Wild Fermentation

Facts

Facts and Statistics About Fermentation

Most people consume fermented foods or drinks daily: bread, cheese, wine, beer, even coffee and chocolate.

Captain James Cook, the 18th century English explorer, is credited with having conquered scurvy (vitamin c deficiency) among his crews by serving them sauerkraut every day.

Fermentation pre-digests foods and improves the bioavailability of the nutrients present in them.

The process of fermentation also creates new nutrients, most notably B vitamins.

Live-culture ferments feed microorganisms essential to human digestion into your digestive tract.

Fermentation organisms also help prevent disease by competing with potential pathogens.

African infants weaned on fermented gruels had half as much diarrhea as counterparts weaned on unfermented gruels.

Literally hundreds of studies have been published in scientific and medical journals documenting the health-promoting and disease-fighting properties of different fermented foods and probiotic organisms.

Recent research in Finland concluded that fermentation of cabbage creates cancer-fighting compounds called isothiocyanates.

Humans started fermenting long before we began cultivating food crops. mead (alcohol fermented from honey) is generally regarded as the oldest fermented pleasure. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suggests that mead-making marks the passage of humanity from nature to culture.

During the two 20th century wars with Germany, Americans redubbed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage." (it goes great with freedom fries.)

Kimchi is such a basic staple in Korea that the average adult consumes more than 1/4 pound each day, and employees are customarily given "kimchi bonuses" in the fall so they can purchase ingredients to make their annual supply.

It was observed following the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that miso protected people from radiation sickness; later research identified a compound in miso called dipicolinic acid, which binds with radioactive elements and carries them out of the body.