 The shocking benefits of vinegar in your diet? Well vinegar has been around a very long time. In fact, research shows that vinegar has probably existed for at least 4,000 years BC. Probably as long as wine has been being made and we've been using it in a variety of ways ever since then. But first of all, what exactly is vinegar? Well the term vinegar comes from French, meaning sour wine. And wine and vinegar are both made by fermenting or turning fruit juices into alcohol. However, the key difference between wine and vinegar is that wine is fermented with yeast while vinegar is fermented with bacteria. And many of you may know that Pasteur became famous in figuring out why wine would sometimes go bad and turn into vinegar. And he discovered that in fact the wine that turned into vinegar had been contaminated by bacteria. And he became the toast of the French court and the French Kings and his fame led to, of course, pasteurization, which was killing off the harmful bacteria in wine. And that's how he actually got famous, but that's an entirely another story. But vinegar in a way is bad wine. Now, wine yeast ferments the sugars in grape juice into alcohol while bacteria can ferment the alcohol into acetic acid. And depending on the variety of what you're fermenting, you can get multiple other forms of vinegar, such as malic acid is in apple cider vinegar, as well as acetic acid, and so on. Now the sour taste of vinegars actually comes from these acetic acids. Now, what's so important about acetic acid? Well, if you've read the Unlocking the Keto Code book, you know that acetic acid is one of the short chain fatty acids that's so actually essential to your good health. The other short chain fatty acid that I talk about extensively is butyrate or butyric acid. There's also another short chain fatty acid called propionic acid or propionate, but these short chain fatty acids are primarily the product of bacterial fermentation of sugars. And these short chain fatty acids, and in this case, acetic acid, have a variety of exciting host benefits in consuming them, because we now know that these are part of post-biotics. And these short chain fatty acids are actually communication systems to our mitochondria, to our cells, that impart, actually, improvement in the mitochondrial performance, and are part of uncoupling mitochondria for improved mitochondrial health. So vinegars are an easy way to get the byproducts of fermentation into your diet without necessarily depending on the bacteria in your gut. As many of you know, most of us, our guts are a desert wasteland from years of antibiotics exposure, antibiotics in our food products, years of glyphosate exposure, roundup, which has killed off most of our healthy bacteria. So that even many well-meaning people who say, well, I need to get more fiber in my diet because the fiber will make butyrate, will make acetate, will make propionic acid, and Dr. Gendry says, I really need those. Most of us, unfortunately, don't have the proper set of bacteria to accomplish that job. So that's why vinegar is a really easy and tasty way of getting these short chain fatty acids that you should be making into your diet. Okay. The big benefit of vinegar is as an uncoupler, as making your mitochondria work less hard to make your mitochondria actually waste calories. And one of the things that you may have noticed on social media is that vinegar is helped with weight loss. Well, there's nothing magical and mystical about how this happens. Because vinegar contains these short chain fatty acids, then these short chain fatty acids uncouple mitochondria making you actually waste energy. And there are well-controlled studies showing that the use of, say, apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar added to an otherwise isochloric diet will foster weight loss. Now, there is another potential way that vinegar is helped with weight loss. Normally, after we eat something, food is kept in the stomach until all the protein that you ate in that food is digested. And the way the stomach determines whether all the protein has been digested is the acid in your stomach is used up in digesting the protein. And as the acid level in your stomach falls, that's a signal to open up the pyloric valve at the base of the stomach and let the food go into your duodenum and intestines. It's the drop in acid that triggers the opening of the pyloric valve. So one of the theories of why apple cider vinegar or vinegars may increase your feeling of fullness and may even lower blood sugar is that the acid load of eating that vinegar keeps the acid slightly higher in the stomach longer. And so you have a longer period where the stomach is full and not empty. And you have a longer period where the food contents of your stomach are put into the intestines where sugar is absorbed. So that's probably a secondary effect, but the big effect of vinegars that we now know is the short chain fatty acid. Now there's different vinegars and that's kind of the fun thing about vinegars. There are multiple vinegars made from multiple sources. There's red wine vinegar, there's champagne vinegar, there's sherry vinegar. You name it, there's apple cider vinegar. You choose the vinegar, you're going to get a different flavor profile and additionally you're actually going to get a different polyphenol profile. Now one of my personal favorites is aged balsamic vinegar. Now it has multiple polyphenols, but perhaps most important. It is the most concentrated form of resveratrol that you can get. Now most balsamic vinegars come from Modena, Italy, and I visited multiple plants where balsamic vinegars made. And fun fact, balsamic vinegars traditionally made from only one form of grape, the Trebiano grape, balsamic vinegar though can be aged and concentrated. And the longer balsamic vinegar is aged, the more concentrated the syrupy flavor and the more concentrated the polyphenols are, including resveratrol, and the more concentrated the short chain fatty acid. So always look for aged balsamic vinegar. The longer the aging process, quite frankly, the more expensive it is. Now I have no relationship with this company, but there is a wonderful company that makes aged balsamic vinegar, and it's remarkably reasonable. And it's called Napa Valley Naturals, and I'm sure their website will be inundated after this. Please don't buy it all because I need it. But they have 25 year aged balsamic vinegar that's thick and luscious, and what I like to do is as you know, make a fake Coke by having balsamic vinegar, one or two tablespoons, and sand, pelagrino, sparkling water stirred around. It's going to be the best Coke you've ever had. And as you know, I was the one who actually started this trend many years ago. So great use of balsamic vinegar. Now how about apple cider vinegar? Now apple cider vinegar contains the mother, and the mother is actually the dead bodies of the yeast and bacteria. Now what's so cool about these dead bodies is we now know that these dead cells carry information as if they were living yeast and bacteria. And the more we learn about the benefits of fermented foods, the more we're realizing that even though most fermented foods don't have active populations of bacteria or yeast, they still carry messages that are actually essential to increase our gut microbiome diversity, and they're actually essential of calming the immune system. So it's a win-win. So the mother is that good stuff that you really do want to incorporate. Now there's a lot of trendy shots of balsamic vinegars, of apple cider vinegars. You got to be careful with these shots. So many of them have had added sugar because quite frankly, a shot of vinegar is an acquired taste. And so many companies to get you to think you're going to get the benefits of apple cider vinegar or other vinegars will add sugar to the shot to get you more interested in consuming that. Also, the beverages that have apple cider vinegar in them, buy or beware. Make sure you look at the total carbohydrates per serving, not the total added sugars. Look at total carbohydrates per serving. And oftentimes you'll be surprised that this healthy beverage is actually a sugar bomb. Now, I love to use vinegars and salad dressing. I like to change. I probably got six or seven vinegars at any one time in my pantry, and I change almost every day. Here's a great mixture that's really easy to do. You take a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, a third of a cup of extra virgin olive oil, Dijon mustard, a little bit of honey, garlic, salt and pepper. Put it in a blender or just shake it up and make sure you're actually getting apple cider vinegar with the mother, if at all possible. And that's, look at it, contains the mother will be on the label. Vinegar, as you know, is also great for household cleaning. You can put it in your laundry at a half a cup of distilled white vinegar into your washing machine's detergent compartment. Make your own multi-purpose cleanser. Use a one-to-one ratio of diluted vinegar and water and store it in a spray bottle. And what do I use it for? Clean out your coffee maker. It's great for dissolving calcium deposits. All right, vinegar. It's not just for breakfast anymore, huh? Believe it or not, have a vinegar and sparkling water with your breakfast. You'll get a kickstart to your day. I think you're going to love this next one. Vitamin D in sun exposure is critical to our functioning as a human being.