Amazing Vinegar

[roland]

My mum uses vinegar for everything, the latest of course is wrapping the Xmas ham in a cotton bag (it's actually my old library drawstring bag that she made in the 1960's) soaked in vinegar. Keeps the ham fresh for ages.....

Where Does Vinegar Come From?

Vinegar is made when fresh, naturally sweet cider is fermented into an alcoholic beverage (hard cider). Then it is fermented once again. The result is vinegar.

Nobody knows for sure when mankind first discovered this, but most likely vinegar has been around for thousands of years, when man began to ferment fruits to make wine.

Check out some of the uses for vinegar: http://www.vinegartips.com/Scripts/pageViewSec.asp?id=7

 

[danago]

From McGee's On Food and Cooking (great book for anybody interested in cooking and the chemistry involved):

"Because fermented plant juices naturally turn sour with acetic acid, our ancestors discovered wine and vinegar together. In fact, a major challenge in winemaking was to delay this souring by limiting the wines exposure to the air. The Babylonians were making vinegar from date wine, raisin wine and beer from around 4000 BCE."

A great accidental invention

I use the chemical properties of vinegar quite a bit when i'm teaching chemistry because acetic acid exhibits some interesting properties and it is something that can be found in pretty much any household, so students can relate to it easily.

 

[white_crane]

We do the same for the ham bag.

Something which isn't in that list:
If you mix concentrated vinegar with salt, you can use it as a contact weed killer

Note: It will kill whatever it touches and I would only use it in small amounts (don't want to add too much salt to the soil).

 

[burglar]

Reduces swelling in sprained ankles

 

[Julia]

Something which isn't in that list:
If you mix concentrated vinegar with salt, you can use it as a contact weed killer

Note: It will kill whatever it touches and I would only use it in small amounts (don't want to add too much salt to the soil).

I can recall my mother using just salt in hot water to kill weeds successfully so you probably don't even need the vinegar.

Also frequently notice a house where they sprinkle common salt over the paved driveway to kill weeds, just dry. Seems to work.

 

[DB008]

Yep, there is literally 1000 and 1 uses for Vingear.
From cleaning household products, to health benefits to who knows what.
It's cheap as chips too.

 

[noco]

Apple cider vinegar is great for your health. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with a teaspoon of honey in warm water before meals is great for arthritis, clears the main arteries of plaque and very beneficial for the urinary track.
The benifits of apple cider vinegar used to be available from some book stores.

 

[motorway]

that lemon juice produces a net alkaline PRAL (potential renal acid load) in the
body? Despite being acidic to the taste, its consumption will contribute to a net metabolic alkalosis (what you want) and help to prevent bone demineralization (osteoporosis)

that vinegar produces a net acid
PRAL and is virtually devoid of any micronutrients? Hence vinegar can be viewed as a nutritionally empty food that carries with it the baggage of promoting a net metabolic acidosis which in turn contributes to age associated bone loss.
Do yourself a favor and use lemon juice on your
salads and in your salad dressing!

So be careful don't over do vinegar..

Or else eg: You will turn alkalizing healthy salads into less healthy acid yielding meals ....

Source Loren Cordain PH D==>

"Bone mineral content is based upon net calcium balance. This is the amount of calcium you take in minus the amount of
calcium you excrete. This helps explain why the U.S. has one of the highest rates of osteoporosis in the world despite having
one of the highest calcium intakes worldwide.

All digested food ultimately reports to the kidneys as either acid or base. If the diet yields a net acid load, the acid must be
buffered by the alkaline stores of base in the body. The highest acid-producing foods are hard cheeses, cereal grains, salted
foods, meats, fish and eggs.

The only alkaline, base-producing foods are fruits and vegetables. Because the average
American diet is overloaded with grains, cheeses, salted processed foods, and fatty meats at the expense of fruits and
vegetables, virtually everyone in the U.S. has chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis.

Many nutritionists think the degree of this metabolic acidosis is mild and inconsequential since it does not affect blood pH.
However, this perturbation of systemic acid-base balance is, in part, responsible for the age-related loss of bone and skeletal
muscle mass.

To buffer the excess acid, alkaline calcium salts are released from bone.

Many studies with kidney patients have shown that a chronic metabolic acidosis leads to bone loss and muscle loss
For most folks, the dietary-induced damage to the skeleton, skeletal muscle, and kidneys is cumulative over a lifetime and appears later in life.

It's also important to mention that some studies have shown that hypertension could also result from a disturbance in the acidbase balance. Further evidence of this link comes from the fact that chloride seems to be a major determinant of the diet's net
acid load and from the fact that old studies show that chloride raised blood pressure to a significantly higher level than did
sodium
.
Normal adult humans eating the typical Western diet, whose metabolism yields more acids (sulphuric acid from meat, fish,
eggs, dairy and cereal grains) than base (bicarbonate from fruits and vegetables), have chronic, low-grade metabolic acidosis.

This is aggravated by the normal age-related decline in overall renal function.
To correct this low-grade metabolic acidosis, focus on eating a high amount of fruits and vegetables, and lower consumption of grains, hard cheese, and chloride. This will bring the body back into acid/base balance, which naturally brings it back into calcium balance, and has numerous other health benefits. Remember, the
goal is to avoid a net acid load on your kidneys. "


References: http://www.thepaleodiet.com/v4n13.shtml

Motorway

 

[Happy]

My Grandmother used to say:
One drop of vinegar kills 10 drops of blood!

This is probably not true, but a lot of wisdom from times well before science revolution has something of value.

We used vinegar for cleaning but not much for consumption.

Lemon was preferred "acid" source in our kitchen.