A few weeks ago, I wondered if I drink too much tea. Is 4 cups/day too much? What about 2 cups/day? To learn more, I needed to drink a lot less tea.
What about miso? I wondered. I had some high-quality miso paste in my refrigerator. I got it in Tokyo at a miso store (thanks to Gary Rymar for taking me there). I made a cup (about 25 g miso paste — 2-3 teaspoons? — mixed with 1 cup hot water). It was delicious. The complex taste reminded me of coffee and chocolate. I added a little cream and a half packet of sweetener (Sucralose). It tasted even better.
I did the same thing with miso from Berkeley. It was still very good.
I cannot imagine not drinking tea. But I can now imagine drinking less tea because miso is much healthier. Replacing tea with miso is an easy way to eat more fermented food. A cup of miso is easier to make than a cup of tea.
Incidentally, don’t waste your time with powdered miso. It is much worse than the refrigerated miso (paste) sold in tubs.
The forums are broken. New users can’t create a profile because the image that we’re supposed to enter the letters from won’t display. This was the only way I could find to contact anybody.
Thanks for your comment about broken forums. I will look into it.
Why do you use sucralose instead of sugar? My impression was that artificial sweeteners seem eventually shown to be less healthful than natural sweeteners (perhaps depending upon quantity, frequency, other dietary factors, and preexisting digestive & physiological status, e.g. artificial sweeteners are probably less harmful to diabetics than natural sweeteners would be).
I use sucralose rather than sugar to keep my blood sugar down — although I am not diabetic. Perhaps this is a mistake, as you say.
Seth, do you have any sense of what a dose-response curve would look like for ingestion of fermented food? Also, is your miso fairly salty? I may try your suggestion (miso with hot water, sweetener, and [soy] creamer), but I wonder about the saltiness.
I have a cup of miso now and then in place of tea. When having it this way, I usually mix it with a little cocount oil.
For Alex: saltiness is one of the dominant flavors in miso, but there are variations that are less salty. To generalize a bit, if you prefer milder flavor, stick with shiromiso (“white miso”), which has a sweeter flavor, and avoid akamiso (“red miso”) which is often stronger-tasting and saltier. But since there are so many varieties; I guess this is a good time to try out side-by-side comparisons.
I prefer stronger flavored food, but just to put it out there, the brand I usually buy from my local Asian food market is called “Yamabuki Milder Miso”. It has much less sodium for some reason than the other brands, which is not that important to me, but it is also one of the more expensive brands that doesn’t have added MSG or additional flavorings.
Re: Sucralose
I’ve been eating alot of xyllitol for dental health. I suspect that it has other health benefits but haven’t done too much research yet. Might be an alternative for you Seth.
Tea is a fermented food. Why do you consider it to be unhealthy?
You can even find very strongly fermented teas, like “puer,” that contain myriad bacteria and related enzymes (one enzyme in puer has a strong ability to digest wheat gluten), and last many years, improving with age like fine wine.
On what basis is tea unhealthy? Especially a mere 1-2 cups per day.
I wonder about the caffeine in tea. But not the caffeine in a mere 1-2 cups.
Why do you suspect that caffeine may be harmful?
Caffeine may be harmful because in large amounts it causes sleep trouble. Maybe small amounts also have that effect…hard to say.