Fermenting foods: it’s freaking me out!
Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: I really like the idea of adding the Rejuvelac as my green smoothie base, but I’m honestly totally freaked out to leave something perishable on my countertop in an unsealed container for several days. What are the chances that “bad bacteria” get in there and make me sick? I really appreciate any feedback you have. It sounds like a great opportunity to make green smoothies do even more for me, but I can’t get over the initial concept. –Grace
Answer: Grace, I think it might help if I explain the concept a bit more. Fermented foods are part of your diet already, if you eat yogurt or sauerkraut, or even beer. The manufacturer had to let it sit at room temperature for a time, to grow the cultures.
Also, before refrigeration, human beings had a stronger inner terrain and microbes rarely harmed them. Of course, now we have antibiotics that have seriously damaged most people’s balance of beneficial microorganisms colonizing the digestive tract. We also have refined foods weakening us, and few, if any, cultured foods strengthening us. We now seem to believe that killing a couple million of the billions of microscopic critters around us will somehow do the trick.
It’s a weird modern concept that everything we eat has to be sterilized—ancient peoples lived amongst billions of organisms very peacefully for thousands of years. So maybe our food is sterilized, fumigated, pasteurized, irradiated…..but there are billions of organisms everywhere ELSE (which makes the antibiotic wipes a pointless waste of money).
So, it feels unnatural to you but only because of our strange modern traditions, and the fact that we’ve gotten away from eating foods that nurture our gut’s need for healthy colonization. Just ONE course of antibiotics can change the gut’s internal terrain forever.
Every culture of the world eats cultured foods. Some chew up a food and spit it, with their saliva, into an earthen pot, and drink it a week later. (I won’t be teaching you those methods, don’t worry.) There are literally hundreds of types of cultured foods, in traditional / indigenous peoples, and in people who have not completely adopted processed diets.
The most complete and well known work on this concept is Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, which has some good info but advocates for lots of meat and dairy and a very rich diet. My 12 Steps to Whole Foods program deals with it in a condensed way in Ch. 8 and uses what I feel are a do-able, moderate amount of probiotic foods that do not require us to purchase $10/lb. animal parts. My work focuses on culturing vegetables, optionally some raw, antibiotic- and hormone-free milk, or coconut liquid. (I now culture my coconut liquid before using it in Hot Pink Breakfast Smoothie).
My blog on 9/15 talks about learning vicariously through others—the examples I gave were learning from others’ health disasters. But you can learn from my health victories, too. Does it help you to know that I have had a quart or a half gallon of raw kefir, or yogurt, or coconut kefir, or sprouts, or Rejuvelac, or sauerkraut, on my counter, pretty much every day of my life for the past 17 years? We have had zero instances of problems, illness, food poisoning.
It also helps if you understand the process of how food has historically been preserved. You can preserve foods a few ways. One, drying it to dramatically slow oxidation, which often involves lots of salt. Two, can it by killing all its lifeforce (enzymes and vitamins) so that there’s very little to oxidize, and then sealing it against air and bacteria. Third, utilizing lactobacillus and other beneficial organisms and lactic acid to break down the proteins and preserve the food (fermenting).
The way I make sauerkraut (see Ch. 8 of 12 Steps) is that the unrefined salt preserves it for a few days while the (slower) lactic acid begins to take over. I have two-year old raw sauerkraut (that I preserved with whey from my yogurt/kefir) that has been unsealed (but covered tightly with a lid) that we are still eating. It’s too soft, and it’s better, texture-wise, at six months old. But it’s preserved, and the healthy bacteria help my family stay healthy.
It might help to address the semantics. The word “fermented” has a negative connotation. (Although beer drinkers who wouldn’t be caught dead eating fermented vegetables drink PLENTY of fermentation.) When you think of fermented, do you think of ROTTEN? We aren’t eating any rotten foods at my house. We could mentally replace that word with a much nicer one: cultured!
So, don’t eat fermented foods. Eat cultured ones!
If “bad” bacteria gets into your cultured foods and makes them “go bad,” you will know. They will taste bad and/or mold. I have almost never had this happen. Once it happened with a bottle of sauerkraut. Never with kefir or Rejuvelac.
My Rejuvelac ferments in a day. At CHI, they told me 3-5 days, but mine tastes plenty tart 24 hours after I blend the sprouts and water, and put it on the counter to grow (aka ferment, aka culture).
Here’s my new video showing this easy, inexpensive habit that has the potential to see you through the winter without viruses or infections!
Posted in: 12 Steps To Whole Food, Videos, Whole Food
Thanks Robyn, DO YOU REUSE THE GRAINS FOR A 2 to 3rd BATCH???
Thank you! I have recently stopped drinking dairy milks and find I am missing my daily goat milk kefir. This looks like a very good substitute for the enzymes and probiotics. I eat quinoa, amaranth and buckwheat groats almost daily, this will be a nice addition.
