Gabe Mirkin, M.D.
Vinegar is an excellent preservative and a good
household cleaner, but it is not a medicine or a weight-loss drug.
Several popular books claim that vinegar prevents cancer and
heart disease, lowers high blood pressure and helps you to lose
weight, but here is no evidence to support any of these claims.
One of the books explains that vinegar helps you to lose weight
because oil and vinegar don't mix, so vinegar and your fat won't
either.
Vinegar is nothing more than a mixture of 95 percent
water and around 5 percent acetic acid, made from grapes,
apples, rice, potatoes or other fermented plants. It is very low in calories, but the only way vinegar could possibly help you to lose weight is by causing you to eat lots of salads while you cut back on other sources of calories.
You can put vinegar in a footbath to help soften hard
calluses. Because it is acidic, it prevents the growth of bacteria in a bottle and is used as a preservative to pickle a wide variety of foods. However, it has not been shown to prevent infection in
humans. Vinegar is an excellent and cheap cleaning agent. You
can mix equal parts vinegar and water and use it to clean a
coffee pot, remove stains from clothing or dissolve rust spots.
Checked 8/8/10