Gut 106: More Reasons Why to Ferment Vegetables and How to Tips

 

Raw Cultured Vegetables are unheated, cultured (which refers to the fermentation process) vegetables that have been either cut, ground, or shredded and left in a sanitary vessel for 5-7 days at a temperature in the range of 59º to 71º. This process allows for the proliferation of lactobacilli which are the healthful microflora naturally present in vegetables and a healthy digestive tract. Healthy microflora breaks down the sugars and starches found in the vegetables, aiding the pancreas and intestines in proper digestion and strengthen the immune system.

 

The difference between raw cultured sauerkraut, pickles, and vegetables, and commercially available veggies is the lactobacilli as well as the fact that healthful microflora have been destroyed in the pasteurization process making these shelf stable products masquerading as sauerkraut/condiments, a nutritionally void product.

Raw cultured vegetables enhance health and are a delicious way to get non-dairy lactobacilli, including acidophilus and lactobacillus planetarium, into your diet which are essential to maintain healthy intestinal flora. People who are lactose intolerant and suffering from other food allergies can especially benefit from these effervescent cultures. Once the gut is healthy, the pathologies, causing the lactose and food intolerances, will be eaten up by good bacteria, enabling most folk to eat dairy and other foods that they are allergic to once again. The fact is, they increase the vitamins and food enzymes found in dairy products, grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits, increasing their nourishment which builds your immune system.

 

 

Think of fermentation as a natural digestive process. When your digestive system is sluggish, it is not fermenting properly. The idea is to warm up your microflora with the correct balance of good stuff. The ferments jump starts your whole digestive system and brings out the flavor and nutrition benefits of everything you eat. The same goes for a healthy compost pile. If your pile has the right ratio of good micro-flora, carbon, and nitrogen it will heat up, ferment, and convert into a robust nutritional dense soil amendment. Your gut is a natural composting system for your body offering you well-being.

 

Your flavorful cultured vegetables are packed with trillions of essential enzymes and lactobacillus cultures that do not dissipate over time like expensive commercial supplemental probiotics and acidophilus powders. These building blocks of your digestive system are comparable to a healthy soil, teeming with trillions of microorganisms, the soil engineers.

 

Most everyone is born with a healthy digestive tract, a natural balance of lactobacilli and other healthful microorganisms capable of converting foods including sugars and starches to lactic, acetic, and other acids. In this healthy balance environment, our digestive tracts do not allow the unhealthful micro-organisms such as candida (a yeast) proliferate. Fermented foods do almost the same thing as a healthy digestive tract, preventing disease and promoting physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. Sick soil, depleted by chemical agriculture, if amended with compost has the ability to repair its microflora, as can your gut flora heal, with probiotic rich fermented food.

 

While this is the end of our Gut and Fermentation series, I truly hope that is it the beginning of your adventure into healthy, balanced eating.

 

My next series of blogs will address the topic of The Value of Knowing your Roots. We will look at the amazing benefits of Rehashing your past; how to bank the bests memories and compost the rest so you can become the BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF.

 

Big Love,

Founder of Soil to Soul Solutions

 

Go out there and inspire someone today to be

part of the solution and not the pollutions.