Review of Probiotic Foods: Bubbies Sauerkraut, Pickles & Kombucha!

Eating probiotic foods is a great way to improve digestive function. You know that your digestion is impaired if you experience any of the following: belching, bloating, gas, diarrhea, gurgling, or even constipation. Impaired digestion can also manifest itself in skin issues like eczema and acne: in fact, as early as 1909 researchers found that disruption of the digestive system and gut flora through worry, anxiety and depression could manifest itself in skin problems.

The Gut-Brain-Skin Axis: Back to the Future?

Probiotics are microorganisms that every human being has living in their intestinal tract. During delivery a mother sort of inoculates her child with beneficial bacteria as it passes through the vagina. Traditional cultures would eat fermented foods that were full of these good bacteria to get a dose through diet.

The microorganisms in our gut are essential to healthy digestion: they break down our food to help our bodies absorb vitamins and nutrients more effectively, help our gut and immune system to function properly, and even fight on our behalf against harmful bacteria that we might ingest (i.e. Salmonella). They might even improve asthma symptoms.

Research suggests that the relationship between gut flora and humans is not merely commensal (a non-harmful coexistence), but rather a mutualistic relationship.^[3] Though people can survive without gut flora,^[4] the microorganisms perform a host of useful functions, such as fermenting unused energy substrates, training the immune system, preventing growth of harmful, pathogenic bacteria,^[2] regulating the development of the gut, producing vitamins for the host (such as biotin and vitamin K), and producing hormones to direct the host to store fats. However, in certain conditions, some species are thought to be capable of causing disease by producing infection or increasing cancerrisk for the host.^[2][7]
         - Wikipedia

Check out Chris Kresser's article: Heal Your Gut
&
Diane Sanfillipo's Article: Bites I Love: Fresh, Raw Sauerkraut


Because most of us use or have used antibiotics, I believe that it's important to replenish our gut flora by eating probiotic rich foods or supplementing. There are many types of probiotic foods including: Kefir, Yogurt, Kombucha, Sauerkraut and Pickles. I set out to try out a few that have been popular in the paleo world:

Kombucha
- A fermented sweet tea with roots in China. I tried GT's Enlightened Organic Raw Kombucha Bilberry No 9 and Hibiscus No 7

Cost: $3.19 per bottle
Claims: 60 Calories per bottle, 14 grams sugar
              50% RDA Folic Acid
              40% Vitamin B2,  B6, B1, B3, B12
              * Bacillus coagulans GBI-30 6086: 1 billion
              * S. Boulardi: 1 billion
              Antioxidants: EGCG, Glucuronic Acid, Lactic Acid, Acetic Acid

Thoughts: Kombucha basically tastes like watered down juice with a little fizz. After a couple tastes my kids started fighting to drink the rest. But, they never have juice. I think that if your kids are drinking juice on the regular, they won't be interested in this. I thought it was ok. Not unpleasant. The folic acid content is pretty attractive to women of childbearing age that are constantly being told to eat their horse pills (I mean prenatal vitamins).

Pickles
These pickles must be found in the refrigerator section. Truly fermented pickles aren't just mixed with vinegar. The stuff you see on the shelves next to the ketchup is pasteurized (i.e. beneficial bacteria is killed). Great reason to eat pickles: Cleopatra believed that they contributed to health and beauty. I chose to go with Bubbie's. They are naturally fermented and have no vinegar.

Cost: $5.99 per bottle
Thoughts: These pickles had a bit of a spicy flavor. The boys didn't care for them. They took a few bites here and there, but otherwise didn't ask for them often.

Sauerkraut
Again, the stuff you find on shelves is pasteurized - you need to go to the refrigerator and check that they are naturally fermented. It is made out of finely shredded cabbage and lactic acid bacteria. I chose Bubbie's brand again.

Cost: $4.99 per bottle
Thoughts: I LOVED this sauerkraut. I generally do not like sauerkraut, blech. It had a pickle-y sort of flavor. The kids didn't care for it. I will probably buy it again or try to make my own!!



