If you are the adventurous type, you can also make your own fermented food at home. Erica and Justin Sonnenburg, two Stanford microbiologists who are married and co-authored the new study, ferment their own homemade kimchi, kefir, kombucha and pickles. One of the easiest fermented foods to make is sauerkraut. Here’s a quick recipe. To get started, all you need is a head of cabbage, salt, and a Mason jar.
TPP: How should I buy fermented foods?
AO: If you’re like me and prefer to buy fermented foods, there are some important things to keep in mind. Not all foods made by fermentation contain live microorganisms when they reach store shelves or your kitchen table. For example, the dough used to make sourdough bread is fermented by bacteria (hence the sour taste), but the microbes are destroyed during baking. Wine is made by fermenting grape juice. But commercial wines are filtered and processed to remove most live microbes.
dr. Justin Sonnenburg said to make sure the fermented food you buy actually contains probiotics, read the packaging and look for statements like “contains probiotics” or “contains live cultures.” Some packaging simply says ‘naturally fermented’. And some foods, such as yogurt and kefir, often list the probiotic strains they contain on their labels. You can usually find these fermented foods in refrigerated aisles in grocery stores.
TPP: Kimchi is too spicy for me. Is the spicy sauce part of the benefit?
AO: According to Dr. Sonnenburg, kimchi is exceptional because it is relatively complex for a fermented food. “It has a lot of ingredients and in some cases it even contains fish sauce or soy sauce, which are also fermented foods.” It’s possible that some of the herbs in kimchi offer health benefits, he added. But the benefits seen in the new study likely resulted from more than just the spicy component of kimchi.
Most fermented foods have fewer ingredients than kimchi, and it’s easy to find ones that aren’t spicy at all, such as yogurt, kefir, kombucha, and sauerkraut. But there are many recipes for kimchi, and you may be able to find some online that are on the milder side, said Christopher Gardner, a co-author of the new study and director of nutritional studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.
