Mizkan Apple Vinegar

In a recent, under-researched yet completely typical attempt to jump onto a health food quickfix—the ‘quickfix’, in this case, painless weight loss as usual—I went out and got myself a bottle of apple vinegar from the Japanese supermarket, cheerily packaged and with all sorts of ‘fresh’ images, like water droplets, fruit splashing into glasses of iced water, blah blah.

Since I was assured of its palatability on several websites, I figured what isn’t killing them wouldn’t kill me, either. (Though I don’t have a stomach ironed-trained on raw fish and pickles, but friendly comfort food like cheese and potatoes…Oh…I’m so hungry.)

The one I chose was on the Best Seller list, being higher-than-average priced. And as a Singaporean raised on the blind mentality that whatever is priced higher must be better, I picked it.

The smell was rather pleasant. Appley, fresh, fruit-splashy, even. The first sip though tasted a hell of a lot like health food. By that I mean it does what you imagine vinegar would (no matter how dilute—it was in a 1:5 mix for mine) and burned all the way down.

I’d say it bleached my insides, but you know I hate speaking in hyperbole. It merely blazed a steaming trail from my lips all the way to my stomach, dissolving it in a longish minute or so. I only hope it doesn’t continue to burn through to the end. Ahem.

I also bought the sucralose version since I figured I might as well go the full way if I’m doing this for health reasons. Naturally, the sucralose left a lovely fake sugar aftertaste. Whoever said sucralose doesn’t leave an aftertaste was…probably a marketing guy and I believed him.

But the torture could be worse. If you clicked through the top couple of links, you’ll see that the vinegar bars in Japan make vinegar shakes. In modern lingo, that’s a vinegar frappucino. Yum. Thick, bubbled and citrusy—just like baby throwup.

It’s also supposed to curb your appetite. I only have two problems with this. One, I don’t know whether it’s ‘curb’ so much as kill. Secondly, I’m hungry. And pissed off.