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We live in a world obsessed with destroying bacteria. Since we discovered that sicknesses can be caused by bacterial infections we as a society have been on a rampage to destroy all bacteria in our environment.
We take antibiotics, feed our livestock antibiotics, wash our hands with antibacterial soap, wipe with antibacterial wipes and sanitize our kitchens and bathrooms with toxic chemicals to ensure we destroy any bacteria on any surface.
This has led to problems like super-bugs, chemical sensitivity and environmental damage of colossal extent.
Sure hand sanitizers kill 99% of the germs on our skin but not all 99% are bad, of the 1% remaining are the ones which are resistant to the hand sanitizer. They live to reproduce and subsequent generations are more resistant and have an open field to grow with abandon. This does not lead to long term health.
Instead of trying to kill everything off we should promote the bacteria which are good for us and let them duke it out with the unhealthy bacteria. This has how we have done it since our creation and seems to have served us well so far.
Chemical sensitivity is now becoming an epidemic. Most public locations in North America are requesting patrons to be scent free so as not to bother those who cannot be in an environment which has chemical smells. This is due to the overuse of chemicals in our environment.
We have chemicals which clean, deodorize, sanitize and just smell good. All these chemicals are not natural and cause our immune systems to react. This can cause inflammation and allergic reactions if the inflammation gets to out of control.
Our food is produced by the use of vast amounts of toxic chemicals. The land which it is grown is sprayed with herbicide before, during and finally just before it is harvested.
It is also fertilized with chemically produced fertilizer which boosts yield but does not improve the mineral content of the food. This is because farmers are paid by how the product looks and how much they can produce. It has nothing to do with how much food value there is in it.
All this spraying not only ends up in our food, and therefor in our bodies, but they also end up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. They change the environment by polluting, killing and stressing our natural habitats which we rely on to keep us healthy.
Fermentation on the other hand is a healthy and valuable practice which not only supports your health but also helps the environment around you.
We pasteurize almost all food we eat
It seems our reaction to the knowledge that bacteria can cause sickness is to try to destroy all bacteria in our environment. One of the main ways we do this is through pasteurization. By heating our food up we destroy most or all of the living bacteria found in our food. The problem with this is that heat is indiscriminate, it destroys the good with the bad and in the process it also destroys vitamins and enzymes which are healthful to our bodies.
Fermentation is the opposite of that. Instead of trying to kill all living things in our food and in that effort destroying enzymes, vitamins and good for you bacteria (probiotics), fermentation encourages the good and benign bacteria to grow. This process destroys the unwanted bacteria through altering the environment and making it inhospitable for them to flourish.
We have focused too long on the small amount of bad bacteria and not at all on the good. It is time we concentrate on maximizing our consumption of life giving food rather than minimizing the bad.
Fermentation is energy efficient
Other methods of food preservation take large amounts of energy.
Canning takes energy to cook the food and then to sterilize it by placing it in boiling water for a period of time. The time required to ensure safety depends on the type of food being preserved.
Pasteurization again requires heating the food up enough, for long enough, to effectively destroy the bad for us bacteria (also along the way destroying the good for us bacteria).
We also dehydrate some foods to preserve them. Again heating it up to drive out the moisture. Since bacteria (both good and bad) require moisture to propagate the food remains edible.
Notice that each method above requires heat. That heat is produced through the use of electricity. That electricity is produced through burning of fossil fuels, damming our rivers and flooding vast tracks of land or through nuclear power.
Fermentation on the other hand preserves our food without the need for outside energy.
There is no boiling, canning, dehydrating. The acidification is natural and stops way before no living thing can survive and the only “chemical” used is salt and in some cases not even that.
It is safer then canning
The process of canning involves raising the temperature of the food in the can high enough for long enough to kill all the pathogenic bacteria found in the food. There are two problems with this plan.
- This process kills off all the good bacteria and destroys most vitamins and enzymes found in the food.
- If it is not done properly spores of harmful organisms can be left behind to have free run of the foodstuff. This is how botulism produces enough toxic waste to kill.
- Chemicals from the cans leach into the food, especially if the can becomes dented or damaged.
Fermentation does not involve the destruction of life but rather the promotion of it. It provides an environment for beneficial bacteria to grow. The presence of several strains of probiotic bacteria produce an environment which is not conducive to the growth of pathogenic bacteria. This naturally produces a product which is safe to consume and is also good for you.
Does not contain chemical preservatives
The worst method of food preservation I can imagine is the chemically preserved foods which are sold at grocery stores. Some of them are presented as healthy breakfast foods like cereals which are heat treated, crushed, puffed and chemically treated and provide no real food value. Once they are made “shelf stable” artificial vitamins are added to provide some advertising clout to the claim of a healthy start of your day. Let me give you a hint, if the box can stay on the shelf for over a year without having to do anything special to it there is no food value in it.
Fermentation on the other hand does not require chemicals other than salt to preserve our food. It relies on us to encourage an environment which is conducive for the growth of probiotic bacteria in the food and an environment which is inhospitable for pathogenic bacteria to survive. Most of the time this means adding some salt, keeping the oxygen out, controlling the humidity and other similar actions.
Improves gut health
By focusing on probiotic foods you can be sure to provide your gut with a wide variety of living probiotics which will improve your health. Since each type of fermented food provides a different set of probiotics it is good to eat a variety of them. Yogurt has different probiotics then kefir even though they are similar. Yogurt can also be made using a variety of bacterial cultures.
