Is Vinegar made from petroleum?
By Karina | May 7, 2008
We talk a lot about using vinegar as a cleaning product - in fact, the entire eco-cleaning and frugal community talk about it a lot, too. But a friend of mine tipped me off to a potential problem with vinegar - turns out that some vinegars may be made from petroleum.
When my friend told me this I was like: WHAT THE HECK THIS IS GROUNDSHAKING HORRIFYING INFORMATION. Vinegar is our magical eco-friendly cleaning solution! it just *can’t* be made from petroleum products!
So I tried to do a little research. Thing is, there isn’t very much out there. Just a lot of rumors. For example, from the Heinz Vinegar webpage:
The Only All Natural National Brand Vinegar*
Heinz® Vinegars have no additives or preservatives. Vinegar’s key ingredient is alcohol. Unlike many budget brand vinegars which derive their alcohol from petroleum, Heinz® Vinegars are the only national brand to use only sun ripened corn or crisp, juicy apples and water.
This page has a very good description of how vinegar is made, and it refers simply to an alcohol being fermented with vinegar bacteria.
The transformation of wine or fruit juice to vinegar is a chemical process in which ethyl alcohol undergoes partial oxidation that results in the formation of acetaldehyde. In the third stage, the acetaldehyde is converted into acetic acid. The chemical reaction is as follows: CH3CH2OH=2HCH3CHO=CH3COOH.
Wikipedia says about the same - but it goes back to the acetic acid bit, and if you click through to the acetic acid page wikipedia says:
The global demand of acetic acid is around 6.5 million tonnes per year (Mt/a), of which approximately 1.5 Mt/a is met by recycling; the remainder is manufactured from petrochemical feedstocks or from biological sources.
but then it also says this:
Acetic acid is produced both synthetically and by bacterial fermentation. Today, the biological route accounts for only about 10% of world production, but it remains important for vinegar production, as the world food purity laws stipulate that vinegar used in foods must be of biological origin. About 75% of acetic acid made for use in the chemical industry is made by methanol carbonylation
So, who do I believe? Heinz, who has a stake in being the purest and most food-based vinegar? Or Wikipedia, which could be edited by anyone, including the Budget Vinegar Czar desperate to prop up the image his product?
Luckily the FDA is on the case and I found this interesting paper discussing if synthetic alcohol (aka, that derived from petroleum products) can be used in vinegar:
Questions have been raised as to whether we can or should continue to consider synthetic alcohol unsuitable for food use. In order to secure more information, we wrote to the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division, Internal Revenue Service. Their reply included the following paragraphs:
“Presently, we authorize the manufacture of vinegar from ethyl alcohol synthesized from natural gas or petroleum derivatives. It is our opinion that most of the distilled spirits used in the production of vinegar are derived from natural gas and petroleum…“When alcohol is used in the production of beverage products, our regulations require that the source of the alcohol be shown on the label except for cordials and liqueurs. Incidentally, I might add that most of the alcohol used in the production of medicinal preparations and flavors is synthetic.”
and concludes with
POLICY:
Synthetic ethyl alcohol may be used as a food ingredient or in the manufacturing of vinegar or other chemicals for food use, within limitations imposed by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the Alcohol Administration Act, and regulations promulgated under these acts.
So it’s true! Check your vinegar labels!
I went to the grocery store and did the following research for my fellow Tiny Choosers:
Heinz Vinegar:
Stop and Shop store brand vinegar:
And both check out a-ok.
Have you checked your vinegar? Did you even imagine that this could be true?
Topics: General |
No, I never EVER imagined that it could be true. It always comes back to the evil Budget Vinegar Czar, damn him.
Ok, so what exactly should we be looking for on the label??
just check the ingredients!
for the stop and shop brand it says: acetous fermentation of distilled alcohol derived from corn or sugar, distilled with water to 5% acidity.
and for heinz it says:made from select sun-riped grain, diluted with water to a uniform pickling strength and table strength of 5% acidity.
I read about vinegar potentially coming from petrochemical sources, so I checked the bottles we had in the house. Stop and Shop brand, so we’re all good.
Scary to consider the alternative though, since I do some food prep with vinegar. I don’t want to eat something from crude oil!
