Pure & Simple Market in Coweta hosted a fermentation class where I got to share the benefits of fermenting from a practical and nutritional standpoint with a fun group of enthusiastic learners. Why Ferment? Food Preservation From the beginning of recorded human history until relatively recently, mankind survived, even thrived, without refrigeration. To preserve foods during times of plenty - like at harvest time when a year's worth of vegetables would become ripe for harvest all at once - canning, drying, and fermenting were utilized. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that home refrigerators became commonplace in the developed world. This occurred along with the expansion of industrial agriculture and industrial food production. The result of these conveniences is tragic for the gut health of people in those populations. The good news is that it can be corrected by tapping into the wisdom of our ancestors. There is more to lacto-fermentation than food preservation. Why Ferment? Nutrition “All disease begins in the gut.” Hippocrates Lacto-fermentation adds necessary beneficial bacteria to our digestive tract. Abnormal gut flora in modern humans is tied to chronic illness. Western diets, the SAD Standard American Diet, and diets comprised of, as Dr. Weston A. Price (Weston A. Price Foundation) called it, “ the displacing foods of modern commerce ” are dead and/or lacking in bacterial diversity. When Dr. Price embarked on his quest to study the health of populations untouched by western industrial agriculture, he found that the people, though they had no access to modern conveniences, had dental and overall health that far surpassed that of their western counterparts. One commonality was the use of fermented foods. In fact, it’s Number 5 of the WAPF Characteristics of Traditional Diets: Our convenient modern foods are refined, pasteurized, fortified, denatured, homogenized, and hydrogenated to give them a longer shelf life and make them look appealing. But what our modern food has led to is a “pandemic” of gut dysfunction which is the root cause of chronic diseases, auto-immune disorders, food allergies, asthma, skin disorders, diabetes, and gut/brain-linked conditions like autism, bipolar, depression, schizophrenia, etc. This comes at a great cost financially as well as emotionally for all involved. Regularly including lacto-fermented foods in our family’s diet can help rebalance this increasingly common occurrence of gut dysbiosis and restore our family members' guts to what they should be - thriving microbial communities with a diverse population of bacteria living in harmony with one another and symbiotically with the host (us!) for our optimal health. One of the pillars of the GAPS nutritional protocol is to correct the dietary deficiency of beneficial bacteria in our guts. Lacto-fermented foods do that and more. Our class learned all about the therapeutic benefits of lacto-fermented foods and made two different recipes, Curtido and Sauerkraut with Caraway and Dill, that they took home to ferment. We learned fermenting from start to finish and I was very thankful for a food processor. So much cabbage! How it Works Lactobacillus bacteria, which are just about everywhere, feed on carbohydrates (starches and sugars) naturally occurring in vegetables and convert them into lactic acid which is a natural food preservative. Lactobacillus bacteria thrive in a salty, oxygen-free environment, unlike other undesirable, harmful, or putrefying bacteria. Through the fermentation process, sugars are converted into beneficial, therapeutic, soothing lactic acid. When fermentation is complete, the result is a more nutritious version of the original vegetables. Benefits of Learning Lacto-fermentation
I love to do group demos! Contact me to set one up. Photo credit: Callyn Francisco
0 Comments
|
joanna francisco, cgcThis is my personal experience with the GAPS nutritional protocol. I hope you find it helpful. Archives
April 2023
Categories |