Got Bacteria? 8 Reasons to Eat Fermented Foods
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“In the normal scheme of things, we’d never have to think twice about replenishing the bacteria that allow us to digest food. But since we’re living with antibiotic drugs and chlorinated water and antibacterial soap and all these factors in our contemporary lives that I’d group together as a ‘war on bacteria,’ if we fail to replenish [good bacteria], we won’t effectively get nutrients out of the food we’re eating.” – Sandor Katz
Humans all over the world have been fermenting food since ancient times. The earliest evidence of winemaking dates back to eight thousand years ago in the Caucasus area of Georgia. Seven-thousand-year-old jars which once contained wine were excavated in the Zagros Mountains in Iran. There is evidence that people were making fermenting beverages in Babylon around 5000 BC, ancient Egypt circa 3150 BC, pre-Hispanic Mexico circa 2000 BC, and Sudan circa 1500 BC. There is also evidence of leavened bread in ancient Egypt dating back to 1500 BC and of milk fermentation in Babylon circa 3000 BC.
It’s very recent that fermented foods have begun to disappear from our plate. Modern pickles and sauerkraut are made with vinegar instead of the traditional method of lacto-fermentation using salt. Bread and pasta are made with commercial yeast instead of being naturally leavened with wild yeast (sourdough). Wine, beer and cheeses are being pasteurized — killing off all the good bacteria we so desperately need to maintain health.
But there are many advantages to going back to the traditional ways of our ancestors, and eating more fermented foods.
8 Reasons to Eat Fermented Food
1. Fermented foods improve digestion. Fermenting our foods before we eat them is like partially digesting them before we consume them. According to Joanne Slavin, a professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, “…sometimes people who cannot tolerate milk can eat yogurt. That’s because the lactose (which is usually the part people can’t tolerate) in milk is broken down as the milk is fermented and turns into yogurt.”
2. Fermented foods restore the proper balance of bacteria in the gut. Do you suffer from lactose intolerance? Gluten intolerance? Constipation? Irritable bowel syndrome? Yeast infections? Allergies? Asthma? All of these conditions have been linked to a lack of good bacteria in the gut.
3. Raw, fermented foods are rich in enzymes. According to the Food Renegade blog, “Your body needs [enzymes] to properly digest, absorb, and make full use of your food. As you age, your body’s supply of enzymes decreases. This has caused many scientists to hypothesize that if you could guard against enzyme depletion, you could live a longer, healthier life.”
4. Fermenting food actually increases the vitamin content. According to the Nourished Kitchen blog, “Fermented dairy products consistently reveal an increased level of folic acid which is critical to producing healthy babies as well as pyroxidine, B vitamins, riboflavin and biotin depending on the strains of bacteria present. [1. Vitamin Profiles of Kefirs Made from Milk of Different Species. International Journal of Food Science & Technology. 1991. Kneifel et al]“
5. Eating fermented food helps us to absorb the nutrients we’re consuming. You can ingest huge amounts of nutrients, but unless you actually absorb them, they’re useless to you. When you improve digestion, you improve absorption.
6. Fermenting food helps to preserve it for longer periods of time. Milk will go bad in the fridge but kefir and yogurt last a lot longer. Sauerkraut, pickles and salsa will keep for months. And if you’ve got a huge batch of produce in your garden that you don’t know how to use up — ferment it!
7. Fermenting food is inexpensive. There’s nothing fancy required for this hobby. And many of the foods required to make these recipes are very cheap. You can use inexpensive cabbage to make sauerkraut, or get yourself a kombucha scoby and with just pennies’ worth of water, sugar and tea, you’ve got a health elixir slash soda pop.
8. Fermenting food increases the flavor. There’s a reason humans enjoy drinking wine and eating stinky cheese. There’s a reason we like sauerkraut on our hot dogs and salsa on our tortilla chips. It tastes good!
How to Incorporate More Fermented Foods Into Your Diet
Look for sourdough bread instead of bread made with commercial yeast. (Trader Joe’s has a few real sourdough breads, and I love the real naturally fermented bread at the chain bakery, Le Pain Quotidien. Or you can make your own.
Drink fermented beverages. Kefir and kombucha are available at many health food stores. They’re also very easy to make at home.