Most probiotics are transient. This means that they are not permanent residents of your gut but rather travel along the entire length of your digestive system. This has two effects:
- The probiotics help to provide an environment which is not conducive to the growth of pathogenic bacteria throughout your gut.
- The benefits of probiotic foods dissipates with time therefore you should eat them on a regular basis to keep them topped up.
There are an unlimited collection of fermented foods from every culture in the world and each of them has a unique probiotic profile. Although the main probiotic strains are the same, the makeup of the community of probiotics changes with time and environment. For example, sourdough made in New York is different than sourdough made in Alaska. This is because the environments which the sourdough live have different ambient bacteria.
Boosts the immune system against viral infections
It seems obvious that eating probiotic foods would help in fighting bacterial infections as the probiotics in fermented foods are active bacteria which consume the same food, live in the same location and produce an environment not conducive to the growth of pathogenic bacterial strains.
But they also boost the immune systems response to viral infections, including conavarius viruses. The range of viruses they are effective against is unlimited as they are not specific to one virus strain like vaccinations are (this is why the flu shot needs be taken yearly to have any effect). Instead they help the immune system response, improving how your system naturally take care of viruses.
Both respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases have been studied and probiotics especially lactic acid bacteria have positive effects on the immune response against influenza and polio, improving the number of killer cells in children given the polio vaccine.
Prolongs vitamin shelf life
Fermentation preserves the food value in the original food and often produces additional vitamins like B12, folic acid, vitamin D, K2 and K which are vital to human health. It also prolongs the life of the vitamin C.
This was how Captain Cook managed to beat scurvy on his boats. His fermentation of choice was sauerkraut and took barrels of it with him on his around the world trip.
Breaks down hard to digest foods
Sourdough bread is easier to digest then store bought bread because the sourdough culture breaks down some of the hard to digest elements in the flour. In short it predigests the bread for us making more of the food value and energy available to us.
Olives need to be brined to reduce their bitterness before they are edible, yogurt culture breaks down the lactose in milk making it more digestible for those who are lactose intolerant, and sourdough starter helps to break down the indigestible parts of the flour making home-made sourdough bread more digestible then store bought.
This is because store bought bread is made for profit. It is produced as fast as possible with the cheapest of ingredients in order to turn the highest profit for the bakery. This means that the dough is “conditioned” with chemicals, proofed only long enough to produce a fluffy consistency and baked long enough to form the right looking loaf of bread.
If there are more than five ingredients on the ingredient listing or if even one of those ingredients is unpronounceable don’t buy it.
This doesn’t seem like a benefit until you have a pantry full of canned preserves which are still perfectly “good” even though they have been in the pantry for at least 4 years.
Every time you go to through them you remember the time and energy which went into the canning process and the plans you had for them when you put them up. They somehow end up back on the shelf taking up space even though you know they are never going to be eaten.
Fermented food is different. It has a shelf life. When stored in the correct temperature fermented food will last a long time. The difference is that it does have an expiry date. It will one day no longer be eatable. One day you will open a container of sauerkraut and it will have a funky smell, the contents will have become mushy and you will not want to eat it. It can now legitimately be thrown out. It will no longer take up space in the cellar and you will not have to feel guilty about not eating it.
Fermented food is constantly changing
This is due to the nature of the living organisms in the ferment. They need energy to survive so they consume the sugars in the food. As the different sugars are consumed different organisms thrive.
For example yeasts like simple sugars like fructose (the sugar which makes fruit sweet) and will readily ferment grapes into wine, apples into cider and pears into Peary but once the main amount of sugar is reduced the liquid must be kept in an oxygen free environment because otherwise the LAB will start to convert the alcohol into vinegar.
Some ferments improve with age like wine and some cheese but they all continue to change. Some flavors are enhanced and some are mellowed. This effect provides interest in consuming fermented foods. Taking note of the flavors of a young ferment like sauerkraut or garlic then tasting it again after a month or so will reveal the differences time makes. Young sauerkraut is tangy and has a nice crunch. Sauerkraut which has been fermented for a while becomes highly acidic as the LAB continue to produce lactic acid. This preserves the sauerkraut but can get overpowering.
This adds interest to your fermenting. It provides another level of control and knowledge which can be used to produce fermentations which are suited to your individual tastes and needs.
For example if you are lactose intolerant and you still want to eat yogurt then if you make your own yogurt and let it ferment longer than the 8-12 hours suggested the resulting yogurt will have less lactose and other hard to digest compounds in it. If it is fermented 24 hours most of the lactose will be gone but as a result the yogurt will become much tangier.
They taste great
Fermentation is a great flavor enhancer. It adds flavors which cannot be duplicated in any other way.
Sure pickles can be made with white vinegar but there is no comparison to the flavors of a brined pickle fermented at the correct temperature to the vinegar soaked cooked counterpart.
Umami cannot be duplicated with chemical processes and who would want to drink a wine which did not include the fermentation of the grapes?
The variety of flavors is infinite. Cheese is a great example as demonstrated by the Monty-python cheese shop skit where the patron lists off at least a hundred different types of cheese (all of which the shop owner does not have).
So go ahead and ferment something
Don’t just sit there. Ferment something. you have lots of options like fermented salsa, kefir, yogurt or sauerkraut.
Try making kombucha or kvass which are great for imporving digestion and warding off any infections which may be lingering around.