From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Sandor Alex Katz. Sandor is author of Wild Fermentation, fermentation, the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live culture foods. And most recently, and perhaps one of my favorite book titles ever, the revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Inside America's Underground Food Movement. He's a fermentation revivalist and you can visit Sandor at wild fermentation dot com which is an amazing online resource. Sandor, welcome to Herb Mentor Radio.
It's a pleasure to be with you today.
You know, and it's an absolute honor to have you here because we've been using your book ever since it came out. I remember when my, one of my mentors, took it out of the box and put it on the shelf and I that she sold books in her, at her little shop and I I grabbed it right away and bought it.
It I hope I hope you've been making use of it.
I yeah.
I demand of cements.
I didn't even I didn't even need to to look in it. I just saw the cover and knew it would be cool.
So, but, yeah, we have been making use of it and, over the years. And it's, on the cookbook shelf actually is where it lives. So, it's a and even, you know, even though it's got a lot of information as well, it's what's gotta have it, you know, in arms reach, you know.
So, you know, as as you know, your work is, really popular amongst herbal folks and those into natural health. In fact, you spoke at the Bastyr Urban Food Fair a couple years ago.
That's in my backyard. I didn't get a chance to meet you there, but, but my wife got your card so I could email you. But, but we have lots of listeners who have not been introduced to the benefits of fermented foods. Now, being that it's August and it's, primo in my area anyway, it's primo pickle and sauerkraut making time. I thought it'd be a great time to have you on.
So what I'm wondering is if you wouldn't mind starting out with the with, with actually maybe maybe the what is is better to start out with. Like, you know, what is what what what are fermented foods exactly?
I I I think that's actually the perfect place to start with the question, what is fermentation anyway and why should we care about it?
So broadly speaking, fermentation is the transformative action of microorganisms.
Typically, we reserve this word to refer to foods and beverages that we intend to put into our mouths, but obviously the transformative action of microorganisms is much bigger than that.
Food that we reject as rotten or spoiled for the most part we are rejecting because of the transformative action of microorganisms.
If you have a compost pile for your kitchen scraps or your garden scraps, that too is the transformative action of microorganisms.
So because what happens to all matter over time, all dead plant and animal matter is that microorganisms begin to digest it.
Human beings from the earliest of times have observed how to manipulate environmental conditions to encourage the growth of certain organisms and to discourage the growth of other organisms.
If you take you know, a head of cabbage and leave it whole on your pantry or if you shred it and leave it in a bowl in your pantry for, you know, three weeks or three months, it will never turn itself into sauerkraut.
You know, there is a technique. It's incredibly simple. It involves using some salt and pounding or squeezing the vegetables to draw liquid out and then submerging the vegetables under the liquids and thereby we prevent the possibility of molds growing and encourage the proliferation of acidifying bacteria.
So all of the fermentation processes ultimately amount to some sort of simple manipulation of conditions to encourage the growth of certain organisms rather than certain other organisms. But it is the transformative action of the microorganisms that is the defining characteristic of, of fermentation.
Now, I I hear the term a lot and and and and sometimes people ask me this and I always get a little confused. Like, for example, you know, we we make we make sourdough bread in our house or we make, I also make wine, just you know, just basic wine fermentation. But then then there's that term that that people use is lacto fermentation. What is that and how is that different than other kinds of fermentation?
Well, I mean, lacto fermentation really is simply, you know, referring to the, you know, the group of organisms that are primarily responsible find, you know, lactic acid producing bacteria alone. You never find yeast alone.
Organisms exist in communities and which of the organisms in a given community that's present on some food, in the air, which of them will become dominant in a given situation depends on what the nutrient is and to some degree on environmental conditions. So, lacto fermentation really refers to acidic ferments, acidified by lactic acid produced by the action of lactobacilli.
This is a really important group of bacteria for our health.
The most famous member of this family really perhaps the only bacteria that's really a household name is acidophilus, that's L acidophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus.
And basically these Lactobacilli are the same kinds of bacteria that we all have in our digestive tracts which enable us to effectively digest food and assimilate nutrients. So these live culture foods defined by lactic acid in the presence of these lactobacilli are actually incredibly beneficial for our health. And they range from yogurt and really many other live culture dairy ferments, sauerkraut, kimchi, all of the vegetable ferments, and certain of the class of what I would call tonic beverages, all contain these wonderful dense concentrations of lactobacilli and effectively replenish populations in our digestive system.
Now I'd say historically there was no reason really for people to have to think about replenishing the bacteria in their digestive systems, but we're living in extraordinary times and the bacteria that populate our digestive systems are under continuous assault from antibiotics that we may elect to take as individuals but that we are all consuming in our water every day just because of the accumulation of these chemicals in the water table.
Compound that with the chlorine that's in the water, compound that with all these antibacterial cleansing products and these bacteria that are so important to our effective functioning are under pretty much continuous assault and really need to be consciously replenished if we are to, if we are to thrive?
So, yeah, then that gets into really the why of of what folks want wanna take this, why they wanna pay attention, you know, and and and use fermented foods. And and I'm and I'm sensing that is that some is that somehow connected to, like, how you got into this? Like, there's there's some at one point that you were just like, oh, I'm really interested in in in in doing this and it was must have been connected to the why. But what's your story? I'm I'm really curious about your story.
Okay. Sure. Well, I I I would say that there are, you know, three distinct stages to my getting involved in fermentation.
You know, my first attraction to fermented foods was just, through my taste buds. You know, fermented foods have really wonderful strong flavors and they're not necessarily flavors that everybody loves, but the people who love them are very passionate about them. And, you know, really, if you walk through a gourmet food store and start thinking about the nature of foods that, you know, that that that we categorize as gourmet foods, almost all of them are the products of fermentation. And my favorite food as a kid growing up in New York City was sour pickles, what people in many parts of the country call kosher dills.
