Jonathan Steedman (00:00.985)

Hey food groupies, we're gonna be talking about ferment, well, I'm gonna be talking about fermented foods today. And you're gonna be listening to me talking about fermented foods, but hopefully by the end of day, I can put some knowledge in your ear holes. So basically fermented foods are foods that have been fermented. Excellent, thank you for listening. Have a wonderful day. No, I'm not gonna go through the process of fermentation, because I don't fully understand it or know how to do it. That's okay, I can buy it from people who do. As a side note, I'm not talking about beer and wine.

 

in this, don't count for a couple of different reasons. Largely the alcohol content kind of destroys any of the potential beneficial gut properties that might be in that food. But we can kind of break fermented foods up into a couple of different camps. We've got fermented veggies, your kimchi, your sauerkraut, traditional pickles. I have never been able to find properly fermented pickles where I am, which is a shame, but they are there. And you could, there's probably a

 

variety of other vegetables that you could pickle slash ferment properly. Then you've got your fermented dairy is another really big one, of course, you yogurt is the classic example, but we've also see things like kefir and whatever that rockabee thing is that I can't pronounce, flim yoke or something. Again, these more kind of yogurt drinks. You know, as a bit of a bit of a less common one where I am, natto is a fermented soybean food, which I have heard is an acquired taste.

 

I haven't been able to find it myself, but it's there. Really good source of vitamin K as an aside, I think. I'll just lock my head. Anyhow, and then kombucha, you so I guess like you could probably argue, unfermented, sorry, fermented unalcoholic drinks. So I think there's also like hazel, I can't remember. There's a few other just more niche types of fermented non-alcoholic drinks, but kombucha, like fermented tea is definitely.

 

the most common one. we're gonna start from, I'm gonna rank them, because people love a list of foods. We're gonna rank from least helpful to most helpful. But before we do that, why does this matter? So probiotics means that contains the actual bacteria itself. So if something claims to be a probiotic, you are ingesting, you are eating the gut bacteria. And we've got good research to show, and it's sort of growing as well, that regular intakes of fermented foods

 

Jonathan Steedman (02:29.023)

improve the variety and the number of gut bacteria in our gut, which is what we want. For good gut health, we know that a diverse range of gut bacteria and in good amounts usually means we've got quote unquote, good gut health. So fermented foods can help support that firstly via their probiotic action, i.e. we are literally ingesting the good bacteria.

 

Not all of it survives the journey. It's pretty rough down there. You know, you've to go through the stomach acid and things like that, but a lot of it still appears to survive the journey and kind of colonize the large intestine. And so they're really good for that. And then we'll see, there's also a few extra benefits as well, such as like their prebiotic action. So a prebiotic is something that supports the health of the bacteria.

 

So essentially it's their food. So prebiotics can be things like fiber, can be things like antioxidants and that stuff that the gut bacteria themselves ferment. And so a number of these fermented foods contain both probiotics, the bacteria, and prebiotics, their food, which as you can see is a really nice synergistic, sorry to all you corporate types who just shuddered when you heard the word synergistic, but a good balanced combination of those two.

 

So I'm gonna start with kombucha and those fermented beverages first. There's pretty poor evidence to show that they support gut health, despite what you might have heard. I don't think that, like, just like, that's the evidence. My opinion is even if we do find it has an effect, it's probably pretty mild if we haven't found it by now. That being said, I love kombucha. It's a fantastic alternative to a lot of other beverages. So I'm certainly not knocking it. I'm just suggesting that.

