Simplification of Chemistry: Fermentation

Nature is a finely balanced dance between life and death. She generously provides bacteria and yeasts, some that preserve and others that spoil, rot and recycle. When left alone, it is always the bacteria that spoil living material to soil.

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Fermentation causes sugars to be converted into alcohols and eventually into acids preserving foods that otherwise spoils in a few days unless kept refrigerated, sealed in a vacuum or soaked with chemicals called preservatives.

250 years ago before refrigeration and chemical preservatives, people preserved their harvest for the entire year by fermenting them.

They prepared fermented foods like:

cheeses and yogurts from milk;

breads, beers, whiskies and vodkas from grains;

tofu and miso from beans;

pickles and sauerkraut from vegetables;

wines and vinegars from fruits; and

cured hams, salamis and pepperoni from meats.

85 percent of the immune system is located in the gut wall which in a healthy state contains 10 times more bacteria than cells in the entire body. Food allergies and intolerance can result in all sorts of reactions, from headaches, sneezing, rashes, abdominal pains, swollen joints, eczema, depression, and anxiety. If gut flora is abnormal, the gut lining begins to deteriorate and the junctions between the cells open up.

This causes the gut to become porous, becoming like a sieve, and foods don’t get the chance to be digested properly before they are absorbed. When the immune system finds partially digested proteins in the blood, it attacks them causing symptoms in your body called disease. Food allergies, as well as virtually all autoimmune disorders can be treated by ensuring a healthy gut wall.

Fermented foods are both potent detoxifiers and contain large amounts of probiotics to maintain optimal gut flora.

Foods can be preserved by giving the bacteria that preserve an advantage over the bacteria that spoil to make new soil. This is done by either

killing all bacteria in the foods and seeding it with the kinds that preserve, or by
selectively killing the kinds that spoil, leaving the ones that preserve alive.

Fermentation does more than just preserve foods. It also makes their nutrients more easily absorbed by our bodies and provides them with active enzymes which act as potent detoxifiers.

So if you want to be preserved and to live a full life and do not want to be spoiled and to die prematurely, ensure that your gut flora, your inner garden, has more of the bacteria that preserve than bacteria that spoil, rot and recycle.

This can be most easily, most naturally and most economically achieved by eating fermented foods and drinking fermented beverages.