Right.
These are not cucumbers that have hot vinegar poured over them. These are cucumbers that are, that are pickled in a brine, in a salty water solution. And in that solution, lactobacilli grow and the acidification is lactic acid that's produced by these bacteria. And I just have always been drawn to this flavor.
I love this flavor. And as a kid, you know, if I had a little spare change, that's what I'd go get myself as a it's it's it's a pickle at a, you know, at a delicatessen in our neighborhood. Right. And, so I just always have loved this flavor.
I did not grow up watching my grandmother make pickles. You know, I had no, you know, I don't like, I I'm not, like, continuing, like, a family lineage of this. It's just a a flavor that I always have been drawn to. Then I spent a couple of years, in the late '80s where I was following a macrobiotic diet.
And, one of the foods that's really emphasized by mac Robotics is the live culture pickles, sauerkraut, these Japanese style of quick pickles, these long fermented daikon roots that in Japanese they call takuan pickles. But anyway, in macrobiotics, I started to get a sense of these live culture foods having an important macrobiotic teachers recommended beginning each meal with a pickle like that to stimulate the digestive juices. And I started noticing during that time that, you know, really before I even put them in my mouth, just when I would smell the, the the sour flavor, it it would make, my salivary glands start, start squirting.
Wow. So I I started really, you know, understanding there to be an important digestive benefit, from the, from the live culture foods in particular. But even then, I really did not have any experience making them. What gave me a reason to start making them was when I moved from New York City to rural Tennessee and started, started having a garden.
And I was confronted with the classic problem of all agriculturalists, which is all of the radishes are ready at the same time and all of the cabbages are ready at the same time.
So really historically what has driven fermentation innovation has been the necessity of preserving the harvest and more so than the nutritional benefits I would say, more so than the flavor benefits, it is the fact that fermentation is a brilliantly effective method for preserving the harvest, that, you know, that that basically found cultures world yet and we use that word like a culture.
You know? So what's the connection there? You know?
I mean, that's that sounds like it's probably origin, Yeah.
We we just, you know, cultured food would be, like a food that we introduce some specific community of organisms into. When you make yogurt, you take the little scoop of mature mature yogurt and introduce that into your your new milk. And so we we we call these little communities of microorganisms cultures. And we also call our, you know, language and literature and music and science and, you know, really all of the things that, human beings seek to pass down from generation to generation are also cultures.
And so, you know, I really, I think that these foods, well, certainly they are not incidental culinary novelties. These foods are somehow, you know, very much at the center of, what it is to be human and the cultures that we have created together as human beings. When you hear people's migration stories, you know, if people, you know, migrated across the ocean and they had the opportunity to bring whatever belongings they could carry, they always brought their food cultures. They brought their yogurt cultures.
They brought their sourdoughs, things like that. If we if we, you know, investigate the word culture, it comes from the word cultivation.
And and and and indeed, you know, we we think about that with our children. We try we're trying to cultivate our children, cultivate certain values in our children, cultivate certain, you know, knowledge in our in our children. And this is in these foods and and basically the, the knowledge that human beings have developed about how to effectively preserve foods, about how to prepare food so that they can be effectively digested. This is an important part of the you know, cultural heritage that we need to be passing on, to our children and that we need to be embracing as an important part of our culture. And I would go so far as to say that, fermentation has played a central role in human cultural evolution.
I think that, you know, trying to imagine the transition of people in different places from migratory hunter gatherer lifestyles to settled agricultural lifestyles.
Basically agriculture makes no sense without fermentation.
It just would be it would be absurd to put all of your energy into crops that are ready at a given moment of the year if you did not have some techniques to preserve the harvest to feed you for the rest of the year.
Right. Of course.
So that yeah. That makes a lot of sense and it's and gosh, you know, it's almost we literally have no culture now.
So, you know, people in our in our society.
It's they're not even paying so so you were talking to about the, three things that influenced you. That was I think you got up to two. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Okay.
Okay. So but but then but then having a garden, you know, I mean, I learned how to ferment because I had a garden and I had the, you know, I had the same sort of, you know, need that people historically have had to to figure out how to preserve food. So then, there there are some there are some further, further steps in my journey. I mean, I learned how to make sauerkraut. I got very enthusiastic about, about sauerkraut and then started investigating other realms of fermentation. And I learned a little bit about making wine and I started, making sourdough bread.
We keep goats in the community where I live and I started playing around with cheese making.
I learned how to make miso. I learned how to make tempeh.
You know, I got very interested in the whole phenomenon of fermentation broadly, but I also had an opportunity to teach people how to make sauerkraut. Some, some friends of mine, who turned their homestead into an eco education center that they call the Sequatchy Valley Institute that's here in Tennessee, invited me to teach about, making sauerkraut.
And, you know, my first, experience teaching people how to make sauerkraut, which was ten years ago, nineteen ninety nine, I learned that there's a huge cultural fear around aging food outside of refrigeration for, you know, those of us in the generations who have been, you know, raised in the context of refrigeration.
And a refrigerator is simply a fermentation slowing device. Mhmm. And, you know, that's its that's its significance in our lives as it slows down the microbial changes that inevitably happen to foods.
But for those of us who have been raised in this context, we're raised to fear food that sits out of refrigeration. If you take a food safety class that many states require of people who work in restaurants, then, then then you hear this dogma that goes something like any food that sits outside of refrigeration for more than four hours is potentially dangerous and should be discarded.
