Vinegar is a liquid that is used in cooking and also as a food flavoring. It may be added to dishes such as vegetable salads, beef, fish and french fries among other dishes. Vinegar is made through a fermentation process involving the action of ace-tic acid bacteria on ethanol. This process results into the production of acetic acid which is in turn mixed with water to make vinegar.

Vinegar has a sour taste owing to its acidity. The color ranges from white to red to clear and to dark brown depending on the type of vinegar. There are various types of vinegar including malt vinegar which is made from barley, rice vinegar, red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, and sugarcane vinegar among oth-ers. Apart from cooking and flavoring food, vinegar is also used for cleaning.

Benefits of vinegar
There are a number of benefits which can be derived from using vinegar in meals and even drinking it as some people do. The benefits are as described below:

1. It helps in killing germs
Vinegar kills bacteria and other microbes when it is added to food. The acid in vine-gar destroys the cell membranes of bacteria and other microbes like fungi and para-sitic cysts.

Vinegar is effective in killing bacteria such as Eschericia coli, Salmonella typhi, and Shigella dysentriae.

2. It helps in weight loss
Research has found that eating food on which vinegar has been added helps in weight loss. Vinegar helps in giving one a feeling of satiety. Consequently, one will eat less food and therefore be able to lose weight. People trying to lose weight can therefore add some spoonfuls of vinegar to their food to help them with weight loss.

3. It acts as an antioxidant
Vinegar prevents the formation of free radicals in the body tissues. The vitamins and polyphenols present in vinegar help in preventing the oxidation of molecules into harmful radicals.

Antioxidants helps in preventing aging due to skin damage and cancer due to cell damage.

4. It helps in preventing heart problems
Polyphenols in vinegar have been found to be helpful in preventing the oxidation of LDLs. This helps in preventing heart-related diseases. Vinegar is also effective in lowering cholesterol levels and in lowering blood pressure. All these are beneficial to heart health.

5. It helps in managing diabetes
Vinegar helps in lowering blood sugar level. The acetic acid in vinegar prevents the complete digestion of complex carbohydrates into glucose. It inactivates enzymes that digest carbohydrates thus slowing down the conversion of carbohydrates into sugar within the bloodstream.

It is also said that the acetic acid in vinegar can make food move faster down the di-gestive tract thereby preventing much carbohydrates from being converted into sug-ar. Research has also shown that intake of vinegar helps in improving insulin sensi-tivity in diabetic and pre-diabetic persons.

6. It helps in increasing the absorption of important nutrients
The acetic acid in vinegar helps in improving the absorption of nutrients and miner-als in the body. Adding vinegar to your food can be helpful in ensuring that your body absorbs nutrients which would otherwise have remained within the food and be passed out as wastes.

7. Other benefits
Apart from the above benefits, vinegar is also beneficial in other various ways. It is for example used to remove pesticides and bacteria from fruits through washing the fruits in a vinegar solution. It is also used as a pesticide and to control weeds. In ad-dition, it is used to wash pets and to clean their ears. Lastly, it is used for hair care.