it for weight gain, for weight loss, for heart disease, for quote unquote female troubles, for hair loss, for kidney issues. It was genuinely like this is like celery juice levels of claims. Right. Basically, the evidence for some of those claims is overblown based on very limited studies by today's standards, based on the evidence we have today. Most of those studies have been small and most of them have only been in rats. Of course. Most of those claims have no evidence at all. Right. Some of them are overblown. Most of them, the evidence is non-existent, right? There are also quite a few claims that Bragg made and that have caught on more recently about sort of the gut health aspects of apple cider vinegar, that it's good for your microbiome, blah, blah, blah, blah. Love it. Bragg's in particular prides themselves on selling unfiltered apple cider vinegar. It has on the package. It says with quote unquote, the mother, the mother, as in kombucha refers to this sort of yeast bacteria colony that's produced during fermentation. Apple cider vinegar is touted as a major source of probiotics, but Michael, there is one catch. This is from an outstanding piece written by a food historian for Epicurious of all places. Get some recipes, get some history. Delightful. So the piece is called How Americans Became Obsessed with Drinking Apple Cider Vinegar. And here is what they have to say about this claim about probiotics. And what about the mother? Why is she such a big deal? Technically, a vinegar mother is not a probiotic as the acetic acid bacteria that comprise it can't survive in our guts. Its main component, cellulose, is not digestible. Shockey and Smith point out that there could be benefits to its consumption that have yet to be measured or quantified. But many artisanal vinegar makers don't include the mother in their products because it doesn't contribute anything to the flavor. Yeah, basically, there's no there's no reason to think this does fucking anything. But the people who are debunking it have to be like careful because you can't prove a negative. You can't prove that something doesn't have magical health benefits because how would you even do that? Well, and also I feel like the real fucking chestnut in that paragraph is it's a probiotic, but that probiotic can't survive in your body. Yeah. It's not the gut health stuff. It's not as easy as just like drink bacteria and then you'll have like new bacteria in your tummy. No, and the science is way too fucking new to even know most of how it works, right? It's bonkers. Yeah, we don't know that stuff. Here's the other thing I'll say about apple cider vinegar. I won't say it. The University of Chicago School of Medicine will say it. Quote, aside from probiotics, apple cider vinegar has a vitamin profile similar to apple juice. Hey, so we're drinking grape juice and apple juice on maintenance phase. Resveratrol and probiotics. We're finally becoming influencers, Aubrey. We're finally giving out individual health advice. Drink apple juice and grape juice. There is evidence of some of the claims related to apple cider vinegar and its health benefits. There is limited evidence that drinking apple cider vinegar after a meal may help people with diabetes moderately lower their blood sugar. But there's nothing definitive. It specifically does not, according to the University of Chicago School of Medicine, help manage hypertension, which is a claim that has been made about that. It does not do that. It also can erode the enamel of your teeth. There have been some wild case studies about tooth decay of people who have like been drinking straight apple cider vinegar all the time. And it is specifically very bad for people with kidney issues who may struggle to process all of the acid. Oh, okay. The University of Chicago School of Medicine is quick to point out that it's antimicrobial. So if you use it in a salad dressing, it kills the bacteria on your salad. You're welcome. Yeah, that's great. Okay. So you're unprobiotic-ing yourself by doing this. It's just interesting to dive into the science on this stuff and go, oh, this thing that everyone I know has been yelling about for a full decade is just a weird, it is a house built on a foundation of sand. It really feels like if you try to piece together the timeline in chronological order of these things, what it sounds like to me is that a guy who's just like a carnival ass grifter basically made up this thing about apple cider vinegar. And then other people have since looked into it. And like by coincidence, they have found that maybe there's a couple of benefits to this thing just because like, I don't know, it's an edible substance. So it probably has some benefits and some drawbacks like everything else. then people are now like using that to backfill like oh yeah the guy like the decades-long liar