fermented foods/probiotics

[mantis]

i've recently gained interest in this area after reading this article

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&

 

it's fairly long but worth it, in my opinion anyway. since then i've purchased jarrow formulas probiotic supplement and have taken to kefir which i either drink or add to smoothies daily.

 

naturally i'd like to pique the collective mind of thetaobums and gather more information, does this seem like hocus pocus to anyone here? virtually every traditional peoples consumed some sort of fermented food and the above article brings some very interesting questions into play... (one of them being the presence of some indigestible protein, i forget, in human breast milk. it is only metabolized and beneficial to a certain strain of bacteria that is in turn beneficial to it's host)

 

i'd like to learn more about this subject, to say the least

[idiot_stimpy]

You can make Korean Cabbage Kimchi yourself very easily.

[i am]

There have been a lot of studies lately indicating that fermented foods are good for you, especially for the flora in your gut.

 

I have little doubt that there's a lot of truth to it.

[runner11]

Traditional cultures ate much more fermented foods than we do today. We still eat some fermented foods, but their not quite the same. A few examples are bread, cheese, yogurt, and sauerkraut. The bread we eat has yeast added, which is not the same as real sourdough, which is fermented with wild yeast from the air. The cheese we eat in the US is fermented, but its mostly made with pasteurized milk, and the bacteria and molds that take over are much more controlled due to things like waxing the rind. Modern/cheap cheese is more a science than an art.

 

Things like sauerkraut and pickles you buy in the store are usually lacto-fermented, but they are pasteurized, and often have vinegar added as well. Sometimes they aren't fermented at all, just brined in vinegar.

 

Traditional American cured meats like ham and bacon used to be cured over a period of months, and sometimes years, hanging in a barn with nothing but salt. Virginia used to produce some of the best ham in the world. Nowadays, we use nitrates to cure it much more quickly. The advantage of this is that the meat is much less likely to go bad, and it cures much faster. The disadvantage is that the flavor doesn't even compare to the traditional way. Cured meats are an artisan food, like wine, and when done the traditional way can go bad very easily, but if it succeeds, the flavor is incomparable. It will have what the French call terroir, meaning that the flavor comes from the place where the food was made. When I buy good local cheese, its one of a kind. There's no other cheese like it. They couldn't make it in France even if they wanted to, because the exact types and ratios of different grasses that the cows eat, as well as the types of wild yeast in the air and the climate is unique to this town that I live in. I think that this way of eating, besides being more healthy, connects us to the place we live and to nature in a way that is missing with our current food system.

 

Unfortunately, there's only a couple of people left in the US who still cure meat the traditional way. One is Mario Batali's father, I think in Seattle, who sells online, but its expensive. I plan to try to ferment my own hot dogs using local beef. If it turns out good, I will make like 5 pound batches and freeze it. Good sourdough bread is also hard to find, which is understandable, because its much more time consuming, difficult, and unpredictable to make. I've found it to be not worth all the effort, but that's just me.

 

As far as fermented vegetables, I make my own. If you can find the real thing in a store, its very expensive because it has to stay refrigerated, or it will continue to ferment and the glass jar will explode. I bought a Harsch fermenting crock from Germany. It works amazing. The way its designed makes the whole process foolproof. Before I got this crock, about half of my ferments went bad and had to be thrown out. Since I got the crock, I haven't had a single ferment go bad.

 

I make dill pickles, sauerkraut, and pickled carrots. Due to the nature of these vegetables, pickling cucumbers, cabbage, and carrots are the easiest to ferment, but there's many others that can be fermented. I plan to try banana peppers in the summer when I can buy a bunch of fresh ones.

 

I wouldn't waste my money of probiotic supplements. It's like comparing a multivitamin to a farmhouse meal. Spend that money on some good pickled veggies instead. Realpickles brand is expensive, but they have the best pickles I've ever tasted. They also have lactofermented hot sauce and other veggies, or buy a crock and start making your own. Its so easy.