I came up with a small but useful new trick.
Plain old apple cider vinegar has a big reputation going back at least to Hippocrates for having many beneficial effects for the body. It has important anti-bacterial properties, it's good for your blood pressure and Ph, and it will even help people on diuretics maintain their potassium balance. A teaspoon or two a day will do you a lot of good. I'm told that Heinz brand is said to have a particularly good chemistry. It's the cheapest medicine you can buy.
The problem is that it doesn't do ANY good if you don't take it, and vinegar generally rates as pretty nasty tasting to me. A few drops in a salad dressing now and again is ok, but I ain't swigging this stuff from the bottle. It is usually recommended to dilute it in a glass of water. However, this just means drinking a whole cup of really nasty tasting stuff. That just doesn't get it for me.
Here's my new trick: plain old tomato juice. A teaspoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with as little as four ounces of tomato juice becomes FAR more palatable. That's still a little strong, but that's about enough that it tastes halfway decent. You may wish to use a whole glass of juice. I'm guessing that V8 will do just as well.
I wouldn't think that I'm the first person ever to come up with this simple trick, but I see no such recommendations scouting around the web. Maybe I'm just a genius.
Anyhow, mixed as a tomato juice/vinegar tonic, I might actually manage to regularly enough consume vinegar to get the benefit. Perhaps you might find this useful as well.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Angela Chen Shui
Thanks for the reminder, Al!!!
In the good old days I used to mix with water, put in a wine glass and pretent to be sipping el vino!!!
Apple cider vinegar is EXCELLENT stuff!
2 - Al Barger
You're more than welcome, Miss Angela. Try some tomato juice and vinegar, and give us your review.
3 - Eric Berlin
Al,
It seems as though many vocal conservatives are also into herbal/natural remedies. Case in point: Michael Savage.
Can you elaborate on this phenomenon?
Eric Berlin
Dumpster Bust: Miracles from Mind Trash
4 - Al Barger
I don't know, but I'm certainly willing to speculate wildly based on my own prejudices. My first guess would be that this would turn on philosophical belief in personal responsibility and self-sufficiency. If a cranky right winger isn't feeling good, they might be inclined to go hunt down something that will work for them, rather than leaning on the authority figures of doctors and hospitals.
On the other hand, I typically think of health food stores as a classic refuge for left wing nuts and hippie types.
Perhaps it's the wingnuts on all ends that are more likely to experiment with alternative medicine, leaving the mushy middle behind.
5 - Eric Berlin
I think you're onto something...
6 - Aaman
How does the combination taste? I mean tomato juice and vinegar?
7 - Frank Csorba
I simply make cucumber salad.
Recipe -
6 cucumbers, peeled and sliced thin
1/3 cup applecider vinegar
1 cup water
2-3 small cloves of Garlic, minced fine or put through a garlic press
1/2 Tablespoon salt
1 heaping Tablespoon sugar
Salt down the thinly sliced cucmbers and mix. Place in refrigerator for a minimum of 1 1/2 hours. Refrigerate overnight if possible. This step is critical because it draws the cucumber juices out.
Mix again when you remove it from the fridge and sample a slice. It should be distinctly salty, if it is not add a little more salt.
sugar
Add the applecider vinegar, the water, the garlic, and the sugar and mix well and serve while still cold.
It tastes so good, I can't help but drink the vinegar juices after the cucumbers are eaten. It tastes even better after the second and third day of refrigeration.
8 - Eric Olsen
okay, but what are the tangible benefits if you don't have high blood pressure, aren't on diuretics and don't have the slightest idea about Ph?
9 - bhw
Methinks Al had the bejesus scared out of him recently, enough to send him to the free-range food aisle at the market.
10 - Eric Olsen
here are the supplements I take twice daily:
multiple vitamin
Vitamin C
Vitamin E
St John's Wort
Saw Palmetto
Milk Thistle
Echinacea, only if I feel something untoward coming on
11 - bhw
Eric, what are the bennies of Saw Palmetto and Milk Thistle?
12 - Eric Olsen
saw palmetto is for prostate health so you don't to worry much about that; milk thistle is for the liver, so the more other things you take, the more important to look after liver, since your liver has to process all that stuff, some of which is very hard on it
13 - bhw
Thanks -- I don't need the saw palmetto, but the hubby is aging right along with me, so he might be interested. ;-)
14 - bhw
BTW, do you think we should tell Al that his participle is dangling?
Anyhow, mixed as a tomato juice/vinegar tonic, I might actually manage to regularly enough consume vinegar to get the benefit.
Who wants to volunteer to mix Al?
15 - Eric Olsen
the dangled participle is perhaps a consequence of the loose screw, or vice versa
16 - bhw
8-D
17 - Eric Berlin
Eric - What's your take on the St. John's Wort? I've heard varying things about it.
I take a multi-vitamin with some ginseng, fish oil w/ Omega 3 fatty acid, and a chondrotin supplement for joints.
18 - Eric Olsen
St. John's Wort really helps regulate my moods: I have been much more generally cheerful and focused on the positive since I started with it several years ago. I would think it would be beneficial for just about anyone who is in the "normal" moodswing range: ie not clinically bipolar but not perpetually sunny-ass either
19 - Eric Berlin
Thanks Eric. My wife's an RN and seems to have something against it, but I've heard good things from other places. I may well give it a shot: cheerful focus is a good thing, me thinks.
20 - Eric Olsen
I am not aware of anything negative other than it being used by people who ARE clinically bipolar and it isn't strong enough to work for them
21 - DrPat
Byron was a noted proponent of drinking vinegar for health and weight loss. The "mad, bad and dangerous to know" poet insisted on a glass instead of wine with each meal.
It probably worked, too - certainly, drinking a couple of ounces of vinegar would kill the appetite!
George Gordon, Lord Byron, died of a fever contracted while fighting against the Turks in Greece before he reached the age of 40.
22 - Eric Olsen
I think writing all that damned poetry is probably what really killed him
23 - Al Barger
I would think of St John's Wort as a mild mood elevator. Roughly, I consider St John's Wort to be to Prozac as a cup of coffee is to a hit of meth.
The only possibly negative thing I've ever heard about St John's Wort is that it might possibly tend to make you more sensitive to some anesthetics. If you're taking it and you're going into surgery, you should definitely tell your anesthesiologist.
Then again, you should be telling your doctors everything you're taking anyway.
24 - Eric Olsen
I hadn't heard that, good to know, Al, thanks
25 - DrPat
No, really, Eric O - he was traipsing around in the swamps with the Greek insurgent troops he had organized, probably got a bite from a bad mosquito or picked up a parasite from some leech.
Drinking vinegar had a brief vogue just before Byron and Shelley emigrated to Greece, but never really caught on. Al's assessment ("really nasty tasting stuff") is probably why.
Interestingly, Ellen White, the cultist whose ideas were lifted by Dr. Kellog of Road to Wellville and corn-flake fame, thought wine and vinegar were alike in causing chastity (and therefore health) problems. Her followers were enjoined to drink only pure water or their own urine.
Just in case you were thinking there was no tipple nastier than vinegar...