Fermentable Healthcare Issue

Brine Pickling U. Newsletter

The Science of Homemade: Probiotic Farming

  With a brine pickling fermentor—like the Perfect Pickler, or a pickling crock— you become a farmer in every sense of the word. You tend and raise a livestock—lactic-acid bacteria—in the trillions. You convert common vegetables into raw, cultured, farmed-in-your-kitchen foods. I dub thee a “farmacist.” There is science within these ferment gardens. Follow us in our continuing Pickling U. Newsletter. We promise to enlighten. - Bill Hettig 

This Issue of Brine Pickling U.

Fermentable Healthcare • Anticancer Pickles? • Probiotics Farming • Taming Fiery Onions • Quick Probiotic Pickles

Fermentable Health? The Power of Fermentation on Human Health

Noted medical doctor, Daphne Miller, writes, “...fermented [food] is probably one of the greatest losses [to the American diet].... Most people have nothing that’s truly fermented in their diet. Even the pickles and sauerkraut and things that you can buy in some supermarkets across America aren’t made through a true fermentation process anymore. So they lack all the health benefits. But recently the medical literature has been showing that genetic information is actually put into our gut through eating fermented foods. It’s becoming really obvious that this plays a key role in everything from food allergies to possible cancer prevention.”   - Daphne Miller, MD, Gourmet, 5/6/08

Dr. Miller wrote a definitively researched and highly readible book, The Jungle Effect, extensively studying the societies around the globe that have very low incidences of Western diseases. She noted that each group prepared and served fermented foods as an integral part of their traditional diet. Each group independently found the sublime power these functional foods have in digesting their meals and boosting their immune systems. 

Anticancer Pickles? Medicine Never Tasted So Good 

Scientists at the University of Illinois have shown for the first time that sulforaphane—the powerful cancer-fighting agent in broccoli—can be released from its parent compound by bacteria in the lower gut and absorbed into the body. 

The researchers suggested a couple of ways to provide this benefit, but I have a far simpler and direct idea. See it in option 3.

• 1 "One way might be to feed the desirable bacteria with prebiotics like fiber to encourage their proliferation.” 

• 2 "Another way would be to use a probiotic approach -- combining, say, broccoli with a yogurt sauce that contains the hydrolyzing bacteria, and in that way boosting your cancer protection."

• 3 One of the best ways is to culture broccoli and then eat it as a pickle. The very same bacteria that reside in our gut live naturally on the broccoli in the fields. Build the recipe in a brine fermentor and "they will come" beneficial bacteria in the trillions. These bacteria can break out the sulforaphane during fermentation. Now you can eat a tasty pickle and consume a special, functional food—at the cost of pennies. For extra nutritive thrust, I add alliums (onion family) as an ingredient. They, too, are found to exhibit anticancer activity as researched by David Servan-Schreiber, M.D. in his seminal book, Anticancer.