Category: fermented food

Advances in Cooking: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Toni Rivard, a Dallas dessert caterer, makes one of the best chocolate-chip cookies in America, according to Forbes Traveller. She ages her cookie dough about three days. She says it improves the texture. I wonder if it improves the flavor, too:

Rivard’s secret? “I like to age my cookie dough and feel that it makes for a better texture in cookies. As a result, the aptly-named OMG! [which is what customers have actually said when they taste one] chocolate chip cookies at Creme de la Cookie are soft and chewy with a deep rich flavor.

Fermenting cookie dough should certainly improve the flavor, although chocolate already supplies a lot of complexity. My experience has been that cooking delicious stuff became a lot easier when I started using fermentation to help (e.g., miso soup instead of soups flavored without fermented ingredients).

Thanks to David Archer.

This Blog Reduces Sinus Congestion (continued)

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Tim Beneke writes:

After 21 days of eating a lot of yogurt [more than 16 ounces/day] and then 15 days of acidophilus pearls — 2 a day for the first 5 days and then 1 a day since, it’s very clear that I can breathe substantially better through my nose. This has been obvious for at least a couple of weeks — it still seems to be improving gradually. I feel it clearly when I breathe. And, rather dramatically, my sense of smell has returned. I got a severe sinus infection in 1972; since then, my nose has been fairly stuffed and my sense of smell weak. Now I’m living in a different olfactory universe.

For a few years, I’ve cleaned up 4 or 5 times a week after a bunch of feral cats that I feed. Until the last 3 weeks or so, I only used my eyes to spot the cat poop. Now I use my sense of smell a lot and often smell it before I see it. Another unpleasant example — I don’t flush my toilet after peeing to conserve water; by the end of the day it looks pretty funky, but I could barely smell its funkiness in the past. Now I smell it quite vividly and am more prone to flush it.

Earlier post on the subject.

Beijing Air: Not Dirty Enough

Seth Roberts5 Comments

I’ve been back in Beijing a week. I’ve been eating lots of fermented food, which is easy to get, including fermented eggs (10 for $1.50) sold at a stand in a shopping mall. There is a bigger yogurt selection here than in Berkeley. Tsinghua University sells its own perfectly good yogurt (20 cents a serving). Every supermarket has a big pickle selection.

In Berkeley, as I blogged earlier, a few months ago I noticed that my nose was no longer runny. My Kleenex consumption, which had been about one box of Kleenex every month or so, was reduced to almost zero. (A reader of this blog had a similar experience.) No doubt this was due to eating much more fermented food. The runny-nose-absence has continued in Beijing.

Last year in Beijing, I had a runny nose. I used about one tissue packet per day. I ate almost no fermented food. So far so good. The interesting twist is that dirty city air has been linked to less runny nose. Air pollution, in other words, can have the same effect as fermented food. Last year, apparently, Beijing air wasn’t dirty enough to get rid of my runny nose.

I’m not joking. After I realized this, I felt a lot better about Beijing’s air, which I have long said is the worst thing about living here. Someday I will blog about the health benefits of smoking, which suggest the same conclusion.

“Kombucha Reconsidered”

Seth Roberts4 Comments

At Cancer Decisions RWM has written two posts called “Kombucha Reconsidered”. After drinking kombucha for a while, he decided to stop. One reason was lack of evidence of benefit:

When I began investigated the actual medicinal properties of Kombucha tea, I thought I would be overwhelmed with information. Not so. For something that has been around for so long, there are only 38 scientific articles in PubMed on the topic of kombucha. Most of these are technical studies on the nature of the bacteria and yeast in the brew. Only a few of these are clinical.

In particular, no evidence of benefit for cancer:

But I am unaware of any credible data linking kombucha consumption to the prevention of either recurrences or metastases. (PubMed yields just two articles on the topic of kombucha and cancer, both of them negative.) This is a poor basis on which to make health decisions.

