BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb Vinegar, Wine and Digestion

With all this talk about apple cider vinegar, I did a bunch of research on how vinegar affects you. Here's an article I just wrote! Let me know if you have comments <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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Vinegar has a very definite impact on your digestion and stomach acid. This means if you have vinegar with each meal - say in your salad dressing - you have better digestion, nutrition, and weight loss.

Remember your old chemistry lessons? Or, if you have a pool, remember how a swimming pool works? There are acids and bases. Your stomach is a container of acid. Stomach acid is hydrochloric acid (HCl). It's got a pH of about 1-2 which is VERY acidic.

As we age, many of us stop making enough stomach acid. This leads to bad digestion of our food. This causes ALL sorts of problems. We don't get enough nutrition. Our stomach hurts. Things get into our bloodstream that are only partially digested and we get allergic reactions to them. Our blood sugar levels get screwy.

It's of course always in our best interest to fully and properly digest the things we eat.

A natural solution is to provide extra acid. This is where vinegar comes in! Vinegar is quite similar to what your body's stomach makes. Vinegar is acetic acid, with a pH of about 4.8. You don't want to ingest anything much more acidic than that!

That's why people eat salads with dressing before a meal - to naturally supplement the stomach acids in their tummy and to prepare for digesting the main meal. If you have 1-3 Tbsp of vinegar in your salad dressing, you should be all set.

Note that some people think they have too MUCH acid in their stomach because of the stomach pains and therefore take antacids - i.e. "bases" that reduce the acid levels in their stomach. This only makes it worse! If you're having stomach problems, you can ask your doctor for a Heidelberg test. That will test if your stomach has too much or too little acid.

As a final note, wine has a pH of 3.5 - so it's more acidic than vinegar. That's why drinking wine with a meal is so healthy for digestion!

Very informative, Lisa! I'll definitely include more vinegar in our meals!

Can't say I've ever found wine to help with digestion - after the second bottle I have appaling heartburn.

How exactly would we use the vinegar? Cooked or straight out of the bottle and how many times a day and about how much?

Cooked vinegar? How peculiar.

LOL I think the key with wine is moderation; 2 bottles might be a bit much <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The aim with the vinegar is to help supplement the stomach acids at that moment, for digestion. So if you have a salad before lunch and a salad before dinner, each with olive-oil and vinegar dressing, that is perfect. Olive oil is incredibly healthy for you, and the vinegar will help your stomach digest the meal.

Of course if you want to make a meal that includes vinegar in the recipe, that is cooked, then that is fine. But the benefit of the salad is multiple. It gets to you first, so the acid is then in your stomach to digest the main part of the meal. The greens are very healthy for you. The greens are primarily water so you get your water intake. You get the olive oil. There are just so many different reasons to get into the salad habit ...