Is Home Depot 30% acetic acid vinegar at $20 a gallon ok to use for food (2025 Update) FAQ

As with any of these "expert reviews" or worse-yet

- online customer reviews - huge grain of salt ! I like to remind folks that the MotorTrend Car-of-the-Year includes the 1971 Vega - possibly the worst car ever made. John T.

I agree with you on Consumer's Union reports where for stuff I didn't know at all when I was a kid, like motor oil, they covered it well (where, in those days, API B still existed, although they might have been up to around D or so by the time I read that canonical article on motor oil selection).

But for stuff I knew well, even as a kid, such as Japanese rice burners, the fact that they rated a rice rocket on "noise level" was kind of ridiculous, given that they person who buys that Consumer Reports recommended Honda Civic isn't the same person who buys a Gold Wing.

There still was some use to their reviews though as the Hagen Daz ice cream review of the 80's showed me the power of perverse marketing, and the reliability records of the American vehicles was well below that of Japan.

Consumer Reports is still good for simpler things, like space heaters, since they test the real output versus the claimed output, for example (where they all have essentially the same output no matter the claims).

But for things like washing machines or lawn mowers, it's hard to find the exact model that they tested, where you might be able to extrapolate one Samsung TV review to another but you'd be guessing which is the whole point that you're trying not to do by reading Consumers Reports in the first place.

I do like the Consumer Reports articles on commonly purchased commodities like car batteries, where they tell you there are only so many companies and they let you know not only which brands are from the few companies but also how to read the secret codes that are stamped on the outside of these commodities (like tires).

One thing I miss though with Consumer Reports is they don't test a lot of the stuff I need to buy, such as brake pads or coffee beans, or... vinegar.

I wonder what the "expert reviews" thought of the Mazda RX3?

The 1971 Ford Pinto got edged out by a Vega?

Any discussion of vanilla takes me back to the day when I learned that someone had expressed (squeezed) a beaver's anal gland, releasing a sweet sticky substance that would later be named castoreum and would be used to provide a vanilla-like flavor to multiple food products.

"You gonna eat that?" "Yep! Watch me!" "Hmm, tastes like vanilla!"

I use food grade citric acid for it, works great and a small bag of it will last a long time.

I was ready to call BS on that one.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1519 brought the fragrant flower—and its companion, cacao—to Europe. Vanilla was cultivated in botanical gardens in France and England, but never offered up its glorious seeds. Growers couldn’t understand why until centuries later when, in 1836, Belgian horticulturist Charles Morren reported that vanilla’s natural pollinator was the Melipona bee, an insect that didn’t live in Europe. (A recent study, however, suggests that Euglossine bees may actually be the orchid’s primary pollinator.)

Five years later, on the island of Réunion, a 39-mile long volcanic hotspot in the Indian Ocean, everything changed. In 1841, an enslaved boy on the island named Edmond Albius developed the painstaking yet effective hand-pollination method for vanilla that is still in use today, which involves exposing and mating the flower’s male and female parts. His technique spread from Réunion to Madagascar and other neighboring islands, and eventually worked its way back to Mexico as a way to augment the vanilla harvest pollinated by bees.

This proliferation helped whet the world’s appetite for vanilla. The spice quickly found its way into cakes and ice cream, perfumes and medicines, and was valued for its intoxicating flavor and aroma. But despite growing demand and a robust crop, the tremendous amount of time and energy that went into cultivation and processing affected farmers’ ability to supply the market—and continues to do so today. Nearly all of the vanilla produced commercially today is hand-pollinated.

While this statement is not entirely false—beavers do excrete sweet-smelling (and edible) castoreum from sacs near their anuses—experts say you probably can’t find this goo on the shelves of your nearest grocery store.

In the early 20th century, castoreum began appearing in some foods to add a vanilla-raspberry flavor. But its use had fallen by 1987, when the U.S. consumed about 250 pounds of castoreum per year, according to Vice. Since then, its use has “decreased significantly,” as the Flavor Extract Manufacturers’ Association told the publication. Perhaps the final strike against popular use of castoreum was that products using it as flavoring could not be certified as kosher.