Serve food with pickles, sauerkraut, salsa, ketchup, sour cream, kim chi, mayonnaise and other naturally fermented condiments. You can buy naturally fermented condiments at health food stores — or make your own.
Get creative and experiment! Try making kefir ice cream, sourdough crackers, fermented coconut milk, mead (honey wine),Eat some Japanese natto (it’s good!) with rice. Visit an Ethiopian restaurant and sample some of their delicious fermented injera bread. The options are endless!
How to Ferment Foods At Home
It’s easy to get started with fermentation. You just need some starter cultures, some mason jars, and you’re good to go.
Here are a few of my recipes for fermented foods:
Kefir
Kefir Soda Pop
BBQ Natto with Shrimp
How to Make Whey & Homemade Cream Cheese
Sally Fallon-Morell has lots of recipes for fermented foods in her book, Nourishing Traditions. You could also pick up a copy of Sandor Katz’s book, Wild Fermentation.
Where to Find Fermented Food Starters
Check out my resources page for sources of starter cultures like sourdough starter, kombucha scobies, kefir grains, and yogurt starters. You can also find sources of fermented vegetables.
You might also enjoy this article I wrote about the benefits of eating naturally fermented sourdough bread: Top 10 Reasons To Eat Real Sourdough Bread — Even If You’re Gluten Intolerant
This post is a part of the Food Roots blog carnival at Nourishing Days.
Sources: Fermentation (Food) (Wikipedia), “Getting Cultured with Fermented Foods” (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune), “Health Benefits of Raw & Fermented Foods” (Food Renegade blog), “Fermented Food: Benefits of Lactic Acid Fermentation” (Nourished Kitchen blog)
Photo credit: Daikon Kimchi by peskymac on Flickr
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30/07/2009 at 8:01 am Permalink
I’ve really begun adding fermented foods this year into my diet. I never thought that i would look forward to eating sauerkraut, but now I do!
I do have a questions about all the good bacteria in fermented foods. If I decide to heat something up, is all of that destroyed? Last night I cooked up a turky burger patty, adding some onions and sauerkraut in the pan to cook along with the meat. Did I just destroy any benefit to the fermented food? It was mighty tasty though! Oh, and I had a couple of dill pickles to go with it, which were brined in salt and not vinegar (Bubbies brand?).
30/07/2009 at 8:21 am Permalink
This post is just chock-full of great resources.
We’ve been on a mission to increase our consumption of fermented foods — and guess what? It’s EASY! Kefir in the morning with breakfast, natural saurkraut or sour cream with dinner. If we branched out and started fermenting our own foods, it would be even better.
Love the health bennies… but the best part is that everything tastes awesome.
30/07/2009 at 8:34 am Permalink
Those are all great reasons! One more: fermented food is REAL, traditional, food like our ancestors ate. One of my guidelines when I make decisions about what to eat. Your photos are gorgeous.
30/07/2009 at 8:44 am Permalink
Flag Gal -
It depends on what temperature you cook the food at and for how long you cook it. Ideally you want to serve fermented foods cold or at room temperature.
That said, people don’t eat sourdough starter — we use it to make bread which is baked. But the sourdough, in that case, is used to help the bread rise (leavening) and it also helps to reduce anti-nutrients in the grain like phytates, and helps make it more digestible (I never get constipated when I eat sourdough bread — but I’m perpetually constipated on a diet of bread made with commercial yeast).
Probiotics do get destroyed at higher temperatures, and enzymes get inactivated. So yeah, ideally you want to serve your pickles and sauerkraut or salsa with your food without cooking it. This is also why creme fraiche or sour cream is traditionally added to soups at the table — and not added while you are cooking the soup.
PS: Love your user icon — cute!
30/07/2009 at 9:06 am Permalink
Ms Cheeseslave,
I have just recently discovered your site, and I like how you think! I have a question and a suggestion.
Q. Are you on board with Sally Fallon in thinking that soy foods are dangerous? Does that include fermented soy foods such as miso and natto? What is the story there?
A suggestion: Could you have a post in which you list your, say, top 10 local food resources for Los Angeles folks? (For example, one would have to be that Bezian Bakery sourdough at local farmers’ markers, based on what I read about Jack Bezian on your site yesterday.) And could you include one or two in the San Fernando Valley where I live?
