 the best way is to get vinegar in your diet. Let me talk about the primary benefits of having vinegar every day. You may remember from unlocking the keto code that vinegar is a fermented food and fermented foods are good for you but it turns out that fermentation that produces acetic acid may be one of the keys to actually improving your gut health. We now know that the bacteria that produce this marvelous short chain fatty acid called butyrate need to have acetic acid another short chain fatty acid to produce butyrate. In fact if they don't have acetic acid they can't make butyrate. So where's an easy way to get acetic acid? Vinegar. In additional benefit of vinegar is that vinegars contain polyphenols and the exciting thing about vinegars is that each different vinegar has different polyphenols. So the more different vinegars you use and drink and put on your food, put in your food, the better off you are. So here are some of my favorite ways to get more vinegar in your diet. Now one of the easiest ways to do it is to just take a shot of it every morning or add it to your green smoothie. You'll never notice it's in there but your gut buddies will. Now salad dressings are the obvious way. I actually like to make all my own salad dressings and I like to use a really high quality olive oil like mine but I like to mix it up with different vinegars. So one day you may want to use white vinegar. Next day you might want to use fig vinegar. The next day you might want to use a balsamic vinegar. Mix it up. You can change every day and just have a good time. Use apple cider vinegar in your salad dressing. Now just a word of warning about store bought dressings. They're full of sugar. They usually use really bad oils so you got to read the labels very carefully. There are a few brands out there like Braggs like Primal but in general it's so easy to make these at home. All you need is a little shake bottle if you want to use like a magic bullet. That's what I do at home. Feel free to use this as a base and just have fun. Throw dry mustard in there. Try regular mustard in there. I like to use Italian herbs and spices in my salad dressing. However you use these just pour it on. How about a healthy coat? Most of you have seen this on TV but most of you actually don't know that I was the originator of this in my first book Unlocking the Keto Code. It's phenomenal taking balsamic vinegar and I like the really thick stuff the aged one and pour it into sparkling water particularly sand pellegrino. Now if you don't want that bitter you can actually add a little bit of alulose which is my preferred sweetener and that'll sweeten it up and you'll actually give your gut buddies even more of what they want. I've amazed a couple waitresses and one of my guests at lunch the other day they had never heard of such a thing. They wondered if I was drinking iced tea and wanted to refill my glass and I pointed out that I was putting balsamic vinegar in and they go what the heck and they went back to the store the restaurant they came back so oh my gosh that is great want to change it up add some lime or lemon to it otherwise do like the Italians do they drizzle aged balsamic over their ice cream and I just happen to have coconut ice cream here so you'll see this in Italian restaurants in Italy all the time put vinegar on your ice cream but make sure it's the sugar-free coconut how about yogurt now yogurt is pretty tangy in the first place but there's no reason not to add vinegar to your yogurt it's an easy way to get more of these fermented foods in your diet and if it's a little too tangy for you take some allulose and sweeten it up the other thing that I've talked about before please please please do not buy flavored yogurts do not buy fruit flavored yogurts they are loaded with sugar preferably by goat or sheep yogurt they're readily available in major stores now and if it's a little too tangy for you just mix in some allulose which will give you additional benefits in feeding your gut buddies without any calories and believe it or not allulose is a true sugar it's a true natural sugar was first discovered in figs by the way add it to baked goods you'll notice that my waffle mix actually calls for adding some vinegar to the mix so take a teaspoon of vinegar and put it in whatever you're going to bake the vinegar will be affected by heating because you're not actually looking for any friendly probiotics you're actually looking for not only acetic acid but you're looking for the remnants of what those probiotics make post biotics and even the mother is some of the remnants that you're looking for when you're looking for vinegars so don't be afraid of vinegar embrace vinegar as probably one of the greatest health foods that you need to get more in your diet and finally i want to answer some of the questions you had about my most recent vinegar video on youtube number one doesn't matter which vinegar i use actually the more you mix it up the better i probably have eight to ten different vinegars in my cupboard at any time and it's really fun to play with these vinegars they all have different tastes they all have different polyphenols is there one with maximum benefits no they're all going to have acetic acid but you're also looking for those polyphenol compounds so look for darker ones look for different flavored ones my favorite quite frankly are balsamic i love champagne vinegar this is a great one fig balsamic vinegar that's produced here in california i've got two of my favorite fruits age grapes and figs is rice vinegar okay yeah rice vinegar is okay remember fermentation destroys any lectins that's in a food so rice vinegar is perfectly acceptable next question does vinegar break a fast no the good news is vinegar does not break a fast and moreover it's actually going to improve your ability to generate short chain fatty acids like butyrate and you may remember that both butyrate and acetic acid acetate can be converted in the liver to ketones so why not drink some tasty ketones next question how important is it to use apple cider vinegar with the mother well you're really looking for the acetic acid but the mother contains all those polyphenols and the postbiotics that actually signal your gut microbiome to be more diverse and i talk about a lot of this in my upcoming book it's actually really exciting information on why fermented foods are actually so valuable and it's not what most people think next question what about enamel doesn't this strip enamel if i have too much now look you're not going to have a bottle of vinegar a day and you're usually going to have the vinegar with something else in a shot is just a shot it is going to go down and it's not going to be in contact with your mouth for very long no you can't destroy your enamel with it can i have too much i haven't seen anybody have too much i use it multiple times a day and i'm still standing what can i use if i'm allergic to vinegar um this is actually a unusual question for me because we manufacture acetic acid in our gut constantly so we we can't be allergic to something that we make every day and that's present in our gut and for that matter in our bloodstream so you're probably allergic to something that vinegar was made from so what i'd suggest is actually start with distilled vinegar distilled white vinegar which is only acetic acid and see if you tolerate that you'll still get the acetic acid and then start looking for what you react to or not does palm wine count as a vinegar well palm wine that's fermented to vinegar will become vinegar but palm wine per se is not necessarily vinegar now there's other great uses for vinegar it's great for cleaning as most of you know are there any other health benefits of drinking white vinegar the only one is it is a source of acetic acid but you're leaving behind all the other polyphenols and postbiotic compounds that really make true vinegars much better for you in the long run doesn't vinegar kill off bacteria i'm confused to how good it is for you isn't it handled as a toxic substance by the body nothing could be further from the truth vinegar actually supports the growth of healthy bacteria in your gut vinegar is not a toxic substance acetic acid is normally produced in our body it's essential short chain fatty acid and the more acetic acid you make the healthy you are exactly the opposite of your question vinegar hurts my stomach lining can't take it why is that that's another odd question because quite frankly your stomach acid is so much more potent than the acid in vinegar it's not the acid in vinegar that's bothering your stomach so let's try some tricks dilute it in a little bit of water or a whole glass of water and see if that changes things use distilled white vinegar and dilute it put it in yogurt put it in salad but it's not the acid in vinegar the acetic acid in vinegar is so mild that it can't possibly compete with the acid already in your stomach the next episode of the dr gunnery podcast is waiting for you now vinegar is a really easy and tasty way of getting these short chain fatty acids that you should be making into your diet