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Fermenting: your new food friend

Food fads and nutrition. Savvy marketing or just "good for you" foods that taste great and look good on Instagram.
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Food fads and nutrition. Savvy marketing or just "good for you" foods that taste great and look good on Instagram.

You know you live in a First World country when there are food trends or fads but are they actually a good thing?

Recently, the BBC good food blog has said to look out for the fermented foods among the health trends picking up speed in 2017.

I can tell you that Janie and I have been fermenting foods since we moved to B.C. many moons ago. Maybe we are ahead of the trend, right? No, actually beer, wine, cheese and kraut have been around for awhile but we have been sold on the grocery store packaged lookalikes for over a generation now.

One of the terms often used in food blogs these days is gut health. Gut health is nearly synonymous with fermented foods these days.

We are taught from an early age that fermenting or rotting food is bad for you. Rotting is more of a word that is used to illicit strange blue green moulds growing on produce in the fridge or compost pile.

We have been fermenting now for several years and I can tell you that there is nothing like a good raw kraut for many simple ailments from seasonal depression to headaches and fatigue to just plain old tummy troubles.

Sauerkraut contains high levels of dietary fiber, as well as significant levels of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, and various B vitamins.

Vitamin B-12 is often something lacking in the vegetarian diet which typically is found in animal products. Vitamin B-12 does a lot of things for your body. It helps make your DNA and your red blood cells. Fortunately, B-12 often shows up in fermented foods, particularly in kraut.

Often old recipes or old food traditions are not derived from the need of being an aesthetic food thing that would garnish a lot of likes on your social media account but were derived from a nutritional need coupled with the seasonality of the regions produce as well as the lack of refrigeration.

The first time that we made our own blue cheese from our sheep was incredible. Though I must admit it was terrifying. My whole life I have been told not to eat what I started growing in my basement. The blue moulds growing on a lump of milk fat smelling stronger each passing day told my senses to throw it out. The first bite into that beautiful Pyrenees blue cheese was magic. I felt like a young teenager trying beer for the first time not knowing what exactly was getting ready to happen from my consumption of this taboo.

The next few moments of my life I will never forget as I began placing the cheese on everything from pizza to salads and sandwiches trying out its possibilities.

Now I must say, if you are going to experiment with fermentation do your homework and do it well because getting sick from something is a real threat and caution should not be thrown to the wind.

Now go dust off those recipe books you got from grandma and grandpa and renew cultural traditions born out of seasonality, you may just like it.

Happy eating, Prince George.