So you can't have a commercial kitchen. No.
That might make sense in the context of a restaurant.
But as an understanding of, you know, the dynamics of our food, it's, it is just patently absurd. If it were so dangerous to eat any food that had sat sat outside of refrigeration for more than four hours, none of us would be here because our ancestors would have perished, thousands of years ago and we never would have had an opportunity to evolve as we have. You know, we have had the opportunity to evolve because our ancestors are very clever and, we're very clever and observed under what conditions foods could be preserved, safely and effectively.
And in fact, fermentation is a strategy not only for food preservation, but for food safety.
Fermented vegetables are safer than raw vegetables.
You know, all of these, you know, ridiculous scares that we've had about, you know, spinach and lettuce and, and almonds and apple cider and, you know, one food after another that's been, you know, experienced some sort of contamination in the context of industrial agriculture and then, spread across thirty four states before they could realize what the source of the contamination was.
The thing is that foods that are fermented, even if they have been contaminated by some E. Coli one hundred and fifty seven or salmonella or any of the notorious food poisoning contaminants, those contaminants would be overwhelmed by the native bacterial populations on the vegetables and they would make it impossible for the contaminants to develop and the acidification would actually destroy the contaminants.
So, you know, so fermentation is an effective strategy not only for preservation, but for food safety. So, anyway, I mean, in my first experience of, teaching about fermentation, I just learned about this huge cultural fear. Almost everyone, it turns out, is terrified, that they might accidentally make themselves sick. They might accidentally kill somebody.
And, and and so, you know, like many aspects of food production that have disappeared behind factory doors, you know, people are very disempowered.
You know, these simple processes which are ancient rituals, which our ancestors you know, people in our time, you know, educated, sophisticated people are afraid of these ancient rituals and, you know, afraid that they might do anything or might do something wrong. So, So, my cultural revivalist work is really just trying to empower people with simple skills and, you know, and reclaim this process into our lives.
That's great. Cultural revivalist. I love it.
You know, and and more broadly, I think that, you know, I I I think that we are living in a in a time where we all have been indoctrinated into what I call the war on bacteria. Mhmm. And, you know, and that is this this ideology that bacteria are bad. We should be killing bacteria. And I think, you know, nothing is a more vivid illustration of this, you know, misguided idea than antibacterial cleansing soaps. Mhmm.
So, you know, we're all there in the store washing I I mean, washing your hands is important.
But, you know, when you're when you're standing there at the supermarket, like, surveying your soap choices, there's all of this marketing encouraging you to buy the soap with the antibacterial compounds that kill ninety nine point nine percent of bacteria. And the effectiveness of that marketing strategy is that, you know, people in our time have been brainwashed to think that bacteria are our enemies. Mhmm. I don't wanna deny that there do exist bacteria that can make us sick and can, can create infections in our bodies. But most bacteria, we can coexist with very, very well. And in fact, many bacteria are important to our effective physiological functioning, to our ability to digest food, our ability to extract nutrients and in particular minerals from the foods that we eat.
They create a competitive situation that is precisely what protects us from the relatively small number of bacteria that have the potential to make us sick.
And when we are continually wiping out these bacteria in, on, and around our bodies, All we're doing is making ourselves more vulnerable to, you know, infection from the pathogens.
Bacteria are not our enemies. Bacteria are our ancestors.
And we can embrace and reclaim bacteria as our allies.
And and it seems as as even this this this cleansing and antibacterial thing is even I find even in the natural health world too. You probably find that too. Like, people say, oh, I have to cleanse or I have to like, when you when someone comes up to you and says, oh, Sandy, you know, because they know you're a groovy natural health person. Right? And they go, oh, I just did this fast or this cleanse or this herbal thing to cleanse myself. What goes through your mind? I mean, what do you tell them?
Well, I mean, you know, I I I I I'm I'm not I'm definitely not averse to to periodic fasting. I mean, I I I think I I think that I think that periodic fasting can be a wonderful thing. But, I mean, fundamentally, I think we have to, like, not think of our bodies as, as dirty and in need of sort of radical deep cleaning. I mean, I think it's great to give our digestion a break. I think that's really the value of fasting, because digestion takes a lot of energy. Mhmm.
But, but, yeah, no, I mean, I totally I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying that, you know, that this this this idea of cleansing is built upon an ideology that presumes that, you know, our bodies are are dirty.
Right. Right.
And, you know, I think I think we have to, you know, we we have to honor our bodies.
You know, another thing I I know is it really struck me in your in your book that is that you're a long term HIV survivor. Correct?
Correct.
And so, this is incredible because this obviously another thing must be obviously that you're just like, hey, this is this is keeping me going. This is this is amazing for my immune system.
Well, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I I I feel that the fermented foods, you know, have been an important part of my healing.
You know, I guess I I I guess I I don't really emphasize that because I have a lot of skepticism about a lot of, like, claims of miracle cures that people make on behalf of specific foods. Cool. And I also wanna be, you know, I wanna be completely honest and, you know, and say that I I also take, I take HIV meds. I mean, I've been taking meds every day for ten years. I had a I was hoping that just good living would keep me healthy and I had a health crisis with all of the classic wasting syndromes and persistent nausea for six months.
And I decided to try the pharmaceutical solution and I've been on parallel tracks. I've been pursuing the pharmaceutical solution, which seems to be working very effectively for me. But I will say that, you know, almost everyone who I've ever met who's been on the drugs that I've been on Mhmm. Has experienced chronic diarrhea, and I have never experienced that. And I attribute, you know, I attribute my continued, good digestive health to my regular consumption of live cultures.
