Why live culture fermented foods are good for your gut | Kathryn Lukas | TEDxUniversityofNevada

I am a microbe evangelist. My journey began in 1994 in Germany, where I encountered a microbe that would dramatically alter the course of my life. I found it in a farmer's cellar, in a barrel of freshly

fermented

sauerkraut. It tasted nothing like the vigorously acidic canned stuff. I had grown up with this, it was soft and tart and crunchy and it bubbled on my tongue, it was so delicious, but there was something else, something I couldn't put my finger on. I just knew I wanted to learn more, learn how to cook. and owning a restaurant in Germany gave me ample opportunity to do just that.

I discovered that there is a spring version that is usually eaten fresh and that the fall version, which is meant to last all winter, is usually a little saltier and is usually eaten cooked. I learned how to finish my sauces and soups with its juice, the best secret ingredient of all time, and I noticed that the chef who taught me how to cook drank it whenever he was hungover, which was often, and miraculously recovered. I also learned that the acid and sour kraut did not come from vinegar as I had always assumed, but from a transformative microbial process called fermentation.

I didn't really understand what that meant until I went to a natural chef culinary program in California many years later and made my first batch of sauerkraut. We massaged salt into thin strips of cabbage until they became translucent and weeping and then tapped the mixture into a small fermentation vessel and we waited for the alchemy to begin over the next few days, the vessel literally came to life, we could hear it gurgling and burping as we worked on other projects in the kitchen when the instructor handed me a fork full to try for a couple more weeks late, I was immediately returned to the farmer's vendor and the sizzle on my tongue.

He had learned the culinary uses of sauerkraut in Germany, but now he needed to understand exactly what had happened in that crock, whether it would transform those simple ingredients into something truly extraordinary. At that moment, sand or Katz's book, Wild Fermentation, was the resource. that novice fermenters turned to and I researched it with fervor. I learned that communities of microorganisms are responsible for many types of fermentation and that these are small beings that breathe, eat, and produce waste products just like we do. I was so fascinated by fermentation that in 2004 I decided to take a cultural walk.

I traveled to Southeast Asia and learned about one of the oldest recorded ferments, fish sauce, which is very similar to garam that was made in ancient Greece and eventually transformed into soy sauce in China. I met a kraut guru in Austria who, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, preached the wisdom of microbes while scooping sauerkraut from a large wooden barrel at his family's market stall in Vienna, and I traveled to an Inca village in deep in Peru's sacred valley and learned about chicha, a sweet milk beer revered for its health. benefits in its smooth hum is made with mashed corn and saliva there is an enzyme found mainly in women's saliva called tit Celyn and it helps start fermentation by breaking down starches into sugars that are easier for microbes to digest.

I was mesmerized as I watched these women chew and spit into a large communal bowl and the friend I was with told me that initially only conversions were allowed to perform this ritual, but fortunately that is no longer the case and I had the great honor of being When I was invited to the chewing circle, it was a little strange at first, but it wasn't long before I was chewing, spitting, and laughing with my new friends. It was so beautiful to witness how playful they were and how proud they were of their craft. and I remember feeling this immense joy knowing that we were creating a delicious, healing elixir for the community and that's when I knew I wanted to do something similar for my community: Spit, no matter where I went in the world, I noticed a thread between all fermenters a genuine love and respect for their microbes every

culture

everywhere I used this fermentation in some way to alter consciousness to preserve food to make it safer or more nutritious and of course to make it more delicious and I began to realize That this is an ancient and symbiotic partnership, these microbes had long ago discovered how to provide valuable services to humans, a pretty clever survival strategy and recent research into the origin of life suggests we might even be their descendants now that some of these microbes are under scrutiny.

In the mid-19th century, powerful microscopes brought the microbial world to life for scientists and researchers and allowed microbiologists to identify boiling microbes in wine, beer, and dairy products. Louis Pasteur along with other scientists discovered that heat killed these microbes and that pasteurization was widely adapted by

foods

. and commercial beverage productions The work of Lully's pursuers also advanced germ theory the idea that specific microbes cause specific diseases and their work saved countless

live

s but also turned microbes into enemies by turning them into germs we began to fear Microbes have gone from associating with microbes to fighting in an all-out war against them over the past hundred and fifty years, some of our most beloved

foods

and drinks have been lost entirely or replaced with sterile versions like cans of sauerkraut.

We are now discovering that this may have been to our detriment. It is speculated that 90% of all diseases begin in the intestine. Overly processed foods. Excessive use of antibiotics. Pesticides. Herbicides. Chlorinated water. Gut microbe communities are significantly less diverse now; those populations are more susceptible to infectious diseases, but they have almost none of our modern ailments. Microbiome science, the discovery that humans are a collection of microorganisms that outnumber our human DNA by ten to one, is radically changing our relationship. To the microbial world, researchers and doctors are starting to think of our guts as ecosystems that need to be carefully cared for and are looking for new ways we can partner with microbes to bring our microbiomes back into balance, one of the first things I suggest we do.

What we do is eliminate as much as possible substances that are harmful to our microbes from our homes and from our diet. Those hunter-gatherer tribes that eat a lot of forage. It turns out that our gut microbes love fiber and ferment it. and converting it into a protective mucosal lining for our intestines and including a wide range of

fermented

foods and drinks from

live

culture

s in

your

diet appears to have a profound effect on increasing gut microbe diversity and overall health and well-being. The Koreans never went to war. with their microbes they have a strong, vibrant and mostly matrilineal fermentation culture.

In November you can see mothers, daughters, grandmothers and aunts gathering in the streets making large quantities of kimchi, an aromatic cabbage ferment, and in Korea, if you are exceptionally

good

. cook is said to have sawn mat or

good

taste from her hands Korean biological artist and designer Jaeyoon Wu wondered if she could capture the taste of her mother's hands so she could use it every time she missed cooking her mother. This inspired her 2017 study called Taste of Mother's Hands. She collected hand-held microbes, in this case yeast from 12 participants and asked them to make a fermented rice wine with the ingredients she provided.

She found that in three of the four families there was a continuation of the Santa yeast in the samples regardless of geographic location. she could tell which family had made which wine, that's because when you ferment at home you're not only making something tasty and nutritious, you're making a rich family heirloom with

your

family's unique microbial signature and that's what I want what we do. rekindle this ancient relationship with the microbes that our ancestors depended on and our bodies still remember much like mine did in Germany in 2008. I left a perfectly good career as a chef to start a fermented foods company that makes sauerkraut, I'm pretty sure.

That was the microbes' plan all along, thanks.