Strange as it may seem including vinegar in your diet could improve your blood sugar. With several studies revealing a possible way to reduce the impact of a carb-laden dish, just by adding a little vinegar. Although vinegar seems to have had a bit of a checkered past; it has also often been hyped in weight-loss diets and miracle cures — solid research has clearly shown that it can improve glycemic control.
So adding a little vinegar to your seems to work by helping to slow the absorption of sugar from a meal into the bloodstream, apparently because vinegar helps block digestive enzymes that convert carbohydrates into sugar.
Head of the nutrition department at Arizona State University, Carol Johnston, Ph.D., says “Scientific studies over the past 10 years show benefits from vinegar consumption. Vinegar decreases both fasting and postprandial (after-meal) glucose levels, she says. “It’s inexpensive and can be easily incorporated into the diet. Used in combination with diet and exercise, it can help many people with type 2 diabetes.”
Also a study carried out by Italian researchers showed that, when healthy subjects consumed about four teaspoons of white vinegar on any kind of salad dressing with any meal that also included white bread with a little less than 2 ounces of carbohydrates, there was a 30 percent reduction in the subjects glycemic response, or rise in blood sugar, compared with subjects who had salad with a dressing made from neutralized vinegar, and in 2004, a study published in Diabetes Care, a journal of the American Diabetes Association, found similar effects in people with diabetes or insulin resistance who consumed a vinegar solution or placebo before a heavy carbohydrate meal.
According to Carol Johnston, many people have far greater responses than others to vinegar. However, she says, “We documented small but important average decreases in hemoglobin A1C in people with type 2 diabetes — over the course of 12 weeks, taking a couple teaspoons of apple-cider vinegar daily,” she says.
Johnston also recommends using vinegar dressings that are drizzled over steamed vegetables, such as cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage. Another option is to dip small, thin slices of whole-grain bread into a mix of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Or, better, try sourdough bread, which contains a substance that also seems to mediate blood sugar response.