 

maybe having some everyday thinking you're supporting your gut health is not working for you. So kombucha, eh, from a gut health perspective. Fermented veggies, sauerkraut, kimchi, traditional pickles, those sorts of things. Better evidence there, again, we've got that probiotic effect of the bacteria, but then we've got the extra double whammy of the prebiotic effect because they've got good fiber and antioxidants. we're not just providing kind of new gut bacteria, we're also

 

Jonathan Steedman (04:45.473)

feeding and helping out the gut bacteria that are already there. really good double whammy there. Again, less evidence than the fermented dairy, which we'll get to in a second, but still really good. I like to just put a tablespoon of it on my plate. I rarely do much else than that with it. I'm sure there's fancy ways of doing it, but I find it really easy to just add on the side of a salad or a bowl or some description, you know, good kimchi or good sauerkraut. If you can do it every day, fantastic. If you can't, don't panic.

 

talk about at the end what you need to be looking for when you are buying these products as well, which is really important. Next is fermented dairy. this by far has the strongest evidence to support its improvements in gut health. So if you're really keen, this would be what I would be trying to add. Now, unfortunately for yogurts, not all yogurts are made equal. If you want to be particularly focused on the gut health benefits of yogurt, you want to find something with a high CFQ.

 

CFUs are colony forming units, which essentially are explaining the bacterial density. That sounds so gross, but the amount of good bacteria that are in that yogurt, I if they're below a certain threshold, it's gonna have less of a probiotic benefit on your gut. So all of the ones that do have good, you know, over 1 billion CFUs, they usually shout about it because it's a really good, you know.

 

thing to market. so Activia is a good one. I'm sure there's others I can't, I think Valia maybe have one. Anyhow, so yeah, look for at least over 1 billion CFUs per serve. But then if you go and look at like your Kefir or your Flim-Yolk stuff, you'll notice their CFUs, their colony forming units are crazy, often five to 20 times that of the yogurt. And so that's typically what I go for. I try and put a shot of that.

 

shot, swig, whatever of it in my smoothie each day. That's a really easy way to get them in, but you can totally mix them through yogurt, notes, and that sort of stuff. I really like those. And they do also have a prebiotic effect as well, even though you're like, is there fiber in them? No, but they're Galacto-Oligosaccharides, which is like the, they've got these really complex chains of sugars in them. That also has a prebiotic action. So very cool on that front.

 

Jonathan Steedman (07:07.389)

Natto I can't really speak to. I don't think we've got tons of studies on it, but given that it is fermented, probably has some benefit, but I can't really claim. And like I said, it's not really common where I am. If you love it, like heck yeah, it's really good for you, but don't feel like you need to go start adding natto to your day. The last really, really important thing around fermented foods, any fermented food that you buy and consume needs to be refrigerated. If it doesn't need to be refrigerated, it is not.

 

live and then you won't be getting the probiotic impact. So you can get like jars of sauerkraut in particular and cans of kimchi and sauerkraut on the shelves. They are not, they do not have a probiotic action because if they did, basically, basically what has been happening is they've been pasteurized, the bacteria inside those products has been killed to allow it to be shelf stable. If that bacteria hadn't been killed and then you sealed that jar,

 

the bacteria would continue to ferment and the byproduct of their fermentation is methane and other gases. And so that jar or that can would literally explode. And so any product that claims to be quote unquote probiotic, but it's shelf stable, I would approach with extreme caution slash I wouldn't bother with. Again, coming back to the kombucha example, I know there's some common shelf stable kombuchas. Can't comment on their probiotic quality because I don't think it's probably there. But again, that doesn't mean don't drink them.

 

I love them as an alternative to a lot of other higher calorie sugary drinks. So, you know, they're still cool. They're just probably not doing much for that kind of bacteria. Anyway, so yes, we need these products be refrigerated because the cold makes the bacteria dormant. So they don't ferment and so therefore your yogurt and your sauerkraut aren't exploding in your fridge. So that's just a really important extra little tip. If you're getting fermented foods, make sure they have to be refrigerated. If they don't need to be refrigerated, they're probably not giving you that.

 

probiotic benefit. that helps. The end. No, not the end. Please like, rate, subscribe, do all the stuff. It helps get the podcast out there, which is cool. And I would appreciate that. Now I'm done. All thanks, bye.