Now, the substance is mostly found in niche foods such as a Swedish liquor. Instead, about 99 percent of the world’s vanilla comes from synthetic sources such as vanillin, a cheaper and less labor-intensive alternative to harvesting vanilla beans or castoreum.

So, while the Food and Drug Administration does list castoreum as safe to eat, it’s unlikely you’ll ever have to worry about ingesting beaver butt goo by accident.

And then...

Unfortunately it went out of business suddenly but I liked Motorcycle Consumer News. There was no advertising of any sort. For the bike reviews there were generally three or four people in the summary. There were different opinions based on personal taste but if they thought the Fleabag

I subscribed for years and knew it was published by BowTie Press. I assumed bowtie was a reference to the Chevy nickname but didn't know what else they put out. It turned out they had everything from Cat Fancy and Ferrets to Poultry World. MCN was the only magazine that wasn't pet oriented and I have no idea how they wound up with it.

I remember seeing Fox Head motor oil. Wolf's Head was a respected brand but I think Fox Head was reprocessed bacon drippings. Even with a 1000 mile / quart beater I stuck to Quaker State. I don't know if stuff like that even exists anymore with the rating system.

Rather extravagant of you. Back in the 60s, on my beater I used to buy re-refined oil at the Merit gas station. It was really cheap. Gas at the time was 21.9. The Esso across the street was 24.9

Yeah, I think Fox Head claimed it was re-refined. Remember the quart glass jars with the tin spouts full of mystery oil? I recall plans for sort of a chute with a reservoir at the bottom. The idea was after pouring a can of name brand oil into a customer's ride, you added the can to the top of the chute and allowed it to fully drain for a day or so. After a while you had several quarts of oil salvaged to put in your glass jars.

Yes, the glass jars. I imaging they re-refined it by filtering through a double layer of cheesecloth or an old T-shirt.

That would give you 768 ounces. That would last you a long time, no matter how many salad you had.

Yes, but think how cheap it is. Anyone with $3 can pay full price at a grocery store, but it takes a real man to face blindness and liver failure. And what evidence do I have that my liver really does anything? AFAICt, it's more like my appendix.

I bought some of that to clean the mineral deposits off my toilet bowl. Thought it would be cheaper than "toilet bowl clean with muriatic acid", HCl. Strangely, it didn't work any better and I'm pretty sure it didn't work as well. Plus of course the small chance of splattering it in one's eyes, which I don't remember if that is warned against for the toilet bowl cleaner or not. Anyhow, it took a while but the toilets are sparkling clean now.

Before the internet, I read it a few times about devices of some sort -- I forget -- and they kept highly rating things that were not for sale around me or would require hunting, and it was pointless to get referrals to something that was too hard to by.

Perhaps, but they may have delayed it to 11:30 once Saturday Night Live was no longer funny, so they had free time.

True, but some of the Amazon reviews give facts that are really valuable. One of them gave instructions for some electronic gizmo that I had lost the insturctions for and could not find online. (I think it was my local FM transmitter, whose controls are not obvious.)

The other day, I wanted a campaign bumper sticker for my car, and on Amazon they were all 5 to 10 dollars (although that was for several and a few weeks ago they were more expensive) and not the right size/shape for my trunk lid. But one was only $1. In two places it said it was vinyl and in one place it said paper. I don't want paper.

They no longer display any Q&A but you can find a few just by putting in single letters, or maybe the word "an" or "the'. And you can ask, so I asked if they were vinyl or paper and within 12 hours I got 4 answers, all of which said, I don't know, I haven't gotten mine yet. !!! Though none said they were overdue or how long before they had ordered. There were 4 replies but when I looked a day later only 2 were showing, and later only 1 was showing. What happend to the other 3? And then the bumper sticker itself was gone. I guess they never sent them!

So that all worked well for me.

Very interesting. Thank you. I had heard the word castoreum but didn't remember what it was. It's also interesting that it's not kosher, although that's not surprising since kosher food from animals has to come from a kosher animal, a fish with fins and scales or specified birds or a land animal with cloven hooves that chews its cud, which are cows, sheep, goat, and giraffes, though no one eats giraffes.

OTOH, honey is kosher because it's not actually secreted by the bees as it might seem. It's made by them from flower nectar.

Hechsher refers to inspection to see if something is kosher or not.

That's good for so many reasons.