Fermented Foods

Indigenous people have long recognised the benefits of fermented foods, even though the science behind it wasn’t known.  Fermented foods or cultured foods are foods that have been pre-digested by bacteria, yeast and mould.  During this process the composition of the food is changed, thus increasing the nutritional benefits.

When eaten regularly, fermented foods encourage the production of good bacteria in the intestine (see last article), this strengthens one’s immune system and is necessary for the complete and proper digestion of foods.  Also, cultured foods have a significantly higher nutritional content than their uncultured food of origin e.g. yoghurt over milk, miso over soybeans, sauerkraut over cabbage.  In fact, yoghurt has 5-30 times more vitamin B12 than milk, and 50 times more vitamin B3 than milk!  Fermented foods have always been eaten all over the world, this was due to the high percentage of people who are lactose intolerant, that is, they can’t digest the sugar in milk very well.  During the fermentation process the sugar is changed which makes the digestion easier e.g. Asian cultures use lots of miso, soy sauce, tempeh, Indians drink Lassi and those who live in Israel drink Leban.

Those foods that are fermented include buttermilk, natural yoghurt with live active cultures, wine, cottage cheese, sauerkraut and apple cider vinegar.  The huge variety of Asian cultured foods also fits into this category such as miso, tempeh, tamari sauce, soy sauce, umeboshi plums, amasake and kombucha.

The most well known Asian food is probably soy sauce, but watch out because most soy sauce made in Europe and the US is made from inorganic acids (like hydrochloric acid) that break down the soybeans rather than living microbes and doesn’t have the same health benefits as traditionally brewed soy sauce.  Miso helps reduce the negative effects of radioactivity and electromagnetic resonance.  Apparently doctors recommended it to those who were in the nuclear fall out zone after the nuclear bomb was dropped in Hiroshima at the end of World War II.  Those who ate lots of miso had dramatically reduced ill effects from the fall out, in comparison to those who didn’t eat it!