Food News You CAN Use!

Hey, Nature and/or Food Lovers!

Got A Bottle of White Vinegar around? You know, the stuff that smells really, well... vinegary, and is useful for all sorts of things, from flavorizing your potato chips, to cleaning your sink, to creating life-like science-fair volcano models? (with the help of its partner-in-fizz, Baking Soda)

Well, before you douse your next bag of Ruffles in the stuff (and its partner-in-flavor, Salt)*, you might want to think about this...

Your bottle of White Vinegar might be made from PETROLEUM! (A-Bubbling Crude - Black Gold, Texas Tea!) That's right, the same stuff your plastic sunglasses, new sweatshirt, and Hefty bags are made out of. The same stuff powering your lawnmower, your friend's new pickup truck, and your next-door-neighbor's Lear Jet. (Or maybe your neighbor's pickup, and your friend's jet, I don't know your particular situation.)

Heck, your vinegar may be made from the same stuff your vinegar BOTTLE is made of. Run out of vinegar? Just melt down the bottle, and use that! (OK, the TDBotD fleet-o'-lawyers made me add DO NOT actually attempt to consume a melted plastic bottle; that part was a joke)

But the petroleum based vinegar thing may not be a joke. My Bestest Blog-friends over at Tiny Choices came upon this freakish news, and being the upstanding citizens they are, instantly shared it with the world, or at least the portion of the world that reads Tiny Choices. (Judging from their comments section, it's quite a few more people than read this stuff that I post here!)

Here's the Thing: I don't eat, nor have I ever eaten, Vinegar, and what's more, I dislike the taste and smell of vinegar so much that I stay away from foods made with vinegar. That means I don't eat any salad dressings (unless you count Cheese and Bacon!),and I don't eat pickles or ketchup, either. It's like a part of me knew all along that this stuff was made from petrochemicals. The fumey, wafty smell was my first clue, I think.

Not all vinegars are this way. Heinz brand White Vinegar explicitly states on the label that it is from all-natural (vegetable) sources. But that's the expensive name-brand stuff; You can bet that the stuff they are using at the ConglomoCorp food factory, the stuff that comes in 55-gallon drums, is probably the cheapest stuff they can get, which, up to this point has been the stuff derived from dead T-rexes.
But - Dead T-rexes, as you may have heard, are getting a lot harder to come by these days, and subsequently a lot more expensive ($130/barrel already?). So the bright side of this is: As oil prices continue to soar, It makes food more expensive, BUT it also may force big Food Manufacturers to start making more of our food out of actual food!

* Yeah, Anna, I'm talkin' to you!

photo by JillDoughtie