12 Steps to Whole Foods

Preserving Raw Foods with Natural Probiotics
I suggest a goal of trying all of the fermented foods in this chapter in the coming month. Then, adopt your
favorites as habits and eat at least two different fermented foods every day.
Fermented Vegetables
Perhaps you grew up, as I did, preserving fruits and vegetables by putting them in jars with lots of sugar and
boiling or pressure-cooking them to death (literally). Until I began studying nutrition, I got a lot of satisfaction
out of “putting up” fruits from my trees and vegetables from my garden this way.
Unfortunately, by heavily cooking our produce, we kill all the enzymes and most of the vitamins and minerals
as well—which are the reasons to eat produce in the first place. The more I studied about nutrition, the less I
was willing to can at the end of the summer. I chopped and froze many things, and still do, but the freezer can
hold only so much.
Imagine my excitement to learn that ancient cultures, without canning methods or freezers, preserved
vegetables for long periods of time, using lacto-fermentation. Europeans, Asians, and Russians use fermented
foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi today, and the U.S. is almost alone in not regularly eating fermented
foods. Although we have pickles and sauerkraut on our grocery store shelves, unfortunately, they are heattreated
and chemically processed to the point that the benefits of natural, raw fermentation are gone.
Lactic acid is a natural substance, present everywhere, that inhibits the bacteria that cause plant foods to rot.
But lacto-fermenting has more significant advantages beyond simply preserving summer garden produce
throughout the winter. Fermented vegetables have much higher vitamin content. They also promote healthy
microorganisms populating the gastrointestinal tract to protect against harmful bacteria that cause illness,
discussed in more detail below. Cultured foods are more digestible than regular vegetables, and they make the
other foods eaten with the fermented product more easily digested as well. Some of the byproducts of the lactofermentation
process are antibiotic and anti-carcinogenic in nature.
The process of lacto-fermentation begins when lids are placed tightly on jars, and the salt preserves the
vegetables long enough for the microorganisms to begin to proliferate enough for more long-term preservation
to occur. Using whey from your yogurt or kefir (discussed below) or a culture starter you can purchase are
ways to minimize the amount of salt in a sauerkraut recipe, since the whey or culture introduces live,
multiplying organisms. So I recommend starting your fermented-food experiments this month with kefir or
yogurt, and then you can branch out using the whey/culture to ferment veggies.
Fermented vegetables, including homemade sauerkraut, should be used as a condiment at meals. Sauerkraut is
easy to make from your garden cabbage—and if you don’t have a garden, cabbage is widely available for a
good price at grocery stores in the late summer and early fall. You don’t even need new canning lids! Used lids,
and canning jars run through the dishwasher, are just fine.
Fermented Dairy Products
This step is very possibly the most important step since Chapter 1’s green smoothies in terms of the potential
positive impact on your health for very little effort. Some evidence shows that fermented milk products prevent
224 12 Steps to Whole Foods
© Copyright Robyn Openshaw