Feeling blah, got those winter blues, scratchy throat or maybe starting a cold, take some apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar has long been louted for warding off colds but it actually has many other health benefits, including helping to stabilize and lower blood sugar levels, which can reduce cravings for snacks. It can also improve your insulin response after eating carbohydrates. By stabilizing blood sugar levels, even after eating sweets, you won’t have that lethargic crash after the sugar high that is often felt. Apple cider vinegar has also been shown to help lower cholesterol levels in preliminary studies. Apple cider vinegar contains probiotics, which can help promote a healthy microbiome in your digestive tract, so that your digestive tract can better absorb necessary vitamins and nutrients. 

“Vinegar” is a general term for a sour liquid made from fermented alcohol. Vinegar comes from the French phrase vinaigre, meaning sour wine. The sourness comes from the acetic acid. “Apple cider vinegar” is a specific type of vinegar made by fermenting apple juice, giving it a distinct apple flavor and potentially additional nutrients compared to regular vinegar which is usually made from grains like corn or wheat; essentially, apple cider vinegar is a variety of vinegar with a fruity taste due to its apple origin. Making apple cider vinegar entails taking advantage of what is essentially controlled spoilage. Yeast digests the sugars in apples and converts them into alcohol. A bacteria, acetobacter, then turns the alcohol into acetic acid. I don’t want to get too technical, but you can call this process fermentation, then acetification. 

The “mother” refers to the combination of yeast and bacteria formed during fermentation. Unfiltered apple cider vinegar contains the mother, which consists of strands of proteins, enzymes, and friendly bacteria that give the product a murky, web-like appearance. If you look at an apple cider vinegar bottle, you can see strands of the “mother” floating around, usually clumped up at the bottom of the bottle. Many people attribute apple cider vinegar’s beneficial health effects to the “mother.” There’s some truth to this since the mother counts as a probiotic. But, the importance of the mother has not been established with research. 

Aside from probiotics, apple cider vinegar has a vitamin profile similar to apple juice. Hence, the sour drink is ripe with B-vitamins and polyphenols (plant-based antioxidants). All in all, the probiotics, acetic acid, and the nutrients in apple cider vinegar are responsible for its health benefits. These benefits are in both filtered or unfiltered. Now to be fair, taking apple cider vinegar is not like taking a modern medication. Results from taking apple cider vinegar are only achieved by taking it over a long period of time, more like years versus weeks or months, but slow and steady wins the race. And you do not need to take a lot, anywhere from one to three tablespoons a day can achieve great results over time.