He also found two case reports, one from 1995, the other from 2009, where kombucha might have caused illness. In the 1995 the evidence is weak; in the 2009 report the connection is more plausible — but the sick person had HIV. The authors nevertheless generalize to everyone: “Consumption of this tea should be discouraged.”

This is a reason self-experimentation is important: So you can ignore inane statements in research articles. After I found that flaxseed oil improved my balance, I could ignore research that supposedly showed poor conversion of short-change omega-3 (in flaxseed oil) to long-chain omega-3 (used by the brain). Had RWM managed to measure the effect of kombucha on himself, he would have a vastly better basis for deciding whether or not it helped him.

This is also a reason that theory is important. John Tukey, the statistician, spoke of “gathering strength” when analyzing data. It is rare that a single body of data tells you how to analyze it, he said. (For example, what transformation to use.) You should use similar data sets to help decide. Scientific theory has the same effect. Before I started drinking kombucha, I didn’t have obvious digestive problems (unlike a friend) and my immune system seemed to work well. So it wasn’t easy to measure its effect. Yet I drink it and am untroubled by the evidence that worries RVM because I have a theory: the umami hypothesis (that we need a steady intake of bacteria to be healthy). This allows me to assess the effect of kombucha — whether it is likely to be good or bad — with the help of evidence from other bacteria-rich food (yogurt, natto, etc.) and much different data (the effect of bee stings on arthritis, hormesis, epidemiology, the effects of turmeric, etc.). Because the umami hypothesis appears to be true, apparently bacteria intake is beneficial — and kombucha has lots of bacteria.

Thanks to Tom George.

This Blog Reduces Sinus Congestion

Seth Roberts2 Comments

A reader writes:

I’m now 30 years old. For the past ten years or so, I’ve had constant post-nasal drip and stuffed sinuses, frequently coughing out phlegm. In addition, I’ve had fairly intense fatigue, moderate but consistent depression, and occasional but intense tendinitis (from typing). I tried nasal pharma sprays and many alternative therapies, feeling most intellectually compelled by neti pot style nasal washes with solutions that mimic salt balances of the body. However, none of my efforts did much good. So I reluctantly agreed to have sinus surgery, even though it seemed to be a blunt force approach to a sensitive tissue. I have since become convinced that treating the sinuses as anything other than an expression of overall health is preposterous. The surgery, with full anesthesia, improved things very slightly while being somewhat traumatic and certainly not worth the ordeal.

About 5 years ago, when I was 25, I discovered that I have a very under-active thyroid. Taking thyroid replacement was the biggest health change I’ve had in the past ten years, giving me much more energy, improving my overall health, and significantly reducing (but not eliminating) my sinus condition.

I didn’t start reading your blog regularly until a few months ago. Your writing on bacteria and flax oils led me to start taking probiotic pills every day (Trader Joes brand and then kyodophilus), eat more yogurt and kimchee, and take flax seed oil pills and try to incorporate flax oil into foods. Within a month of starting this, my sinus congestion was reduced by about 90%. I don’t need to constantly have tissues on hand and I can breathe easier every day. Thank you! I’m hoping to finally start making my own kombucha this week.

I suspect it was the bacteria rather than the flaxseed oil that helped his nose. Like him, I used to need to carry a handkerchief at all times and I went through a whole box of Kleenex in a few months. This didn’t stop when I started drinking lots of flaxseed oil. After I started drinking lots of fermented foods, however, my nose became a lot clearer and my Kleenex consumption went way down.

Probiotic Pills: Minus and Plus

Seth Roberts2 Comments

A reader writes:

I recently had a bottle of pills that became virtually inactive (i can tell from my bowel movements) after a few weeks, probably because they weren’t refrigerated . . . I probably wouldn’t have been able to get a lot of bacteria into my diet without pills, especially since I travel frequently for work. Â In addition, since I take thyroid pills every day, adding another pill is easy. Â I think pills are also clearly crucial to research efforts.

