Eating a salad with vinegar dressing might be just the ticket you need to counter overweight and diabetes: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050101/food.asp Eating the salad BEFORE the main meal is a double edged sword, salads are lower calories than potatoes or pasta for example, while giving some basic "fullness" to the stomach, follow that up with a SMALL meal richer in carbs/fat and you will feel satisfied. Also do a search for Citric Acid and weightloss, For All round effect I would make the salad dressing like this: make sure each person get: - two tablespoons vinegar - some theaspoons citric acid - one tablespoon of fishliver oil (for the omega 6/9), or if you are posh, use Udo's Choice oil - that secret ingredient your grandmother uses to make dressing really taste (ask her) - a few theaspoons of one of those "super green" supplements (wich contains vitamins/minerals/enzymes/flavenoids , but all in their natural bounded state because the powder is basically 20-30 types of chopped up greens/veggies Include some red paprika, tomatoes and brocolli and you have a tasty starter that you can feel really good eating. In Mediterranean countries they eat a fair share of fat meat but relatively low heart-diseases, its quite common to have salads with vinegar for starters, do the math!
i think its purely due to acidic content, having the extra acid speeds up digestion and therefore reduces the amount of nutrient/fat gained from it