It may be easy to tell the difference between sweet, tangy apple cider and apple cider vinegar (ACV), a perennial “health food” favorite, but comparing cider vinegar to apple cider vinegar gets a little murkier.
Are apple vinegar and cider vinegar the same? For the most part, “cider vinegar” and “apple cider vinegar” mean the same thing in common usage. But fruit-flavored vinegar and individual branding practices add a few wrinkles to this rule of thumb.
What Is Apple Cider Vinegar?
There’s a good chance you’ve heard of taking ACV with water or using it as part of a detox diet.
Vinegar itself is a fermented combination of acetic acid and water that can be made from the sugar or starch of many plant liquids, including grains, rice, potatoes, and fruit, per the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Apple cider vinegar uses crushed apples as its base, lending the sour vinegar a brown hue and slightly sweeter taste. A 1 tablespoon (tbsp) serving of typical, off-the-shelf apple cider vinegar, diluted with water to 5 percent acidity, contains 0 calories, proteins, fats, carbs, sodium, or nutrients, per the USDA.
But some brands add ingredients, such as sweetening syrup, starch, and flavoring, or use concentrated apple juice to add depth to their product. These variables, of course, change the nutritional makeup of the product.
For instance, one branded apple cider vinegar that contains apple juice concentrate, glucose-fructose syrup, modified starch, and natural flavor has 40 calories, 9 grams (g) of carbohydrates, 10.1 milligrams (mg) of sodium, and 8 g of sugar in every tablespoon, according to the USDA.
What About Cider Vinegar?
Vinegar traces its roots back to 5000 BCE as a cooking ingredient, medicine, and preservative used in ancient Babylon, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. Naturally, that long history has given food manufacturers plenty of different ways to make vinegar a part of your diet.
Vinegar can be made from a variety of fermented grain and fruit bases, and then can be sweetened with fruit juices and ciders, which may be dubbed “cider vinegar” (though in some cases, the fruit juice is added to an ACV base). Examples include raspberry cider vinegar or strawberry cider vinegar; but vinegar products that have the word “cider” on their label without containing apple cider aren’t very common.
Vinegar itself is a poor source of both calories and nutrition, but vinegar with various kinds of fruit, or non-apple types of cider added, can run the nutritional gamut. Still, products labeled “cider vinegar” are usually just some variety of apple cider vinegar.
Cider Vinegar vs. Apple Cider Vinegar: The Bottom Line
Many people tout vinegar for its health benefits and promise to aid in weight loss, but research on this isn’t abundant. What’s certain? Neither type of vinegar is a cure-all, according to UChicago Medicine.
As for the science to back up vinegar’s potential, there are some findings. A study published in Frontiers in Clinical Diabetes and Healthcare in 2023 concluded that consumption of 30 milliliters of ACV per day in conjunction with a healthy diet led to reductions in fasting blood sugar and hemoglobin A1C levels.
A study published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health in 2024 found that participants who consumed three doses of ACV for 4 to 12 weeks experienced reductions in weight, body mass index, body fat, and blood glucose, triglyceride, and cholesterol levels. But the study covered only 120 participants with overweight and obesity.
As the Harvard School of Public health highlights, existing research does not back up vinegar as a treatment for digestion issues, coughs, or chronic disease.
Apple cider vinegar likely won’t hurt your diet, but it also “won’t replace a healthy lifestyle,” according to UChicago Medicine. “It may have some benefits to our bodies, but overall, we need more studies to truly understand the health benefits and side effects associated with ACV.”
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