put a
f
on it

We’ve been busy this summer and fall, fermenting everything we can get our hands on- making sauerkraut and salsas, dill pickles and kimchi, coconut water kefir and rosehip kombucha. It was sort of serendipitous how it happened, as our entire fermentation obsession started from one conversation I had with a best friend’s father at her lovely wedding in Canada.

But first, an aside if I may. We weren’t always interested in natural health. It was born out of necessity, a story for another time, but ignited by results. When Robert and I started eating locally grown organic vegetables as our primary source of food, making all of our own meals, juicing, fasting, getting back into nature, meditating, yoga-ing, whatever we were interested in, it was astonishing to us how amazing we felt. More energy and more happiness, certainly, but changing our behavior also caused a shift in the way we wanted to live our lives with less stress / more growth.

My friend Natasha and her father have been living this way since I’ve known them. Very balanced, full of optimism, and actually I’ve only seen Natasha sick once, when we were traveling in Mexico. Natasha’s father explained to me recently that his current way of life, too, was born of necessity. His mother had given birth to him shortly after her release from a concentration camp, and he believes this made him very weak. As a child he struggled with many mysterious illnesses, coming close to death maybe 4 times or more, and each time being healed by seemingly radical and inexplicable methods, once moving with his mother to live by the sea and breathe the salty air. As a young man, he finally found relief from his medically unexplained symptoms with a macrobiotic diet, and adopted this philosophy for many years, raising Natasha by these principles along with daily yoga practice and meditation. It is his belief that he’s alive today because of his perseverance to find a naturally harmonious lifestyle. More recently he has researched other dietary modes- raw foods, fermented foods and raw animal products. At Natasha’s wedding, he told me he was making his own coconut water kefir. Funnily enough, that was it for me. Perhaps it had something to do with the delivery of the information. A recommendation from a glowing vivacious man, who has struggled in his life and yet is healthier looking than most his age is impossible to ignore. And really, as far as role models go, I want to be like Natasha’s dad!

So Robert and I started fermenting and we started reading. And boy what we found. Fermented foods have been understood by pretty much every culture, except contemporary highly industrialized cultures (oops). Sauerkraut was used medicinally by the ancient Romans, and also by 18th century sea captains using its potent vitamin C content to treat scurvy. The Russians/ Polish developed Kvass. From Latin America comes Cortido. Thank god for Koreans and kimchi. The Eskimos make a strange fermented fish liver and wild berry concoction. And there are countless more fascinating examples from many many cultures. All had/have knowledge of fermentation processes necessary to preserve food and promote health.

Lacto-fermentation is a natural process by which lactobacilli, microscopic bacteria naturally present on lovingly grown plants, convert starches and sugars into lactic acid in an effortless alchemical process. The lactic acid keeps vegetable matter in a state of preservation, and basically pre-digests the vegetables. This pre-digestion not only makes nutrient content easier to assimilate but the chemical process generates new things too, like an array of B vitamins, increased levels of Vitamin C, the illusive Vitamin K, calcium, potassium, iron and on and on.

Live, raw/unpasteurized fermented foods bring teeming beneficial bacteria right into our systems creating a symbiosis between bacteria and human. This might seem slightly counter intuitive, as the current health paradigm includes pasteurization and antibiotics and has created a sense that all bacteria are harmful and must be eradicated from the body. But this is only true in cases of true sickness/infection. Pasteurization and antibiotics certainly destroy harmful bacteria, but in the process also destroy beneficial bacteria and enzymes in food and in the human body that are necessary to flourish. This is another reason why fermented foods are so f-ing awesome. They’re living probiotics, improving digestion in a major way and protecting/building immunity, rebuilding the body’s trillions and trillions of protective bacteria. And, they could not be easier or cheaper to make at home. It’s amazing to me that the most medicinal foods I have ever eaten are also the most economical.

It’s a little sad that fermented foods have largely been forgotten in the wasteland of industrialized food. But, they’re gaining awareness rapidly (yay!) and becoming ‘cool’, at least here in Brooklyn with the influx of kombucha. It may seem a little silly to say, but I would argue that for me personally, it seems like acquiring a little knowledge/wisdom of fermentation is perhaps one of the most important health discoveries of my life and has been the most medicinal, most economical, most low-tech and most healing.

-L

sources:
Hawthorne Valley (see these guys every week at union square green market!)
Fab Ferments (met Jennifer and Jordan recently and love them!)
KBBK
Zana Juice

read:
Wild Fermentation
Body Ecology
Nourishing Traditions
Bonzai Aphrodite