Um, NO, I had never considered this! Luckily I get the honking gallon-sized *Heinz* bottles so i am all set. But will keep this in mind as really I usually just get the biggest and cheapest ones I can find (since I use so much in cleaning and wash). Thanks so much for raising this issue. Sigh, I love Tiny Choices (exactly my brand of geekery!).
I was relieved to find that the big bottle under my sink is heinz, too. phew!
and thank you! I’m glad that our geekery is also your geekery! :)
TC is my brand of Geekery, too! I Heart you gals!
rockstar geeks unite! we gals heart you!
Geek Love!
Looks like the anti-war movement has a new chant: NO BLOOD FOR BALSAMIC
Ha! That made me thought out loud!
That is the perfect slogan for our first round of TC t-shirts!
I just use Ume Vinegar for everything, which comes from natural fermination juices when pickling ume plums with sea salt. Since I have celiac sprue, i can’t use anything from grains, so i lucked out and unknowingly have avoided dashing petroleum vinegar on salads :)
So weird when we find out where our food actually comes from. Strange how no one questioned these practices from the start.
Gah, I’m so glad that I have the gallons of Heinz. Now I need to double check the apple cider vinegar I get for when I dye my hair.
I *think* that this should only affect white vinegar - apple cider vinegar really REALLY should be made from apple cider!
Some totally isn’t, though! But, um, yeah, that makes sense. Hee.
Thanks so much for looking into this - I tried to research it a while back and got nowhere. What would it say in the ingredients if it *had* been made from petroleum?
I’m not really sure! I am going to be checking the vinegar aisle in every grocery store, though, just to be sure.
[…] Tiny Choices questions if vinegar is made from petroleum. […]
This is UNBELIEVABLE… I have two gigundo jugs of vinegar at the house from Costco… and I will be checking that pronto! Drinking/eating anything made from oil is HORRIFYING. Oh my goodness!
Thank you for this in-depth research! Wow!
I just wish it was easier to find answers! but I guess the best thing to do is always check the labels.
I knew this to be true, as my dad was a petroleum engineer, so it is not news to me.
We avoid all but “natural” vinegar because of this. I don’t know that it is dangerous, but food made from, well, food seems like such a better idea than food made from petroleum.
If I had petrol-based vinegars laying about, I’d use them for cleaning rather than dump them down the drain, but I would choose not to eat them.
now that you’ve verified this information I am even more confident in my research!
The Four Monks vinegar (the stuff from Costco) just says distilled vinegar, diluted to 5% acidity. The label also calls it wine vinegar - any idea what that means?
wine vinegar ought to be derived from wine, not from synthesized alcohol (petroleum). one hopes, anyway!
I am going to totally do a post over at TDBotD all about this!
Short version; I don’t eat vinegar, or anything made with/ derived from vinegar, and never have, because I absolutely can’t STAND the stuff! I guess I subconsciously must have known all along…
Okay, I gotta play devil’s advocate here. I’m against using any more petroleum than necessary just because it’s getting scarce. However, theoretically, petroleum is just complex carbon derived from algae which has been super-duper cooked. (Yeah, technical, I know). So why not rearrange those carbon molecules back into something we can digest?
I suppose oil is unappetizing enough to make it’s derivatives unappetizing. Heck, I guess ancient algae is unappetizing enough to make it’s derivatives unappetizing! But I’m just sayin’…
you’re right, Becca - plus I’m a big fan of fully using up byproducts so we have maximum efficiency. but at the same time I’m trying so hard to minimize the use of petroleum in my life through driving more efficiently, using less plastics, and I guess also choosing the right vinegar - just ’cause it’s a finite resource. And I’m sure that our need for vinegar is not driving the cost of oil up, but if I can cut back here too, it’s a tiny choice I’m eager to make!
Bet you didn’t know that APPLES are dipped in wax made from petroleum.
Yummy!!!
Hey Erika, can you pass me a slice of that good ol’ American apple pie?
;)
This is unbelievable!! Here I am thinking that I’m using all natural products to clean my house and it comes to this!! I’m at work but as soon as I get home I will be checking the vinegar that I buy from Walmart. I do buy Heinz also but I buy the really cheap stuff to clean my toilet. I don’t use white distilled vinegar as far as food consumption so that makes me feel a little bit better. All this time I thought vinegar was made with natural products. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Oh one more thing…what is this talk about TC (Tiny Choosers)???