If you don’t mind, what did you do before becoming a mother? Here are my top three guesses:
1. Lawyer
2. Advertising
3. Something in the Hollywood studios
(Again, please say “I’d rather not say” if that’s the case — I’m just someone curious about people’s training and background)
30/07/2009 at 9:07 am Permalink
Are the photos in this post yours Ann Marie? What kind of ferment are they?
I’ve heard that fermenting does not increase the amount of vitamins in the final product, but it does make the ones that are already there more bioavailable. Have you heard this?
30/07/2009 at 9:29 am Permalink
Christine –
No I got that photo from Flickr:
Photo credit: Daikon Kimchi by peskymac on Flickr
Good question re: whether fermenting increases vitamins or makes the ones there more bioavailable. The answer is: BOTH! Good bacteria actually produce B vitamins.
During fermentation, bacteria produce vitamins as they digest vegetable matter. Also, if the salting causes a vegetable to lose water, the fat-soluble vitamins will become more concentrated. According to Korean scientists, kimchi (a traditional pickled cabbage dish in Korea) contains as much as double the levels of vitamins B1, B2, B12, and niacin as unfermented cabbage contains.” Source
30/07/2009 at 9:41 am Permalink
PaulD,
Thanks for your comment.
I do agree that soy foods are dangerous and not good for our health. With the exception of natto, miso and other naturally fermented soy foods. That said, even those foods should be eaten in moderation. They were traditionally eaten as condiments in Asian countries — not as a main course.
The reason for this is that even though the fermenting reduces some of the anti-nutrients, it does not reduce all, and also, soy foods are very high in phytoestrogens. Also, soy foods were traditionally eaten as part of a diet very high in iodine. You get iodine from fish broth (containing fish heads), seaweed, and seafood (particularly if the fish heads are eaten, and also fish eggs).
So if you plan to eat fermented soy, you should consider ways to get more iodine. I personally take an iodine supplement, and give one to the rest of my family. (We eat seafood often, but don’t eat a whole lot of fish head stock — although we do enjoy caviar and fish eggs — and eat them as often as possible.)
Actually I think most folks today should consider iodine supplementation — because we are all being inundated with soy foods and other goitrogens and halogens that block iodine uptake.
I have been working on including more local resources on our Real Food Media featured company listings. You can see some advertisements for local resources here: http://www.cheeseslave.com/resources
Just got that going this month though so we will be adding more going forward. I plan to expand that and include as many local resources as possible (they can be geo-targeted listings so you will only see them if you are viewing the page from a specific locale).
I enjoyed and was flattered by your guesses about what I did prior to becoming a mother. You are correct about # 2 — I have a long background in interactive (digital) advertising. Although I came very close to studying international law in college. And as part of my work in advertising, I’ve worked very closely with many (if not all?) of the studios.
30/07/2009 at 9:42 am Permalink
Oh PS: For more on soy — ‘m currently reading The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla Daniel. Good book — I recommend it.
30/07/2009 at 10:49 am Permalink
thanks for this timely post. i live in Mpls and just read the article in our local star and tribune, also Mr. Katz was here teaching a class at a local coop which i didint go to but am sure it was awesome.
30/07/2009 at 12:22 pm Permalink
I did go to that class last night with Kandor- it was pretty good. Interesting to meet him, but more like preaching to the choir. At any rate, I’m super excited to get my cabbages from my share tonight and make some sauerkraut!
30/07/2009 at 1:08 pm Permalink
I eat some sort of fermented veggies and plain yogurt daily and my digestion has improved a great deal since I started eating these foods on a consistent basis. I got a lot of recipes from the book Wild Fermentation and buy raw fermented foods when I can.
30/07/2009 at 3:48 pm Permalink
Hi,
Did you see the horrible big food corporation propaganda article posted on CNN about organic food not being healthier? It’s disgusting and completely missed the point of eating organic food:
http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/30/what-does-it-mean-if-organic-food-is-no-healthier-than-regular-food/
30/07/2009 at 5:31 pm Permalink
Great post! In synch with what I’ve been up to this week, too-I have my first jars of cortido (Latin American take on saurkraut) and cucumber pickles fermenting on the counter. One question, since you’re from Texas. Are you familiar with watermelon rind pickles and green tomato pickles? They were served to me in the south, and I loved them. I’m wondering if there is a way to make a lacto-fermented version, with less sugar than the typical recipe probably calls for. Both pickles seem to be made with the classic sweet and spicy combination of flavors-think cinnamon, cloves, mustard seeds, etc. Pickling spice. But I’m not sure whether the veggies would need to be cooked before being pickles, or whether I could use a bit of sweetener in there to get the right flavor. Please let me know if you’ve experimented with any sweet pickles. And thanks!