Good points. On recent trips (in America) I’ve found kombucha, yogurt, and kefir in the new locations, but it’s been time-consuming. Pills would have been easier.

Acid Reflux Cured by Kombucha? Yes

Seth Roberts13 Comments

My friend with acid reflux — who used to have acid reflux — contacted me today:

My stomach is so much better [since I started drinking kombucha]. I rarely have problems. Every once in a while I might be a little uncomfortable. Then I drink a little kombucha, it gets better within an hour. I got up in the middle of the night the other night and I felt the usual kind of pain, took some sips of the kombucha, felt better, and fell back asleep. Hardly ever have pain now. The kombucha is much more effective than the Asiphax medicine I took. That was $60 for a 10-day course. It might even be more effective than Prilosec. (Which cleared up the problem but then it came back.)Â I’ve been drinking kombucha for about three weeks. I really like the grape, guava, and strawberry flavors of the Synergy brand. The grape flavor is like sangria that’s just started to go bad. A couple of people I’ve tried to turn on to it but they just can’t stand the taste. My levels of stress haven’t decreased. I’m drinking less than half a bottle a day. Now the problem is that I forget I’m supposed to have stomach trouble so I forget to drink it.

If you know of anything (data, anecdotes, whatever), positive or negative, that sheds light on whether kombucha cures acid reflux, please let me know.

Not All Probiotics are Wonderful

Seth Roberts3 Comments

From a mailing list I’m on:

Right before I left the U.S. I purchased Complete Probiotics from Dr. Mercola (online health guru). . . . I did not have the time needed to give these probiotics a good try before I left the States so I went ahead and purchased quite a bit. After arriving here in Beijing I began taking them just to find out they were not working well for me. I still think it is a good product, just not right for me.

I have 7 bottles total. 5 bottles expiration date: May 2011. 2 bottles expiration date: Dec. 2010

This batch I have has [in each capsule] 2 billion CFU [colony-forming units] and 500 mg of FOS [Fructooligosaccharides]. There are 90 V-caps per bottle. They are all completely sealed with shrink bands

Dr. Mercola’s sale price is $30 U.S.D. for a single bottle and about $25 U.S.D./each for a 3-pack. [the 3-pack costs $75]

She doesn’t say why they’re not right for her. I make kombucha for pennies per day. Homemade yogurt costs a few dimes per day. Also, they’re delicious, the kombucha is thirst-quenching, and the yogurt, as a condiment, improves many other dishes (salmon, soup, hamburger). So they’re easy to eat, whereas the vitamin pills I take I have to force myself to swallow. Because I am close to the making of the kombucha and yogurt — I sample them during brewing — I am sure that they have plenty of bacteria. With pills made in a factory, hard to be sure. And hard to know what those expiration dates mean.

Bees and Kombucha

Seth Roberts9 Comments

After noticing how much it improved his own health, B Wrangler tried it on his bees:

In the early spring, I grade my hives strong, average, below average, weak. This year, I sprayed the below average hives with slightly diluted, about 30%, solution of overly ripe kombucha. It was probably about 3 weeks old.

The spraying was done incidentally, without any planning, etc., just to watch the initial reaction of the bees. After spraying, the below average hives were left alone, without any additional manipulation or observations.

The kombucha worked better than smoke for controlling the bees in a normal situation.

To evaluate the yard’s progress, I’d pop the covers off a couple of strong hives and a couple of weak hives every few weeks. Ten weeks later, I popped the covers off the below average hives and found they had a full super of honey, while all of the others, even those with larger bee populations had none. In fact, they hadn’t even entered the supers.

I was quite surprised to say the least! And I’d had forgotten about the incidental kombucha spraying until looking at my notes a week later.

This reminds me of the turning point in the discovery of Vitamin B1. Experiment 2 done by Christiaan Eijkman gave results opposite to Experiment 1. Eijkman was unaware, until he looked into it, that his chickens, the experimental subjects, had been fed different rice in the two experiments.

Thanks to Heidi.