guy like he was actually right but like on what basis would he have said this at the time and like what he's telling folks is a scientific explanation for what they were already doing again this was part of an American folk healing tradition. Right. This offered people the sense that what they had already been doing was like a really good thing to do, not just for their own health, but for their own virtue and character. Right. Because of this sort of like deeply Christian language that Paul and Patricia Bragg use, it's not just a matter of caring for your body. It's a matter of, you know, your piety and your ability to resist temptation and like all of these sort of deeply, deeply Christian constructs. Right. He's selling people's pre-existing beliefs and behaviors back to them. And he's doing a thing that happens to this very day, which is getting very comfortable I'm not sure what that means. pre-existing beliefs and behaviors back to them. And he's doing a thing that happens to this very day, which is getting very comfortable muddling up people's perceived health with their character and morality and worth as people, right? All of that is getting dumped into the same bucket. Right. It's like a weird little kombucha of culture and capitalism and lies. And you just leave it there to ferment. I mean, what I can't get over is the specificity of apple cider vinegar. There's a million vinegars in the world. It doesn't make any sense that this would have magical properties. I'll tell you what. I love the taste of apple cider vinegar. Oh, my God. I use it in racional salads all the time. It's really good. Oh, my God. Salad dressing. It's the best. I also make shrub at home. Do you mean you're eating edibles? No. What's that? Edibles? No. Shrub is like a drinking vinegar. It's like you infuse vinegar. You add some sugar or sweetener of your choice and a bunch of fruit and let it macerate and then strain out the solids and you add that to like club soda or something it's extremely refreshing and delicious my parents always told me if you macerate you go blind that was abysmal i'm sorry are you ready for a little coda to the brag story yeah denow me first things first we're just gonna watch little clip. I sent it to you in the Zoom chat. Clip time. Let me know when you're queued up and ready. Why are we? Oh, no. Okay. I saw it's loading slowly. And it loaded this screen grab of Orlando Bloom on Jimmy Fallon. Get ready. And then the title loaded. I was very confused, but now I understand. The title of the clip is Orlando Bloom bonded with Katy Perry over apple cider vinegar. The crazy story. So I, when I met Katy, um, one of, one of our first dates, I was, she was, she had a bottle of water and when you pour it in the water, it makes it go kind of slightly off color. And we both have bottles of apple cider vinegar because I said, wait, what have you got in your water? And she was like, apple cider vinegar. I was like, no. We're made for each other. This is it. And then the really crazy part is that her mother had actually been part of a church group in Santa Barbara when she was growing up. And Katie got her first guitar from Patricia Bragg, who is now 90, who runs that company. And then the crazy part is that her mom said, you know, Patricia's getting up there and she wants to offload the company and she was about to sell it. And we were like, no, let us get in there. Let us help, let us find somebody. So we brought some people in. It was a lot of money. We brought some people in to help put the money forward and then we're going to kind of take it through to the next chapter of its life because we believe in it that much uh aubry do you ever feel like a plastic bag twisting in the wind hoping to start again that's how i feel now i don't understand what's happening your ears do not deceive you the new owners of braggs are katy perry and orlando bloom lego loss and i kissed a girl are now in charge of braggs old left shark herself and hot elf own a company together not only did patricia bragg and katie perry's family go to the same church according to one of the profiles of Patricia Bragg, so grain of salt, right? It was actually the church where Katy's parents were the pastors. Oh, okay. Right. This is now my emotions are all over the place. I don't know what to think about this shit anymore. It's wild. I was like, this is the most, this is a mad lib of a coda to this story I know. It's weird. It's like the end of Clue. It's like in the study with the candlestick. Like this celebrity and this other celebrity. I don't have a ton to say about Katy Perry or Orlando Bloom or Press Juicery. I have no analysis. I have no analysis to add here. I'm just like, okay. It's too weird not to talk about. Yeah. I just feel good that it's now in the hands of people who are much more qualified to prevent sickness crime."