30/07/2009 at 7:06 pm Permalink
Hey – you read my mind! I’m just about finished re-reading Wild Fermentation and looking forward to getting a kombucha mother from a friend and experimenting with fermenting this year’s veggies as more of them come in (we have had a cold, dry summer – everything’s running late). Thanks for the recipes and links.
30/07/2009 at 8:45 pm Permalink
Great post! The health benefits of fermented foods cannot be overstated. I’ve been enjoying the new coconut milk kefir made by So Delicious. I appreciate the convenience, and it tastes great and has 10 live active cultures.
31/07/2009 at 4:32 am Permalink
The only natto I find here is in Asian stores in the freezer section. I never buy it because it has MSG. Where do you guys buy natto???
31/07/2009 at 5:12 am Permalink
This is a great resource! I’m always a fan of using choosing food over supplements and think that fermented foods are a great way to improve digestive health without relying just on probiotics and digestive enzymes.
31/07/2009 at 5:58 am Permalink
For years our family struggled with acid reflux. Everyone, from us “old folks” to the 7-year-old would get screaming heartburn several times a week. We would get relief from papaya tablets, which were a great natural remedy, but still just a band-aid.
Since adding fermented foods to our diet, papaya tablets have come off my weekly shopping list and it is now a rare occasion that someone has a bout of heartburn. There is always a jar of some vegetable or beverage fermenting on the kitchen counter or available to eat in the fridge. And now my youngest will say, “Mom, we didn’t have a jar with dinner, we’d better have a snack so we don’t get a stomach ache!” She doesn’t always like the taste of the fermented food, but she recognizes its value.
31/07/2009 at 10:52 am Permalink
Ann Marie,
I’m so confused about iodine supplementation now. Have you read the summer edition of Wise Traditions yet? I just don’t know what to think now.
Lydia,
You can make lacto-fermented green tomato pickles. I made them last year and they turned out great! Slice them into quarters, stuff them into a jar along with some garlic, onions, green peppers, chilie flakes, fennel seeds, peppercorns, etc. Make a salt brine and let ferment for a few days on the counter.
01/08/2009 at 2:09 pm Permalink
nice post. Fermented foods are delicious and wonderful. Over the last few years I’ve had fun with the recipes I’ve found in Nourishing Traditions. I just discovered and bought from Tropical Traditions (where I get coconut oil) a Phillipino condiment made with Green Papaya that has been feremented. Very delicious with meat. It’s called “Atchara”. Try it for a new and delicious treat.
01/08/2009 at 6:09 pm Permalink
I have a question about what you use to store the lacto-fermented foods.
I just pulled out a glass mason jar to put my homemade yogurt into & smelled it. I could easily tell that this jar once held ginger carrots. This surprises me because I didn’t realize glass could hold smell like this.
I’d be curious if anyone else has had this problem, how the overcame it or what I could do to avoid it in the first place. Right now the smelly jar has baking soda in it to see if that deodorizes it.
As always – thanks for the helpful post!
02/08/2009 at 5:32 am Permalink
Jessie -
Odd. You could try rinsing it in vinegar and hot water.
08/08/2009 at 10:27 am Permalink
Ann Marie, have you heard of a supplement called Nattokinase?
http://www.springboard4health.com/notebook/health_nattokinase.html
I don’t have any experience with it but just read about it today.
08/08/2009 at 10:53 am Permalink
Janis -
Interesting! I had not heard of it..
22/06/2010 at 12:33 am Permalink
Great post, but I’m confused as to how long the bacteria and enzymes remain alive. I thought they stayed alive pretty much indefinitely, but was recently told that once the sugar in the veggies has been consumed, the bacteria die and there is no longer a probiotic benefit to the ferments. How would you know when the bacteria have died and you’re not receiving a probiotic benefit from them any longer?
Thanks!