Category: fermented food

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts4 Comments

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Bryan Castañeda.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts6 Comments

Thanks to Melissa McEwen and Bryan Castañeda.

Moderate Alcohol Consumption Associated With Less Cirrhosis

Seth Roberts10 Comments

Alcohol is bad for your liver, we’re told. However, moderate amounts may be good for your liver. A recent meta-analysis found that men who drank moderate amounts of alcohol had considerably less risk (a risk ratio of 0.3) of liver cirrhosis than men who drank no alcohol. It wasn’t clear if some forms of alcohol (e.g., wine) were more protective than others. I came across this study because another article called the association “biologically implausible”, whereas I think it is highly plausible due to vast experimental literature on hormesis (animals given small amounts of poisons are healthier than animals given none).

The findings about cirrhosis join a much large body of evidence that moderate drinking is associated with less heart disease. A recent meta-analysis reached this conclusion once again and found, in addition, that moderate drinking is associated with less all-cause mortality.

These are more examples of the health benefits of fermented foods, one of my favorite subjects. It is unfortunate the liquor industry does not run long-term human experiments on the effects of moderate amounts of beer, wine, and so on.

 

Fermented Foods Improve Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Seth Roberts5 Comments

It’s hard to get scurvy. If you eat anything resembling an ordinary diet you won’t get it. The existence of scurvy, produced by extreme conditions, led to the discovery of Vitamin C. From the case of scurvy and Vitamin C we learned — well, most people learned — that some diseases are clues to what we need to eat to be healthy.

There is no lab test for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is diagnosed if you have “abdominal pain or discomfort in association with frequent diarrhea or constipation,” says Wikipedia, and a dozen other things (colon cancer, lactose intolerance, celiac disease and so on) can be ruled out. It is common. In the United States, one study found that 14% of those surveyed had it. Surveys in other countries produce even higher values — the United States is not a hotspot. “It is one of the most common diseases diagnosed by doctors,” says an NIH webpage.

What is it telling us? According to the NIH webpage, “medications are an important part of relieving symptoms.” Those medications include anti-depressants. If you treat the problem with drugs, you completely ignore the possibility that a digestive problem is due to eating the wrong food. You might think that would be obvious — but no. Of course, people with IBS are less interested in taking medicine so they often believe they are “intolerant” to various foods. But they have a hard time figuring out what those foods are, and their problems persist. The Wikipedia section about causes is a monument either to the ignorance of medical school professors or Wikipedia contributors:

The cause of IBS is unknown, but several hypotheses have been proposed. The risk of developing IBS increases sixfold after acute gastrointestinal infection. Post-infection, further risk factors are young age, prolonged fever, anxiety, and depression.Publications suggesting the role of brain-gut “axis” appeared in the 1990s, such as the study “Brain-gut response to stress and cholinergic stimulation in IBS” published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology in 1993. A 1997 study published in Gut magazine suggested that IBS was associated with a “derailing of the brain-gut axis.” Psychological factors may be important in the etiology of IBS.

That’s all. Nothing about eating the wrong food. And people wonder what to do about the cost of health care! My suggestion: get rid of everyone (especially medical school professors) too blind or biased to consider that a digestive problem may caused by the wrong food.

Fortunately not everyone is rushing to treat IBS sufferers with drugs. In an obscure journal called Molecular Medical Reports, an open-access article recently appeared about diet and IBS (“Diet and effects of diet management on quality of life and symptoms in patients with irritable bowel syndrome”). The authors are from Norway, which makes the sanity more understandable. The article looks at the effect of dietary advice on IBS symptoms. It compares three groups of patients (IBS patients given dietary advice, IBS patients not given dietary advice, and people without IBS). Patients with IBS eat quite differently than everyone else (for example, they eat less dairy, thinking they might be lactose intolerant), but they are still bad off.

The main point of the article is that the dietary advice was helpful. IBS patients given the advice two years before the study were better off than IBS patients not given the advice, although even those given the advice were considerably worse than normal. Looking at the difference between the diets of the two IBS groups, the better-off group ate a lot more probiotic dairy:

The guided IBS patients reported a consumption of sour milk products containing probiotics almost twice as often as the unguided IBS patients and one and a half times that of the controls. The products used were supplemented with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, Lactobacillus acidophilus La-5 and Bifidobacterium Bb-12. Patients with IBS were found to have fewer Lactobacillus spp. and Bifdobacterium spp. in their intestinal flora than healthy individuals (44). These bacteria have been shown to bind to epithelial cells and inhibit pathogen binding, and to enhance barrier function (46). Furthermore, these bacteria do not produce gas on fermenting carbohydrates, an effect which would be amplified as they also inhibit Clostridia spp. (46). A number of studies have shown an improvement in flatulence and abdominal distension with a reduction in the composite IBS symptom score, following probiotic intake (45,46) [emphasis added]

It is highly unlikely that we need to eat sour milk products containing probiotics to be healthy — such products are new in evolutionary history. But it is entirely possible that we need to eat plenty of microbe-laden (e.g., fermented) food to be healthy, as I have said countless times on this blog. The big improvement in IBS symptoms produced by probiotics supports my belief that we need to eat plenty of fermented foods to be healthy. (The Wikipedia entry about IBS mentions probiotics and yogurt, but not fermented foods.) Maybe IBS, like scurvy, is a clue to something really important.

