Vinegar as a Diet Addition

David Trammel's picture

Recently I ran across a couple of articles on the effects of adding vinegar to your diet.

https://www.care2.com/greenliving/why-you-shouldnt-skip-adding-vinegar-to-your-next-salad.html

Vinegar has the effect of helping your arteries dilate naturally by boosting the activity of an enzyene your body produces that signals this. High fat meals have the effect of constricting arterial size and can lead to problems like heart attacks.

Vinegar also reduces the spike in blood sugars and insulin spikes, which may help people who are at risk of diabetes. The amount of vinegar required seems low, in the 2 tablespoon range, and while you would think salads, vinegar can be added to a wide range of foods.

https://www.care2.com/greenliving/whats-the-optimal-daily-vinegar-dose.html

What if you consume vinegar every day for months? Researchers at Arizona State University randomized pre-diabetics to take daily either a bottle of an apple cider vinegar drink, a half bottle at lunch, and the remaining half at dinner, or an apple cider vinegar tablet, which was pretty much considered to be a placebo control. While the bottled drink contained two tablespoons of vinegar, the two tablets only contained about one third of a teaspoon. So in effect, the study was comparing about 40 spoonfuls of vinegar a week to 2 spoonfuls for 12 weeks. What happened? On the vinegar drink, fasting blood sugars dropped by 16 points within one week. How significant is a drop of 16 points?

Well, this simple dietary tweak of a tablespoon of vinegar twice a day worked better than the leading drugs like Glucophage and Avandia. This effect of vinegar is particularly noteworthy when comparing the cost, access, and toxicities associated with pharmaceutical medications. So the vinegar is safer, cheaper, and more effective. This could explain why it’s been used medicinally since antiquity. Interestingly, even the tiny amount of vinegar in pill form seemed to help a bit. That’s astonishing. And, no: The study was not funded by a vinegar company.

Blueberry's picture

Vinegar can be a trigger because it dilates the arteries. Has lots of health benefits but not for me.