Drinking vinegar will not cause you to lose weight, prevent cancer or heart disease, lower high blood pressure or offer any other health benefit. Vinegar is fine for salad dressings, as a preservative or a household cleaner, but it is not a medicine. One book claims that vinegar helps you to lose weight because oil and vinegar don't mix, so vinegar and body fat won't either. I hope you don't believe that.

Vinegar is about 95 percent water and 5 percent acetic acid. Because it is acidic, it prevents the growth of bacteria in a test tube and is used as a preservative to pickle a wide variety of foods. However, it will not kill bacteria in humans, prevent infection or serve any other health function. Your stomach acid is much stronger than vinegar, so eating vinegar or any other acid food has no impact at all on the acidity of your stomach or any other organ in your body. The only way vinegar will help you lose weight is if you use it as a dressing and eat lots of salads made with fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans.

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Dr. Gabe Mirkin has been a radio talk show host for 25 years and practicing physician for more than 40 years; he is board certified in Sports Medicine and three other specialties.

Dr. Mirkin's daily features on fitness have been heard on CBS Radio News stations since the 1970's. He has written 16 books including The Sportsmedicine Book, the best-selling book on the subject that has been translated into many languages. His latest book is The Healthy Heart Miracle, published by HarperCollins.

Dr. Mirkin is a graduate of Harvard University and Baylor University College of Medicine. A Boston native, Dr. Mirkin did his residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He has served as a Teaching Fellow at Johns Hopkins Medical School, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, and Associate Clinical Professor in Pediatrics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He has run more than forty marathons and is now a serious tandem bicycle rider with his wife, nutritionist Diana Mirkin.