Fermented Foods: The Key to Unlocking Your Vibrant Self

Do you eat fermented foods regularly? If not, you’re missing an easy way to make your gut healthier. And a healthier gut means a happier and more vibrant you! If your gut isn’t right, you can eat healthy and still struggle with feeling flat and not quite yourself. Does this sound familiar? Because fermented foods are super important for healing the gut and balancing out the countless good and bad bacteria, they could be your secret weapon for unlocking your vibrant self.

 

 

What are fermented foods?

 Fermented foods undergo a process called lacto-fermentation. If you’ve never heard of this, it’s how foods were preserved before refrigeration became an option. The “lacto” part is nothing to do with lactose; it actually refers to the lactobacilli bacteria involved in the process.

 

The benefits 

 A healthy gut environment is essential for your hormones, immunity, digestion, and nervous system, which can potentially mean big changes to your health.

According to a 2011 study published in the Nutrition Research Journal, fermented kimchi supports weight loss and can help to reduce body fat in people who are overweight – much more so than fresh kimchi. Plus, it can improve metabolic and cardiovascular disease markers such as blood pressure, fasting blood glucose levels, and waist-to-hip ratio. Other research has linked kimchi to lower cholesterol levels, and it may be able to protect against constipation, osteoarthritis, atherosclerosis, and even cancer.

Fermented foods can be great if you’ve been experiencing problems such as food intolerances, yeast infections, digestive issues, and allergies. These can often stem from an unhealthy gut, and fermented foods can help to tackle this.

For immunity, good bacteria are involved in helping your body to recognize foreign threats and distinguish them from normal, healthy cells, make more antibodies, and help white blood cells to fight infection.

Basically, they give your body the tools to start healing, which is crucial for your health and well-being. And for anyone with health issues that stem from inflammation, they can help to calm things down. This is particularly great for people with autoimmune conditions, which are often highly inflammatory.

And with as much as 90% of your serotonin levels (a neurotransmitter heavily involved with mood) being made in your gut, fermented foods can be an underrated way to help you improve your well-being and feel better and more vibrant.

What to eat…

Some examples of fermented foods include:

• Sauerkraut (fermented cabbage)
• Kombucha (a fermented tea)
• Kefir (a fermented milk drink)
• Kimchi (a side dish made from fermented vegetables)
• Yogurt with live cultures
• Fermented vegetables

If you want to add more fermented foods into your diet, try including 1-2 tablespoons of them with meals and build up from there. Experts suggest you’ll get the best benefits from eating half a cup of fermented foods with foods. And as you’ll see in the next section, it’s not difficult to make them yourself.

 

Making your own fermented foods

Homemade fermented foods tend to have more bacteria (both good and bad) than most of the ones you’ll find in the grocery store. Pasteurization can kill off as much as 80% of the bacteria in store-bought fermented foods, destroying most of their benefits. Making your own fermented veggies means you don’t have to worry about that, and it’s not as difficult as you might think!

For the fermentation process, you’ll need a fermentation container, such as a large, clean glass jar, and some sea salt (around 1-3 tablespoons for every liter of water you’re using).

Chop up your chosen veggies as finely as possible and sprinkle with the salt. Massage the salt into the vegetables for around 5 minutes. If you don’t want to use your hands, try a potato masher instead for this part. You should have started to produce a brine at this point. Continue until your vegetables are covered in the brine, then transfer to the fermentation container. Ideally, the veggies will be entirely under the brine and not peeking out. If this isn’t the case, the bacteria won’t be able to ferment them properly. You may need to add more water to the jar to ensure that everything is fully submerged.

Once you’re done, cover the container with a very tight-fitting lid. Leave it at room temperature, and over the next couple of weeks, it should ferment naturally. If your container has an ultra-tight lid, you’ll need to unscrew it daily to let some of the pressure out of the jar. 

 

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