Live culture foods have a lot of incredible benefits. I mean, all the live culture vegetables contain compounds that are called isothiocyanates that are known to be anti carcinogenic compounds. Mhmm. Does that mean that if somebody I loved was diagnosed with, with brain cancer, I would tell them just eat sauerkraut and everything will be alright? I'm not sure that I would.
Right.
But I would definitely say whatever other course of treatment they might be pursuing, they should be eating sauerkraut because, you know, a lot of those, I mean, because it's potentially anticarcinogenic and also because so many of the treatments have such detrimental effects on our digestive health. And this is a great way of keeping digestive health, of keeping our digestive systems, healthy. Mhmm. You know, I would say that people who are suffering from various digestive diseases ranging from chronic constipation, acid reflux, Crohn's disease, irritable from the regular consumption of live culture foods.
You know, I would say that, you know, if you are the healthiest specimen in the world, if you are just feeling the effects of aging like most of us are, if you are living with a long term chronic illness, if you're facing an acute health crisis, no matter what your health status, in almost every case, I think that the live culture foods can be beneficial and help improve digestion and assimilation of nutrients. And just on the basis of that, lots of different kinds of health problems can clear themselves up.
Okay. So so let's say then, I'm I'm getting into this a little bit. I've either bought a copy of your book which I recommend everybody does, Or, maybe I watch a little YouTube.
I was thinking about embedding that YouTube video where you do the, on the page where I'll host this, you know, on herbmentor dot com, you know, where you, show the simple raw vegetable demonstration right right sure I have a little I have a little sauerkraut making demonstration on here and okay so I do that I got some sauerkraut in the fridge fridge.
Some other maybe I use that's fermented YouTube, you know, that video or maybe I've got some yogurt or kefir. I've made some pickles. Very simple stuff to do as you outline, or maybe, you know, I didn't make the miso but I I bought some from southrivermiso dot com or I went and I got some at the health food store.
What amount do I you know, if I have one of those things in my fridge or some of those things, what amount in my in my fridge is about what I should be eating to keep up my digestive health?
Okay. I think that, you know, these fermented vegetables have typically been used as condiments. People eating a small amount of them to flavor their other food.
Traditionally they've been made very salty, although you can definitely make them with only a moderate amount of salt or even with no salt at all if you like. I think they taste a lot better with some salt. Mhmm.
But, you know, because they've historically been salty foods, they're things that people typically eat in small amounts.
And it's really not about eating huge amounts. It's more about, eating them regularly.
So I think, you know, if you, you know, if you're if you are, you know, two people living in an apartment, a quart of vegetables, a quart of fermented vegetables, which takes about two pounds of vegetables to make, you know, should last you for weeks.
Wow. But but if you but if you really love it, I mean, there's not there's nothing wrong with eating more. The only downside is if it's salty. And so I really recommend that people who are not making this food with the imperative of survival to be able to this was a survival food for farmers in temperate regions.
Picture, Minnesota, somewhere where there's a very limited growing season. Oftentimes, for people in a region like this, this was the only Vitamin C that people would have access to over the course of the long winter. So that's where the tradition of using a lot of salt comes from, is the imperative of preserving it for a long time. But if you're not needing to preserve it for long periods of time, use just a little bit of salt.
And then if you like the flavor of it, you know, feel free to eat to eat a pint a day, a quart a day. It's not gonna hurt you. It's great stuff.
Oh, wow. That's great.
But but but you don't need to eat a lot. You know, each spoonful has billions of, bacterial cells.
When we're talking about replenishing bacterial populations, we're not talking about huge quantities of food. It's more about, you know, regular ingestion than high quantity ingestion.
It doesn't matter which type you're choosing to eat because like, you know, in your book, your miso, sauerkraut, you know, kimchi, yogurt, a lot of, you know, dairy things like that and others, pickles, breads, crackers.
I mean, I would say, you know, eat eat what you like. Okay. Don't assume that if you don't like sauerkraut that you've had at a hot dog stand or in a can, that that's the only way it can be. You know, you you know, people are making all sorts of, you know, radically different styles of sauerkraut, depending on how long you ferment it for, what kinds of spices you add into it, how salty you make it, how long you ferment it for, you can really achieve a huge range of different flavors.
Personally, I would say that there is a benefit to eating lots of different types of ferment, eating ferment at different stages of development.
And, you know, these are all, ways of, you know, basically building biodiversity inside our bodies, micro microbial biodiversity.
But, but, you know, you don't have to start you don't start out thinking that, you know, you have to have, you know, ten different live culture ferments that you're eating every day. Just find what you like, find what feels good when you eat it and start incorporating that into your your diet and then if you have the energy to start incorporating another food then pick a second. But I think that just trying to do it all at once is really, you know, just a, you know, a recipe for disaster.
I know. It always happens when you really get into something.
Well, I'd love to describe a really simple ferment that I love, that's incredibly easy for people to make. And it's a drink. It's called beet kvass.
I'm drinking some right now.
I got some Alright.
You're drinking some beet kvass right now.
I got my wife my wife made it.
Not be simpler to make. So you take a you take a small to medium sized beet, scrub it, cut the top off of it, chop it up into half inch cubes, put it in a quart sized jar, fill the jar the rest of the way with water, add a pinch of salt, seal the top of the jar, and leave it on your counter for a few days. Mhmm. Three, four days. Taste it. If, what what will happen is, you know, as the days pass, the color and the sugar and the flavor from the beets will infuse into the water, and it will all begin to ferment, which means that it will begin to acidify.
So if you taste it and the flavor still tastes weak, give it another day or two. The flavor will get stronger as more of the flavor infuses into the water and as it begins to get more noticeably acidic.
