The claim fails against the available evidence.
Researchers measured urine pH across citrus juices: orange juice alkalised it; lemon, grapefruit and lime didn't. The ritual picked the wrong fruit. For kidney stones, lemon juice is unproven: the one randomised trial of it that counted new stones could not rule out chance, and one in five got heartburn.
Canola is rapeseed bred low in erucic acid — the name literally means Canadian oil, low acid. The FDA ban people cite was against mustard oil, not this. Erucic acid does fatten animal hearts at high doses, which is why it was bred down to trace levels and is capped by law. And in 13 head-to-head trials, canola lowered LDL more than olive oil did.
Cut dietary linoleic acid by up to 90% and arachidonic acid in the blood doesn't move — the arachidonic acid route to inflammation fails at step one. But two recovered BMJ trials found no mortality benefit, and in one, more men died on the oil. Here is the whole file, including what's wrong with both halves.
The whole scare rests on one 2009 study of 20 rugby players that measured DHT and never looked at anyone's hair. The 56% rise it found moved men from 0.98 to 1.53 nmol/L — the normal range is 0.8 to 3.5. In 2025 a trial finally examined hair directly for 12 weeks and found no difference at all.
On the same day in July 2023, IARC called aspartame 'possibly carcinogenic' — a hazard statement, third of four levels — and JECFA reaffirmed the safe daily intake, noting a 70 kg adult would need 9–14 cans of diet drink a day to exceed it. The press ran the first report. WHO's own nutrition director said safety is not a major concern at normal doses.
The 2023 study behind 'sweetener damages DNA' is real, competently run and industry-free — and every experiment in it happened in a dish. Its own authors write that the health effects 'are not yet known'. That sentence did not make the coverage.
13 trials, 606 people, and a real dose-response — but an I-squared of 94%, meaning the trials flatly disagree, and no figure you could act on. Meanwhile the famous green coffee claim of 17.7 lb 'with or without diet and exercise' came from a study whose weights were altered. It cost $3.5 million and was retracted.
Across 21 studies, the people who lifted and did cardio still built a large amount of muscle — less than lifting alone, but nowhere near losing any. The cost is real and it depends on how much you do, and running causes it while cycling mostly doesn't.
Twenty-one trials longer than eight weeks, screened from 23,441 records: a trend toward benefit, and a confidence interval that includes zero. Then the FTC found the marquee study's subjects had been told to diet and exercise — while the press release said they hadn't.
Fifteen women, a ventilated hood, and 100 g of celery: digesting it cost 13.76 of the 16 calories it delivered. That is 86% — far closer to free than we first said. It is still not negative, and the researchers said so themselves.