You might associate fall with pumpkin or butternut squash recipes. But for a small but vocal minority, the item that best embodies the season is fire cider—a popular drink that not only incorporates autumnal ingredients, but also boosts your immune system during cold and flu season…or so its advocates say. Search “fire cider” on TikTok and you’ll find dozens upon dozens of videos of people brewing their own version, typically accompanied by a voiceover singing its praises. “The best thing that’s going to keep you from getting sick this winter is going to be fire cider,” one creator proclaims in an August 22 clip that has nearly 40,000 likes and more than 30,000 saves.
If you haven’t heard of the beverage before, let’s start by defining it. Simply put, fire cider is a concoction made from apple cider vinegar and various vegetables, herbs, and spices. While it typically contains onion, garlic, ginger, horseradish, and cayenne pepper (hence the “fire” in the name), the exact ingredient combination is infinitely tweak-able, so countless variations and spinoffs exist. Judging by the TikTok videos (and according to the Cleveland Clinic), turmeric, rosemary, lemons, oranges, and jalapeños or habaneros are commonly added as well.
Regardless of your preferred combo, making fire cider is about as easy as, well, pie: Just pack your preferred items into a glass jar, let the mixture steep for a few weeks, strain it through cheesecloth, and add a sweetener like honey as necessary. Traditionally, people drink fire cider in daily shots to shore up your body’s infection-fighting capabilities. (Not that this experience is anywhere near pleasant, as the pinched expressions on TikTok show. “Tastes like spicy rocket fuel… but keeps the sniffles away,” one caption cautions.)
Of course, it’s always a smart idea to take claims like these with a grain of salt: Many “home remedies” and “herbal tonics” are more snake oil than miracle cure, after all. When I first came across fire cider videos on TikTok, some of the trad-life-esque terminology and language set off alarm bells in my brain. Instinctive skepticism aside, I also had food safety concerns about the brewing process.
Like I mentioned above, fire cider is made by steeping all the ingredients in a jar for several weeks in a cool, dark place—an approach that made me wonder about the risk for bacterial proliferation or mold growth. With all that stuff stewing away in a confined space that might not have been sufficiently cleaned beforehand, it seemed highly possible that the emerging potion could be a microbial breeding ground. So I reached out to an expert for her take: Is the final product safe to drink? And if so, will it have the promised health benefits? Or will it be as I feared—ineffective at best, and potentially harmful at worst?
“Individually, these ingredients are undeniably beneficial,” Anthea Levi, MS, RD, a Brooklyn-based health writer and founder of Alive+Well Nutrition, tells SELF of the aforementioned staples. “Apple cider vinegar contains blood sugar-balancing acetic acid, garlic is naturally antiviral, and ginger is a potent antiemetic that can also support healthy digestion.” What’s more, she adds, incorporating citrus fruits like lemons and oranges “also supplies vitamin C, a potent antioxidant that supports immune function by helping cells fight off pathogens.”
That said, the whole fire cider premise has a critical flaw: Namely, that there’s no real advantage to putting all these ingredients together over simply enjoying them on their own, according to Levi. “There are immense benefits to consuming the ingredients used to make fire cider, but they don't necessarily have to be ingested in this form—and may actually provide additional benefits when consumed in more pleasant ways,” she says.
Take oranges or lemons as an example. Eaten whole, they’ll deliver a solid amount of fiber—a crucial carb that keeps you full, controls your blood sugar, boosts your digestive health, and prevents constipation (and, incidentally, even supports immunity in its own right by feeding the “good” bacteria in your gut). One medium-sized orange packs close to four grams, for example. By comparison, drinks infused with lemon or orange (like fire cider) are basically fiber-free, so they don’t offer the same perks. Similarly, Levi says, raw, crushed garlic is “possibly even more potent when enjoyed with fresh tomatoes and olive oil on a slice of sourdough bread.” (Not to mention, she adds, “eating an orange or a slab of bruschetta will probably be more enjoyable than downing a shot of fire cider every day.”)
Drinking fire cider can potentially cause some undesirable side effects—and maybe even health complications, according to Levi. While submerging the various ingredients in apple cider vinegar helps reduce the risk of contamination (since bacteria don’t like acidic environments), she says, there’s a major catch: “If the ingredients are not fully submerged in the vinegar, there's potential for risky mold growth.” Besides, Levi adds, “There's also always a chance that the produce or equipment used hasn't been properly washed or cleaned, which could pose food safety concerns, particularly for those at high risk, such as elderly, pregnant, or immunocompromised individuals.”
What’s more, the sheer kick of the final product may cause GI distress. “Mixing all of these ingredients together may not sit well with everyone,” Levi says. “For people prone to acid reflux, downing ACV infused with citrus and cayenne pepper could be a recipe for discomfort, as acidic and spicy foods are among the top causes of reflux symptoms.” Because of this, she recommends that people with reflux and gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining) avoid it in particular. Drinking highly acidic beverages like fire cider regularly can also cause dental issues: It can “erode tooth enamel over time, compromising oral health,” Levi says.
And last but not least, there’s also no real evidence to back up one core claim about fire cider: That it prevents cold and flu in the first place, or—as the TikTok caption quoted above puts it—“keeps the sniffles away.” Yes, fire cider “is one way to get immune-friendly nutrients into your system,” but this hardly makes it “a proven strategy” for staving off illness, Levi says. Research shows that even a more scientifically solid intervention like taking a daily vitamin C supplement won’t necessarily protect you—rather, it only slightly reduces the duration and severity of symptoms if you come down with a bug.
For all these reasons, fire cider is a skip for Levi. Bottom line: “There are plenty of ways to obtain the same health benefits from fire cider's ingredients that don't come with potential food safety concerns or the risk of adverse side effects like enamel erosion and esophageal irritation,” she says. In light of that verdict, we think we’ll rely on a different kind of shot as our primary flu prevention measure—the type administered by a trained clinician in a pharmacy or doctor’s office, not housed in a can’t-remember-when-you-last-cleaned-it canister.