How much should a person eat?

The kombucha bottle claims you should have an entire bottle a day. I have read that a 1/4 cup of fermented vegetables a day is ideal. Up to you! I'll probably have 1/4 cup of sauerkraut a day, but the kombucha is too expensive to drink an entire bottle a day.. I may try to make my own and blog about it someday.

The Four Pillars - Part 1

I wrote last time that I'm working on implementing recommendations for optimal health for myself and children on a daily basis. I'm following first the recommendations in Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan. She suggests that people should eat food from the Four Pillars of Nutrition (which are the foods all native/indigenous people have in common): Meat on the Bone, Organ Meats, Fermented/Sprouted Foods, & Fresh/Uncooked ingredients. I will show you how I incorporate these old, traditional foods into my life.

In this installment I tackled: Meat on the Bone/Bone Broth

I was already making bone broth somewhat infrequently, but I have since increased my intake to a mug of bone broth almost daily. If I do not have bone broth made in a given week, I'll make soup with chicken bones or beef soup bones.

What, Why, How?

Instructional Bone Broth Videos:

The Primal Project

Lately I've been considering what optimal health is, what it really means to me and how exactly we can achieve it on a practical, everyday basis.

You read articles from the paleo/primal blogosphere about how many health improvements are made just ditching grains and eating more good fats and vegetable matter. But, you will also read articles espousing the benefits of fermented cod liver oil/bone broth/liver consumption/nature communing/etc., etc.

I read these articles and just thought that these people were kind of a fringe of the paleo community and though these ideas were intriguing, there was no way in hell I was going to eat liver! EW! Well, I have decided to pursue my bachelor's in dietetics, but because we'll be trying to open our gym next year it is something that will have to wait a couple of years. In the meantime, I've decided to attend as many paleo seminars and read as many paleo/primal books as I can to self-educate. In my book searches I stumbled across one called Deep Nutrition by Catherine Shanahan. Here's the description:

Deep Nutrition illustrates how our ancestors used nourishment to sculpt their anatomy, engineering bodies of extraordinary health and beauty. The length of our limbs, the shape of our eyes, and the proper function of our organs are all gifts of our ancestor's collective culinary wisdom. Citing the foods of traditional cultures from the Ancient Egyptians and the Maasai to the Japanese and the French, the Shanahans identify four food categories all the world's healthiest diets have in common, the Four Pillars of World Cuisine. Using the latest research in physiology and genetics, Dr. Shanahan explains why your family's health depends on eating these foods. In a world of competing nutritional ideologies, Deep Nutrition gives us the full picture, empowering us to take control of our destiny in ways we might never have imagined.




It never really struck home before this exactly what kind of impact food can have on our height, physical features and degenerative diseases. Since I have two growing boys, one of which has soft tissue problems in his leg from an early trauma, optimal health and wellness is extremely important to me. If you were told that you were genetically predisposed to getting xyz, check this book out. The first half of the book seems to be very focused on physical appearance, but further along in the book (especially when I got to The Four Pillars chapter) I had so many food revelations.


Because of this, and an article entitled Guts and Grease by Sally Fallon, I'll be attempting to actually consume these traditional foods and try to practically live other optimal health practices that are promoted in the paleo community. Just as an introduction:


I'm a 28 year old female, two kids, living a "normal" life in a city. I'm a stay at home mom with a husband in the military. We've been eating "paleo" with lots of ice cream for almost two years now. I grew up eating bowls of fruity pebbles for breakfast and spooning sugar over strawberries because they weren't sweet enough. I have been "dieting" or interested in losing weight since middle school. For the first year and a half of my first son's life, he ate puffs and I fed him turkey sausage because I thought the fat in pork sausage was bad for him. I've tried eating "clean" and low-fat high carb and the first year of my marriage to my husband we had a spaghetti night and a fried foods night where we ate mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers and french fries - because this was cheap and easy and I had no idea how to cook. If I can do this, you can too. 


Please join me on this adventure..