I’m excited to try this! I already use kefir in my smoothies everyday, but this looks great! Maybe you could do an instructional video on dehydrating your sprouted grains, grinding them into flour and baking with them as well.
I’m excited to try this! I already use kefir in my smoothies everyday, but this looks great! Thanks for the tips! Maybe you could do an instructional video on dehydrating your sprouted grains, grinding them into flour and baking with them as well.
I’m so excited about this! I was very intimidated about sprouting until I watched this. I just put some Quinoa to soak. Thank you for the awesome video! Can’t wait to see you in Mesa Nov. 5th!
I loved your info on rejuvalac and I make and eat fermented foods but a question came up about using rejuvalac if you cannot/choose not to eat grains? Please comment.
Julie, then use quinoa—which is not a grain.
My understanding on wheat berries is that you can use any of them (spring, summer, soft, hard, white, red etc). It all depends on your taste as each kind comes out tasting different.
I’m so excited to start this. I’ve been wanting to start sprouting and this gave me the kick I needed. Thanks!!
Hi Robyn I enjoyed your video Im always looking for new ways and ideas to increase health and performance. I’m a chiropractor , professor of physiology and microbiology and do ironman comps and 100 mile runs and crazy stuff like that. I do a lot of of the wall nutrition so this fits right in I’ll give it a try. Kris
Kris (Dr. Hansen), where do you live?
Hi Robin!
This is a fantastic video. Thank you for making it. I would love a video about making sauerkraut. Every one I’ve seen out there uses whey or tons of salt. I’d like to make sauerkraut, since I love it so much. I’ve tried a few ties with dismal results.
I love sprouting…….there is something growing on my counter always…….my family has just come to know that and they understand all about live enzymes and would tell anyone that I put sprouts on everything…………..and of course that is not all together true but we do eat a lot of them. I am super excited about this particular video because I really want more cultured foods in our diet so I am excited to make Rejuvalac! Thanks Robyn!
you said on your video that you used soft wheat, but does the type of wheat matter? Does hard wheat work as well as soft? Thanks so much for this video. I am excited to try it.
Michelle, YES you can use hard red wheat!
Thank you so much for sharing rejuvelac techniques with us. My sister and I have been making our own fermented “cultured” vegetables and coconut kefir. We love how good they are for us. We use Donna Gates starter from bodyecology.com website. We will also be trying the rejuvelac. Thanks again Robyn, for bringing us affordable goodness!
Hi Robyn,
I enjoyed watching your rejuvelac video. When I was at the HHI in 1995 in West Palm Beach, FL, they did not do that anymore, but I have since given Ann Wigmore’s online demo a try by using 1 cup wheat- or rye berries and letting the whole grain berries soak in 2-3 cups of water (I usually use destilled from my own countertop destiller, or the RO ionized H2O from the healthfood store) for 2 days (48hrs.) and then I pour off the fermented water and drink it strained and add 2-3 cups of water again and let that sit only 1day (24 hrs) and repeat up to 5 more times and then one could compost the grains and start over with a new dried grain berries (or 1 day before the 6.th drink to not be a day without it).
I personally prefer the taste of rye rejuvelac. Now if I did it like I said should I use the last batch’s grain in my green smoothie or because the good stufff has already been coming out of it for 5 days that it would not be of much benefit on the 6.th day to also put the berries into the blender?
Now Dr. Max Gerson said in his famous literature that he found out that the continuous action of the blender destroys the living enzymes and in Dr. Norman Walker’s books I noticed that he pulsed only with the blender (maybe to not get the electtrical power buildup and that way not destroy the living enzymes) so that is what I have done to be on the cautious side.
What do you know about creating electricity through continuous round motion as in a blender?
Thanks very much for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us!
God bless you for it!
monika
Monika, great info, thanks! I’m waiting to post about Rejuvelac again until I get an answer from Dr. Brian Clement who runs Hippocrates about my questions. But that’s a good tip–just pulse. Also a good tip to use the fermented, sprouted grains as a “starter” for up to a week, to make it even easier and simpler. I run mine for only a few seconds. I will include this in the “Take Two” blog I am preparing on this subject, thank you!
I wanted to chime in the on the “alcohol” concerns someone mentioned. Maybe this was already addressed, but we have to remember that our guts produce alcohol. And the more out of balance our gut bacteria is, the MORE alcohol we produce. When we replace the healthy gut flora, we actually produce less alcohol. SO, using natural probiotic foods like kefir and rejuvelac is likely to result in you having LESS alcohol in your body, even though they contain a tiny amount. You can actually have such a serious candida overgrowth that you are literally drunk from the alcohol it produces. Balancing your gut flora lowers the alcohol in your system overall.
Thanks for the info, Robyn. I’m soaking my quinoa tonight!