Category: fermented food

Did Genghis Khan Read Weston Price?

Seth Roberts1 Comment

In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2004) by Jack Weatherford, I read this (p. 87):

Compared to the Jurched [Chinese] soldiers, the Mongols were much healthier and stronger. The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones.

To tenderize meat a Mongol would put it under his saddle while riding. I was pleased to read this because I eat a lot of meat and yogurt (but not milk). The source of this information is unclear but it’s a surprisingly modern comparison. Good Calories Bad Calories (2007) by Gary Taubes says much the same thing (minus the yogurt — the part that most interests me). Weston Price wrote many similar passages comparing people eating traditional food (= Mongols) with people eating modern food circa 1930 (= Chinese). Long ago, grain was modern food.

Thanks to Tucker Max.

Acid Reflux Cured by Kombucha?

Seth Roberts15 Comments

A friend of mine had acid reflux. When he ate certain foods — tea, chocolate, foods high in sugar or fat — and when he ate too much, he got a pain in his stomach. “Maybe I’ve got an ulcer,” he thought. He first noticed it after eating brussels sprouts, about a year or so ago. At the time it was only uncomfortable. He was taking Alleve for back pain around that time — that might have messed up his stomach. He was also worrying a lot at the time.

It got worse. Periodically he would have pain in his stomach in the middle of the night and during the day. In particular, after eating Oreo cookies. Mint tea, which he thought would help, made it worse. Friends suggested he try Prilosec OTC. A 14-day course seemed to clear it up. A month after the Prilosec ended, however, he went to a big party. He ate a lot of food, a lot of different things. He woke up in the middle of the night with the worst pain yet. So then he went to a doctor. The doctor said it was probably acid reflux; try Asiphex ($60 for two weeks), he said. It was less effective than the Prilosec. Then I suggested that some sort of fermented product might help. So he bought Activa yogurt. It wasn’t clear if it had any effect; maybe a small one.

Recently he was in Rainbow Grocery, in San Francisco. They sell kombucha. He bought some because I had spoken particularly highly of it. After four days of drinking it, he felt much better even though he’d only finished 3/4s of the bottle. His stomach doesn’t hurt any more. That improves his mood. His back feels a lot better — but that comes and goes. That might be a placebo effect, he says — “even though I don’t believe in kombucha, I think it’s bunk, but I have to admit that it works,” he says.

He’d heard of kombucha from his colleagues about three years ago. They raved about it but it seemed faddish to him. He’d tried it, but just to taste it. He doesn’t eat any fermented foods besides vinegar; he doesn’t drink wine or beer. Hadn’t been eating yogurt. He had gone on a vegan diet for a few months before the Prilosec. He’d thought the vegan diet would protect him from stomach problems, but he was wrong.

He has continued to drink small amounts of kombucha and the improvement has persisted, although recently something mint at a party caused a problem.

Antibiotics and Debt: Sources of Weakness

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Alexander Fleming, the Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, served in the military during World War I. According to Happy Accidents (2007) by Morton Meyers, soldiers in that war often died from infections in relatively minor wounds. Rather than conclude that something was wrong with their immune systems, and wonder why, Fleming — unsurprisingly for a bacteriologist — began to think we needed more substances that killed bacteria. A hundred years later, the blind spot still exists. A few years ago I noticed that a wide-ranging course on epidemiology was being taught in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. I knew the professor. I asked him, “Will the course cover what makes the immune system weak or strong?” “No,” he said. You will look in vain for that topic in any epidemiology text. To call it a blind spot is being nice. Half the subject — the more important half — is being ignored. And Schools of Public Health favor prevention. Medical schools are worse.

In an editorial in today’s Financial Times, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Spitznagel point out that debt is inherently destabilizing because it creates less room for error. Financial professionals and economists, including those at the very top, don’t realize this:

Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, tried playing with the business cycle to iron out bubbles, but it eventually got completely out of control. Bubbles and fads are part of cultural life. We need to do the opposite to what Mr Greenspan did: make the economy’s structure more robust to bubbles.

Taleb and Spitznagel note that the dotcom bubble, when it burst, had only minor consequences. That’s because it was an equity bubble rather than a debt bubble. The stimulus package is just more debt: public rather than private. It doesn’t reduce the source of the problem: A too-fragile system. A great point — fascinating how rarely I hear it.

Just as Greenspan failed to understand the problem and chose the wrong lever to pull, so did Fleming and a million doctors and medical/drug researchers. They have tried to deal with a too-fragile system by killing bacteria. Bacteria, like financial bubbles and fads, are part of life. We need to make our bodies more robust to them. Fermented foods do that. By killing off bacteria inside our bodies, antibiotics do the opposite: Make us even more fragile.

