If you’ve been reading our Saving Dinner posts and articles for any amount of time, hopefully, you’ve grown aware of the dangers of the GMOs lurking in our food chain.
Sometimes it feels like a never-ending battle to avoid these foods. Everywhere we turn, there’s a new food danger to be aware of.
GMOs are hiding where nobody would suspect. One place you probably have GMOs in your home is in an ingredient we all have sitting in our pantries: white vinegar.
I can hear you now: But I am so aware of GMOs and eating organic! How did I not ever consider vinegar?
Probably because most of us have never stopped to think about where vinegar comes from!
White vinegar is made from corn. Yes. Corn.
Corn is distilled into corn alcohol. That corn alcohol is then mixed with water and fermented into vinegar. From there, the vinegar is filtered to make it clear before being bottled. There are more steps to the process than this, but that’s the gist.
White vinegar comes from corn, and at least 88% of the corn grown in the US is genetically modified. And, honestly, that is a conservative estimate.
I’ve always considered white vinegar a non-food anyway, using it only for cleaning. White vinegar is too acidic for cooking, and given the fact that it is GMO, I strongly advise that you keep it out of your mouth at all costs!
In households where white vinegar is mainly used as a cleaning agent, I wouldn’t worry as much about splurging on an organic brand. But, if you’re washing your fruit and veggies with vinegar, it might be worth splurging on a GMO-free brand like Spectrum.
10 Responses
Check your supplements. Vitamin C can be made from corn ( as are other other vitamins) and maltodextrin. Beware of Life Extension. When pressed to explain why they don’t use organic ingredients they say they want to keep their supplements affordable to their members. I guess GMO’d corn, wheat and soy enhances your health and longevity when you shell out big money for isolated ingredients. Cognitive dissonance anyone?
Great! (sarcastically!) It is one of the few vinegar products which doesn’t bother me from sulfites! I think my sensitivities/allergies for sulfites and msg are getting worse; when I had some soy sauce with msg recently, my son said my face got red immediately – which he thought was me blushing in response to something he said. Then came the GI symptoms 🙁
Cathy,
Organic should be non GMO! I hope this helps!
I ONLY USE it for cleaning too and take a gallon and run it through my washer and dish washer to keep them clean and de gunk them i have been doing that for over 40 years as my dad was a pulmber and did the same thin
g matter of fact i just did it on both just a week ago . cleaned my front loading washer and my dish washer.
It’s DISTILLED. I can’t imagine there would be any sort ofGMO product left after that process.
From reading other articles, distilling is not necessarily part of the process anymore.
You are correct. The alcohol is distilled, so no sort of GMO is left from the original raw material. In other words, no genetic material makes it to the alcohol. White distilled vinegar is called distilled, because it is made from distilled alcohol. The vinegar itself is not distilled.
Corn is one of the foods I’m intolerant of, so this explains why so many symptoms got so much worse after using it to clean a sauna that smelled slightly of mold. I also used it on a bunch of clothes to remove a perfume smell in thrift store items. My poor system was overloaded!
Excellent article. Does Barley Malt vinegar contain GMO? Thanks
Hi SB – this is a question for the manufacturer of each brand.