Thanks to Melissa McEwen.

 

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments
  • All about kefir
  • Fraud and waste at a New York hospital. From the comments you can see that the problems have lasted decades. If someone is always sick, year after year, it means there is something about their sickness (about health in general, actually) we do not understand. Likewise, the decades-long persistence of huge problems at this hospital suggests there is something fundamental about regulation (and perhaps health care) we do not understand.
  • This paper about how well blood uric acid level predicts mortality, which appeared in 2004, did not get nearly the attention it deserves. I was shocked by its existence — American medical school professors are almost incapable of good research. Well, it’s from Finland.
  • David Healy’s new blog.

Thanks to Bruce Charlton, Jazi Zilber, Melissa McEwen and Alex Chernavsky.

Hot Miso with Cream and Sweetener: Coffee/Tea Substitute

Seth Roberts12 Comments

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.

How to Eat Natto

Seth Roberts6 Comments

I started to eat natto, a kind of fermented soybean, after I became convinced that we need to eat plenty of fermented foods to be healthy. That was four or five years ago. Recently I learned it is a very good source of Vitamin K2, which is a co-factor of Vitamin D3.

This post about an infographic called World Stinky Foods (in Japanese) complains that the infographic doesn’t include natto. In my experience, however, natto has a moderately strong taste but does not stink. If anything it has too little smell, which is why it comes with packets of mustard and sauce. I think it is the texture that some people don’t like. Wikipedia refers to this difference of perception: “The flavor of natto can differ greatly between people; some find it tastes strong and cheesy and may use it in small amounts to flavor rice or noodles, while others find it tastes bland and unremarkable, requiring the addition of flavoring condiments.”

By ordering it in restaurants, I have finally figured out a good way to eat it: 1. Add both flavoring packets (mustard and sauce). 2. Add a raw egg. 3. Add chopped onion. 4. Mix. The egg adds protein and creaminess, the onion adds bite and crunch. I might try it with scrambled eggs. Ever since I learned that Mr. T (a rat) liked scrambled eggs, I have been eating about one egg per day.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Thanks to Jim McGuire, Dave Lull and Peter Spero.

How Things Begin (honey wine vinegar)

Seth Roberts4 Comments

At the recent Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, the most impressive product I encountered was a honey wine vinegar made by Slide Ridge Honey, a small family business in northern Utah. I interviewed the developer, Martin James, about how the business and product began.

How did your business begin?

I started keeping bees when I was 9 years old. It was a hobby. When I was in my thirties, I wanted to start a business. I’d been doing flooring. Carpet, linoleum, that sort of thing. Large commercial jobs and residential. I wanted to be my own boss, control my own destination, have my own business. I started a honey business with my two sisters, one older, one younger.That was 10 years ago.

How did this product begin?

We wanted a more unique product. We wanted to expand beyond Utah. When you ship butter somewhere, it’s already there — local honey. So it’s hard to enter the market. We wanted to diversify our business so we weren’t only selling honey. We wanted higher profit margins.

My sisters and I discussed lots of possible products. Eventually vinegar came out the favorite. There are only two other people making honey wine vinegar — one in Washington State (Honey Ridge Farms), the other in Italy. If you put our products side by side, you’ll see they’re totally different.

The development took 7 years. The first step was to use honey to make wine. I got yeasts from wine shops, brewing shops, and mail order. I needed to find a yeast that was compatible with honey. The first ones I tried produced off flavors — for example, the wine smelled like gasoline. I finally found a yeast that was compatible with honey, that made an excellent honey wine. The next step was to produce vinegar. To do that I used an acetobacter — a microbe that eats alcohol and makes acid. It feels like piece of wet leather. What kombucha makers call a scooby. I found the acetobacter I needed from a vinegar maker in Napa Valley — a vinegar maker.

There was also four years of paperwork. Local, state, federal.

What has surprised you?

The reception. When they taste it, people’s eyes light up. I hadn’t prepared myself for the product to take off so well. Repeat customers buy 3 bottles. A lot of specialty chefs have taken an interest. A lot of TV chefs have come by.