Yogurt Associated With Less Allergies

Seth Roberts6 Comments

From the abstract of a 2006 study done in Japan:

An epidemiological study was carried out on [134] first-year junior high school students in Wakayama Prefecture. Analyses were performed to investigate the relationships among eating habits of fermented milk or fermented soybean foods and the presence of atopic diseases. Serum levels of total IgE values, specific IgE to house dust mite and Japanese cedar pollen in these subjects were evaluated to clarify atopic status. . . . RESULTS: Serum total IgE levels were found to be significantly lower in those subjects habitually eating yogurt and/or fermented milk drinking, in comparison with those who do not habitually eat such fermented milk foods. Subjects with habitual intake of these fermented milk foods were significantly lower in having various allergy diseases compared with those without such an eating habit. However, no difference was found on the total IgE titers and having allergy diseases between subjects with or without habitual intake of Natto, a fermented soybean food.

Note the small sample size. Contrary to some experts, it’s a good sign. It means the differences were strong enough to be significant in a relatively small sample. A review article about allergies and fermented foods.

Last January (2008) I got home from Japan and started eating miso soup so often I forgot what I used to eat. This January (2009) I went to the Fancy Food Show and became so interested in fermented foods I’m having trouble remembering what I used to blog about.

Thanks to Peter Spero.

Homemade Kombucha: The Hard Part Made Easy

Seth Roberts6 Comments

The only hard part of making kombucha is getting starter culture. Here’s an easy way to do that:

Get a bottle of K.T.’s [or any non-pasteurized brand] . . . remove the cap, cover with cotton [or paper towel] and rubber band, set in warm spot [room temperature is fine] for about 3 weeks [or less] and a nice baby culture will grow on the top! Simply pour the entire contents in your . . . tea and sugar mixture.

I noticed the same thing with Rejuvenation Company kombucha stored at room temperature for a few weeks. To speed up culture growth transfer the kombucha to a container with a wide mouth, so that it gets more oxygen. Adding sugar, a few teaspoons/cup of kombucha, might help.

Teaching Kids to Cook

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Outside Berkeley Whole Foods I encountered this cooking camp in session — they teach kids 8-12 years old to cook in two-week sessions, 4 hours/day. I love the idea. I think childhood obesity is due to eating ditto foods (foods, usually factory-made, that taste exactly the same each time) — teaching someone how to cook is a good way to reduce that.

I asked if they included any fermented foods in the curriculum. “Tomorrow we’re making tofu,” said one of the counselors — a Nutrition major at UC Berkeley. Tofu is not a fermented food, I said. She wasn’t sure what a fermented food was.

Fermented Art, Beijing Style

Seth Roberts3 Comments

From Time Out Beijing:

Veteran Beijing artist Gu Dexin . . . first turned European noses at a satellite show of the Venice Biennale in 1995, when he dumped three hundred kilos of raw beef into three glass coffins set in a local casino.

In the heat of summer, poisonous gases from the rotting meat quickly forced officials to clean up the show. This shy enfant terrible of the art world went on to astound European audiences in a succession of shows, placing raw meat or fruit in public places and letting them rot.

Up until this year, when he installed raw pork at the Legation Quarter, the formula has served him brilliantly. Part of the force of this current show is the absence of decay — resulting in a sterile and odourless silence.

Fermented Food in Africa

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Michael Bowerman writes from Kenya:

First, I’ve made a point of eating yogurt daily and have had no stomach problems in a month of eating here. May be coincidence as I haven’t eaten at risker spots, but most others I know here have had some problem during their stay. I did drink one yogurt which tasted foul, and realised it was past expiration. I wonder if my perception that it was foul was culturally indoctrinated, or a useful rejection of spoiled food. What is the relationship between fermentation and true spoilage?

Second, reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography he talks about a traditional drink of his tribe, the Xhosa, called amasi – feremented milk. He writes about how much he loves the taste during an anecdote where fermenting the milk on his window ledge while staying at a safehouse in a white neighbourhood draws the attention of passing Africans who are wondering why “their” milk is in the window. I wonder if he would have liked my “spoiled(?)” yogurt? I haven’t looked for commercial versions yet, but will.

Third, a Sudanese friend told me that the Sudanese have a drink made from cow’s blood, urine, and fermented milk. The only part I was incredulous about was the urine but it seems cow and camel urine have been drank by other cultures — there is a urine-based soft-drink being released in India called Gau Jai. I found this site which documents the extensive fermentation in Sudanese culture — meat, milk, urine — including “…mish, which is made by prolonged fermentation to the extent that maggots thrive in it. The product is consumed whole, with the maggots included. These two products are closely related to Egyptian mish (1).”