And then when it reaches the point where you like it, strain the beets out, and you can just drink that beet sauce right then and there, or you can put it in the refrigerator and just have a little sip each day as a as a little, tonic.
And then if you want, you can put some more water over those same beats and do a second or what I call a second pressing.
The second pressing will be a little bit weaker in flavor, but it will go a lot faster because the beets have already built up a much denser population of acidifying bacteria.
Fantastic. Thanks for that extra advice. That's good.
You know, you were just you were just talking a minute ago about, often being used as condiments and, that's what I've heard too like, especially using using soy like, you know, in in tamari, for example.
I just wanted your opinion because this comes up, I I this comes up from time to time on on on our on our site or I see out there. You know, what's your run on the, you know, is especially especially okay. Are are you are you vegetarian, Sander?
No. No. I'm not I am not a vegetarian.
Well, of the vegetarians that you know, me neither. But, you you know, there there's a there's this first of all, I I I a lot of people think, like, oh, vegetarian, they always associate maybe with Weston Price Foundation or something like that. Like, oh, you know, I don't I'm a vegetarian and and and and and really, these are what we're talking about so far are really vegetables.
That way and and so anyone can eat them. But the thing I talked about is a lot of vegetarians I talked to consume a high unfermented soy diet.
And I was just wondering what you, you know, your your take on, you know, the unfermented soy products versus the fermented soy soy products such as, you know, tamari good tamari and the lime?
Sure. Okay. So, okay. First of all, you know, one of the, other important nutritional benefits of fermentation Mhmm. Is that fermentation predigests whatever it is that you're ferment fermenting.
It is, you know, at least partially digested before it goes into your mouth.
With certain foods, this is more important than with other foods. And I would say that the the single food in which this predigestion aspect of fermentation is the most critical is with soybeans.
You know, soybeans, the reasons the reason why the vegetarian subculture adopted soybeans as the, you know, almost singular replacement for meat and for milk is that soybeans are the plant food that has the highest concentration of protein. Oh. But if you just, you know, soak some soybeans and then cook them for six hours and sit down with a bowl of soybeans to eat for dinner, that's gonna be a memorable evening for you because you're you're gonna have terrible indigestion and gas all night. And, you know, basically, our human digestive tract are not equipped to digest soybeans and certainly not to extract all of that protein that's in the soybeans. So the, you know, the the Asian cultures that pioneered soy agriculture all developed these amazing ways of fermenting the soybeans. And so, you know, there's soy sauce that, you know, is a condiment in, you know, much of Asia. There's miso.
There's natto, a Japanese soy ferment that's remained a little bit more obscure in, in the west. There's, there's tempeh, the Indonesian ferment. And if you're familiar with these foods, they're very different from one another in flavor and in texture. But what they have in common is that the protein of the soybeans gets predigested into amino acids, the building blocks of proteins that our bodies can access.
So it just makes the fermenting it. So, yes, I mean, I think that fermented soy products are just vastly more digestible and nutritious tamari, you know, like all of those are fermented, miso is fermented, tempeh is fermented, natto, is a really wonderful food that we're learning about some extraordinary health benefits from this food that's remained a little bit more obscure. In addition to predigestion and the live cultures and by the way, not all fermented foods contain live cultures. Lots of fermented foods are cooked after their fermentation and before they are consumed.
So those just by definition cannot have live cultures. And I don't mean to suggest that that's always a terrible thing to do. It's just to understand, you know, an important distinction.
But, many ferments contain, unique micronutrients that are generated by the microorganisms over the course of their life cycles as they are digesting the foods for us. And, and then they're contributing these unique micronutrients ferments all contain isothiocyanates, which are these, anti carcinogenic compounds.
Well, miso contains this extraordinary compound called dipycholinic acid. And dipycholinic acid in our bodies functions as a magnet for heavy metals. And it can literally pull heavy metals out of our cells, bind with them, and deliver them out of our bodies. Well, natto, this Japanese, soy ferment, which is which is not really caught on so much in in in in in the West because it's slimy and we have an aversion to slimy mucilaginous textures in food. But it's really it's really a very delicious food, you know, if if if if that doesn't put you off too much. But anyway, natto has this compound that's gotten a lot of attention called nattoquinase.
And if you go into, you know, if you go into supplement stores, you can find capsules of nacho kinase. And, you know, at first, they're using it for peep to to regulate blood clotting, in particular for people at risk for aneurysms and other kinds of clotting disorders. Disorders. But some new research in the last six months or so suggests that nacho kinase might actually help, prevent or even treat Alzheimer's disease. So there's a, you know, huge new interest in this, you know, food that has until now been, you know, fairly obscure in the West.
So, so vegetarians eat your natto, not your Tofurky.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and and and also, I mean, I would say, like, don't look to a single, you know, sort of food to, to, you know, as a source for all your your protein and and you're a lot better off with, with with with soy after it's been fermented rather than unfermented forms of soy.
Thank you. You know, just a little question. I we have some member questions, some techie types of questions that came in. I wanna ask, for for our members. I asked them, hey, you know, what what would you wanna ask, Andor, if you had a chance? Before I do that, I guess I'll ask my question first since it's since it's my show and and I can do what I want.
We, one thing that we really we my my wife loves making, fermented like using ginger culture and what not of making sodas.
Like she may She's just gotten really good at it, you know. Make doing like fermented. You know, do you know that process, you know, when you're doing the Yeah.
Yeah. So it's yeah. Naturally carbonated sweet beverages.
Right. With the with the ginger and the culture and then making that first and putting that in there. And and also, you know, I like I brew a few different wines in a year. I like my elderberry, my my blackberry, and all. So, you know, I know that the the sodas containing, sugar and we know the wine containing alcohol and these two things aren't, you know, so great, for you. But, but, you know, when you compare them to conventional things, I mean, is there health benefits to these beverages?
