A double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study found that body weight and belly fat were significantly reduced by adding just a single tablespoon of vinegar to one’s daily diet. Is there any benefit to vinegar consumption if you’re not overweight? Well, the subjects’ triglycerides normalized, and, for those taking the larger dose of two tablespoons per day, there was a dip in blood pressure. Those effects may have just been because of the weight loss, though. Other than taste, is there any benefit to normal-weight individuals sprinkling vinegar on their salads?
If you feed people a half cup of table sugar, as their blood sugars spike, their artery function can become impaired. The higher the blood sugars go, the more the arteries take a hit. There’s a drug, though, that can block sugar absorption. By blunting the blood sugar spike with this drug, you can prevent the arterial dysfunction. This demonstrates that it’s probably good for your heart if you don’t have big blood sugar spikes after meals. In fact, how high your blood sugars spike after a meal is a predictor for cardiovascular mortality. So do people who eat lots of high glycemic foods, like sugary foods and refined grains, tend to have more heart attacks and strokes? Yes. They also appear more likely to get diabetes—but maybe people who eat lots of Frosted Flakes and Wonder Bread have other bad dietary habits as well.
The diets that have been put to the test in randomized controlled trials and proven to prevent diabetes are the ones focusing on cutting down on saturated fat and ramping up the consumption of fiber-rich whole plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, without specific regard to lower or higher glycemic loads. The drug has been putto the test, though, and blunting one’s mealtime blood sugar spikes does seem to reducethe risk of developing diabetes, as well as reduce the risk of heart attacks and high blood pressure. So is there any way to prevent these blood sugar spikes without having to take drugs?
Yes, the drug can slow the progression of your atherosclerosis. But wouldn’t it be better to eat a diet that actually reverses heart disease and diabetes? The healthiest diet to prevent the meal-related blood sugar and fat spikes—the oxidation and inflammation—is a diet centered around whole plant foods. But what if you really want a bagel? Instead of spreading drugs on it, spreading on some almond butter may help blunt the blood sugar spike from refined carbs. Another option is to dip your baguette in some balsamic vinegar.
“The consumption of vinegar with meals was used as a home remedy for diabetes before the advent of pharmacologic glucose-lowering therapy”—that is, before drugs came along—but it wasn’t put to the test until 1988. After all, how much money can be made from vinegar? Well, according to The Vinegar Institute, millions of dollars can be made! But a single diabetes drug, like Rezulin, can pull in billions—that is, until it was pulled from the market for killing too many people by shutting down their livers. The drug company still made out like a bandit, though, having to pay out less than a billion to the grieving families for covering up the danger.
There’s no liver failure from schmearing peanut butter on a bagel, though, and it cuts the blood sugar response in half. Similarly, drinking four teaspoons of apple cider vinegar diluted in water gives the same blunting of the spike—with the additional advantage over the peanut butter of lowering insulin levels in the blood. This is something peanut butter apparently can’t do. But putting peanut butter on your bagel is presumably better than having a bagel with lox because fish causes triple the insulin response. Red wine also increases insulin levels, though not as much as fish does, and also shoots up triglycerides. Non-alcoholic red wine, however, doesn’t have the same problem.
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