Well, sure. I mean, they have a lot of cultures. Mhmm. You know, I mean, they have I I mean, the, you know, the, you know, the only way to achieve carbonation unless you attach, like, a a tank with synthetic carbon dioxide to something is through fermentation and and the cultivation of cultures. Cultures. And so, you know, yeah, these naturally fermented sodas and there's lots of different ways that people are people are doing them, different sources of cultures that people are using.
But yeah, sure, they all contain live cultures. And that in and of itself is a health benefit. They still have lots of their sugar intact, so I would recommend that people limit their consumption. It's not drinking half a gallon of naturally fermented soda isn't really no better for you than drinking half a gallon a day of synthetic sodas.
You're still getting all that sugar.
But sure, yes, for as an occasional treat, you know, as an alternative, you know, for your kids, it it it's a great idea.
Yeah. Because the kids love it.
I would say, I mean, as a practical matter, the the biggest challenge for naturally fermenting sodas is you you're sealing something that's alive and fills a lot of sugar in, an enclosed vessel.
Carbonation. But but moderate carbonation is useful.
Extreme carbonation, I mean, it it it it ends up wasting your drink because it all comes out as foam and it becomes potentially dangerous like a bomb that could explode.
Explode.
So, so you won't really wanna ferment for short periods of time. What I always do is, you know, I I I prefer to use glass to plastic. But when I do things like that that have the potential of building up a lot of pressure, I always put one bottle in plastic so I can gauge how pressurized it's becoming.
And then once it starts feeling, you know, like it's under significant amount of pressure, move them all into the refrigerator. Your fermentation is flowing machine and then, you know, you want to drink them. These, you know, naturally carbonated sodas are not like a Coke that you can just leave in your cupboard for eight years.
Make a gallon at a time.
They will explode. Make small batches and, you know, enjoy them as soon as they get carbonated. And, you know, you can store them, in your refrigerator to slow them down but pressure will still build, over time even in your refrigerator.
And anyone listening here, we've got a video recipes, on doing this these processes on our mentor, the soda, step by step if you're curious.
So let's get some of the, member questions if you don't mind. So, few techie questions here. Amber wanted to know, because she, she she wanted to know, can you ask about making yogurt with raw milk? Should you only heat to a hundred and ten degrees?
So what would you say to that?
Okay. That's a that's it's a great question.
So, you know, I I definitely I definitely, you know, am part of the raw milk revolution. I love raw milk. I feel like it tastes better.
It's more digestible.
It makes more sense.
It's better for us, if it's from healthy animals. We certainly would not want to stop, pasteurizing all of the commercial milk supply in the United States. That would be a terrible idea. But anyway, as for yogurt making, the the thing is that raw raw milk has a native bacterial population.
If you just leave raw milk on the counter, those bacteria will, acidify the milk. That is soured milk, and that is how most people throughout history have been able to enjoy milk because, fresh milk is really a phenomenon of the twentieth century and and, widespread refrigeration. And in parts of the world where refrigeration is not as widespread, people are still used to drinking sour milk. The derivation of all of the cultured milks that people enjoy is somebody's soured milk that happened in a particular environment that just yielded a spectacular, you know, flavor or, or texture.
The problem with making yogurt out of raw milk is that there is this native bacterial population that to a certain degree will compete with the the specific community of organisms that you add to make yogurt. Mhmm. So, you know, you can make lovely raw milk yogurt, but you'll just always have to accept that it will be thin and runny. And, you know, it will never get as thick as it gets, if you heat up the milk, which, you know, which effectively kills the native bacterial population.
And also that, you know, the the the heat denatures the proteins, which has something to do with, you know, making the the the thick texture that people really love in yogurt.
Mhmm.
So you can make raw milk yogurt, but you just have to accept that it will be much, thinner and runnier than, the yogurt that you're used to.
In either case, whether using raw or from the supermarket, the temperature you'd heat to is about one eighty ish or something?
Or Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to denature the protein, and, you know, kill any native bacteria. Yeah. Heat it up to heat it up to about one eighty, then cool it cool it down.
You know, try try to cool it, quickly, using a cold water bath or something around the pot down to one hundred and ten and one hundred and ten is the ideal temperature yogurt cultures, and incubate.
Okay. So you're you're incubating it at one ten, Amber. Okay. Okay.
And so, you know, I mean, some people buy these little plug in thermostatically controlled devices and those are fine, but don't feel like you have to have one of those. I do it basically in an insulated cooler. I preheat the cooler with some hot water Yeah. And then I put and then I then I then I put my my jars of of yogurt right into that preheated cooler.
I've seen people just wrap it up in a blanket, sometimes with a couple of hot water bottles to help generate some heat under there.
You know, this has, for most people throughout history, been an improvisational, process.
Oh, that's where our hot water bottle is. I've been looking for it. I know you're thank you for reminding me I was looking for it. That's why my wife's got it in the cooler where she's making the yogurt.
So she she's read conflicting information on how much yogurt to use as a starter. Some say no more than one tablespoon, and others say a half a cup.
So do you have any no.
No. Definitely, let let less is more. Less is more. I I learned that from the joy of cooking.
But, yeah. You you will not you will not you will not get thicker yogurt by by just adding more starter.
About a tablespoon per quart Right.
Is, is sufficient.
So she should just know that if she, you know, she was looking for a thicker yogurt that raw milk is basically gonna give you a thinner yogurt, it sounds like. Yeah.
Well, I don't you know, the other thing about the pursuit of thickness in yogurt is, our expectations have been created by industrialized yogurt. So, you know, every batch of industrial of industrial yogurt, they're using like a like a laboratory cultured laboratory cultured starter, which has, like a very high balance of the the bacteria that makes you overcoagulate is not the acidifying bacteria. It's another bacteria called streptococcus thermophilus that is found in the same community.
So so if you always use, like, a pure starter that has exactly the right balance of those things, and then most of the commercial yogurts, they're they're they're adding in either some extra cream or some extra milk powder or in certain cases, even things like gelatin, or collagen as thickeners. You know, they they learned that people love thick yogurt, so they're using all these sort of, like, you know, tricks to make the yogurt even thicker. Like, the yogurt we're eating now is thicker than the yogurt that people have enjoyed historically.
So, you know, you don't have to don't don't don't judge your it'll be really hard for your yogurt to be quite as firm as some of the commercial yogurts are. But some of the things that will help are, yeah, preheating right before you make your yogurt, bringing it up to one hundred and eighty degrees and then cooling it down, maintaining your incubation temperature as close to one hundred and ten degrees as you can.
And, and if you see, if you keep on perpetuating your starter, if you keep on taking a little batch of your yogurt and using that as a starter for the next one, it will get it will the balance of microbes in the community will shift over time and chances are that your yogurt will will stop being quite as firm. So, you know, you can really you know, yogurt can be fine and still has a certain thickness to it, but not be as thick as some of the commercial yogurts.
It can still be wonderful. Or if you're in pursuit of the product that you're used to, then you're going to keep need to, like, periodically refresh your starter and, you know, go back to, you know, one of the pure strains coming, you know, out of a commercial product.
K. You know, you're talking before about, you know, with milks raw milk souring. Can you can you use that soured raw milk, to make yogurt at that point or is it past the?
No. I mean, once it's that acidified, then the the the streptococcus thermophilus, bacteria won't be very active. So you won't it won't be thick. You know, raw milk that's sour is safe to drink. Mhmm.
You may or may not like the flavor of it, but, you know, all of the, you know, fermented milk products that people enjoy, yogurt, kefir, fuel milk, villa, pima. There's, you know, there's there's just infinite variety in in, you know, cultured milks that, you know, basically every human culture that domesticated lactating animals for their milk Mhmm. You know, developed, you know, traditions of of of culturing milk.
But they all they all arose spontaneously from, you know, somebody's sour milk that had a particularly lovely flavor and or texture. Oh. So, you don't have to be afraid of trying your your your, your your soured milk. It might be it might be very it might be totally delicious. You might love it. Right.
What I what I suppose do is let it get really sour so it separates. It curdles itself and it separates and the milk the milks that float to the top And I skim it off and I put it in a jar and I write sour cream and we use it like sour cream. Oh.
But, you know, just just taste it. See what you think of the flavor. And, you know, it's when pasteurized milk sits too long, it does not sour. It develops, bacteria that are typically referred to as putrefying bacteria rather than souring When raw milk with a native population of lactobacilli sours, the flavor becomes sour and it becomes densely populated with really beneficial bacteria.
Our our milk, our raw milk, we with two kids in the house, they it never gets the chance to go south.
Alright. Well, that's that's the best.
Is there a difference of when making yogurt between goat's milk or cow's milk in the process?
No. No. The the the the the process is the same. I mean, the goat's milk and cow's milk are are different, you know, if you're working with raw milk especially, goat's milk is naturally homogenized whereas cow's milk, the cream floats to the top.
Okay.
So, you know, you get this like stratification, in it and with with the cow's milk that you don't get in goat's milk.
A lot of people assume that goat's milk has less, less fat and in fact, goat's milk has a little bit more fat. It's just that it's, it's just that it's naturally homogenized. Alright.
Okay. So, switching away from, yogurt here.
Manzanilla in Texas.
And she's in Texas so it's hot down there. And she even says it's pretty hot and even very warm in December even. And so she she was she has a let's see, an an air conditioned attached garage, and she says, should I risk keeping home canned pickles and kraut in the garage during the hot months, or does the honey to do list need to canning your sauerkraut. Mhmm.
I mean, I I am really opposed to canning your sauerkraut. Mhmm. I mean, this is sort of the this is the typical American approach to sauerkraut is to, is to can it. But I think that you're, you know, you destroy the, you know, the most profound nutritional benefit of the sauerkraut, which is the live cultures themselves when you when you heat process it.
Mhmm. But just to answer the question, I mean, I would say any, you know, any heat processed food is going to stay nutritious longer in a cooler place. You know, just nutrients will degrade faster if it's stored in a very hot place. So you might try to you might try to get some shelves in a in a cooler place in your in your house.
Let me say about about making sauerkraut and some of these other, ferments that historically have been strategies for food preservation. Right. Right. You know, historically, they're done in the fall when the temperatures are getting cool.
And that's when you have the most potential for long term preservation over, you know, three months, six months, nine months. In a hot climate, during the summer, it's not the time to ferment things for long term storage. However, you can ferment in any temperature range that you live in. You just have to understand the dynamics that all of these fermentation microorganisms, their metabolisms speed up when it's warmer and slow down when it's cooler.
So if you make, you know, like today, it's ninety five degrees here where I live in Tennessee. You know, I I have some sauerkraut going right now, but I just I have to understand that that's a short term process, that I'm making just because I just because I enjoy the flavors and I like the health benefits of it. And that is not gonna last for, you know, six or nine months because it started off in this ninety five degree temperature and it's going through its process very quickly. But what it does mean is that, you know, after five days or a week, it has progressed significantly further and it's a really transformed food and it's wonderful.
But, you know, you just have to adjust your expectations to your, your climate realities.
Okay. Great. And one last quick member question, and and I think you're excuse me. I think you already answered it. But just to just to bring it up for Peggy's sake because she participates a lot online.
And she's, like, wondering about people with candida and how fermentation can help. And that really does relate to what you talked about earlier too.
Okay. But but I I wanna address the question, directly if we have time because it's a it's a question that comes up a lot. And, you know, a lot of a lot of the sort of standard medical advice for candida will include avoid all fermented foods.
And personally, I think that's a terrible idea for someone with candida, and I think that that is only, you know, the response of somebody who can't be bothered to distinguish between different types of ferments.
But but basically, when you have candida, you wanna avoid carbohydrate based foods. That's what is, you know, feeding the yeast that you're having an overgrowth problem with.
But one of the reasons why these yeast are are are are are growing out of control in your body is because their bacterial competitors are not there or are not are are not thriving. So so, actually, you know, my perspective and, you know, with the disclaimer that I am not a health care provider, but, you know, at this point, I have heard sort of the anecdotal stories of so many hundreds of people, that that that that I firmly believe it.
That, you know okay. First of all, you wanna avoid the ferments that are based on carbohydrates, and that's lots of ferments. Alcohol, vinegar, bread, kombucha. You know, these are all ferments that are based on carbohydrates.
But, but the ferments that are based on foods that are not primarily carbohydrates, the vegetable ferments, the milk ferments, and and and that have live bacterial cultures in them, you know, actually are precisely, you know, the thing that in combination with avoiding carbohydrates can help, you know, replenish the bacterial populations in your body that can compete with the yeast that you're having a problem with. So I think that, you know, sauerkraut, yogurt, kefir, kimchi, certain of the tonic beverages like the beet kvass, actually can be wonderful, wonderful, treatments for Candida.
Excellent.
You know, Sandor, I was I was at a hotel, with my family last week. I went to I spent some time down by the beach in Oregon coast. And my my daughter was mystified by this box that was on top of the refrigerator.
And my, son walks up in, you know, he's ten years old and she's five and described it as a microwave and that how it's not a healthy thing to cook in.
And I just this is one of those parental moments when you're observing and you go, it's getting through, you know.
But your your new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwave. I love that title. And could you just tell us, if you have the time, about this book and what inspired you to write it?
Sure. I I mean, the revolution will not be microwaved. Well, for one thing, it's not about microwaves like that.
I mean, it's about grassroots food activism and projects that people are doing to create better food choices for themselves and in their communities.
And, you know, it runs the gamut from, the revival of local food and of farmers markets and the growth of the CSA concept to things like the raw milk underground and other raw food movements, I addressed some of the impediments to the reemergence of local food and one of the themes that runs through the book is how laws that have been enacted in the name of food safety actually are having the perverse effect of discouraging local food production, because the regulations are so much written for the needs of the large scale producers. And oftentimes the regulations that's appropriate to people producing at a large scale simply have the effect of preventing the possibility of people producing at a smaller scale because, because the facilities that are described are just not economically feasible if you're doing a small scale business.
But really the emphasis is on grassroots movements and what people are doing that's positive because I know that so much of the information about our food system is bleak. And I think I do think that many of the, you know, many of the realities of our food system are very bleak, but we're not going to solve them by just, you know, sitting around and feeling depressed about them. You know, we have to, you know, figure out strategies to create better better choices for ourselves and, you know, and the people we love.
You know, my inspiration for writing the book was, you know, as I traveled around after Wild Fermentation came out and, you know, started meeting all these these people who were interested in fermentation, most of them were not interested only in fermentation. Most of them, you know, the context in which they were coming to fermentation was their involvement in some other kind of food activist work. And so, it's really the inspirational tales of people I've met, as I've traveled around teaching people about fermentation.
I do teach teach fermentation workshops. I list them on my on my website. I do a certain amount of traveling and doing them, you know, in different places. But then I also have a teaching kitchen here in Middle Tennessee, where I live and I offer more intensive workshops here for people who are interested in really, you know, exploring, this more deeply. And, that information is all on my website, which is wildfermentation dot com. And, you can also get my books through my website.
I love it when, you know, it's just always a great interview when literally this whole time you've been literally, like, answering the next the next thing I was saying, the next thing I was gonna ask say before I do.
I love it. So in a way, we're creating creating a new culture here. Right? Get it? No.
That's Absolutely.
Absolutely. And and we and we have to create a new culture. I mean, you know, the, you know, the paradigm of, you know, globalized commodity food is rapidly destroying the earth and depleting natural resources.
It is destroying our health and resulting in a situation where today, our children are expected to have shorter lifespans than we are. And it's really destroyed any kind of underpinnings of economic security and producing food from the land is the source of all wealth and we really need to devolve our agriculture, get away from the sort of high-tech mass production way of thinking about it and reintegrate food production back into the lives of our communities. And I think that fermentation is one aspect of that that's not insignificant, that has a lot of potential for improving our health, and moving us past this ridiculous war on bacteria ideology.
Once again, folks, thank you so much. And once again, folks, you can visit Sandor online at wild fermentation dot com. And like always on Herb Mentor Radio, we really encourage, you to support the authors. And the great way you can support Sander is, going to his website where he has both his awesome books on sale right there.
You could subscribe to his free newsletter, find out where he's teaching, such as, the Fermentation Festival in Portland, Oregon on August twenty seven two thousand nine, and many more. So did I get all that right, Sander? Do you have anything to add there?
No. No. You got it all.
Oh, excellent. Well, Sander Katz, it's been an amazing experience. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
It's been my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.
Take care.
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