Fermentation Workshop

Hello everyone, I'm Kirsty from Kultured Wellness, and welcome. This is the first video in the gut health workshop series. I'm so glad that you're here, and I'm really, really looking forward to sharing all this information with you, so you can take it onboard, and head out there and start to apply it to your everyday life. Today, we're going to talk about fermented foods. It is really the 101 of gut health, and I think it's so important that we start this workshop series right up the front with fermented foods.

A little bit about me before we get started, some of you I may know, and some of you may not have met me before or have seen any of my work. My passion in gut health and fermented foods really started and was born out of my own adversity to and my own problems with my gut. Look, I probably would've put up with it for the rest of my life. I had significant chronic diarrhea. It was up to 15 times a day. I had lots of pain. I couldn't digest my food. I couldn't eat much food. I was, at one point, down to lamb and zucchini. I was so fatigued, and I was having such a hard time trying to front up with each day and putting up with these symptoms.

I would've, as I said, put up with it forever had my son not come along and he also started displaying all of those symptoms, and then they started reflecting in his learning and his development. Now, unfortunately, my son had a horrible time and he didn't develop. He really struggled to learn. It affected his speech. It affected his ability to socialize. It affected his immunity, and his neurological function was significantly affected. At three and a half, he was diagnosed with autism, and he was given a terrible prognosis.

Me being stubborn me, I thought, "No, there's got to be more to this. I have these issues, and he has these issues. Surely, it's got something to do with that." We went on this massive journey of investigation, and we got the right tests done. We found the right people to help us, and we learned. I kept learning. I kept studying. I came from a research background. I knew how to research and put all of these puzzle together, and what we found was both of us had quite significant gut issues, so gut dysbiosis, which meant there was pathogens, parasites, infections, all sorts of things living within us. They were basically taking over our microbiome, and taking over our bodies, and causing us such distress.

We had no good bugs. We had no beneficial microbes. We were literally hosts to some pretty horrible things. What we did is we found out through the testing who these guys were, and we methodically went about eradicating, and step by step, rebalancing our gut, putting beautiful beneficial new microbes back in there, and slowly but surely addressing each part of our body and each function of our body, and slowly rebuilding. Look, it's been amazing journey. It's been confronting and hard and exciting and everything in between, but we got there in the end, and we still continue to work on it every day.

We should. It's a moving process. You don't just suddenly get great gut health and there you are. Every day you have to work on it, otherwise it changes again. Our gut changes. Within three days, you can have beneficial microbes in there or pathogens in there. It's very important to constantly look after yourself, and nourish and nurture your body, not just do it once, and be done with it. My son and I are doing so much better now, and we're just so grateful for the experience and the journey that we went on. Here I am, wanting to explain and teach everyone else exactly the importance and the foundations and all of the things that need to happen to bring the body back into alignment.

Out of that little journey, I started to realize that we needed very, very specific fermented foods, and specific culture strains. We'll talk about this in a sec. I've developed these cultures, and of course, family wanted them. Then friends wanted them, and Kultured Wellness started. Kultured Wellness has an education, but it also has beautiful cultures that we sell so you can make your own fermented foods, and we also have gut supplements and products. Yeah, it just started, and here we are. I'm so excited about it. I just love what I do.

 
In this first video, I really want to go through all of the ups and downs of starting fermented foods, and how exciting it is. Let's dive on it. Fermented foods started as early as 600 BC. They had been around for absolute eons of time. They started because they're a wonderful way to preserve food. Pre-industrialization, there were certainly no refrigerators. There were certainly no local shops where you could just pick up food. You had to grow your own food. When it was in season, you had to reap the rewards from your crops. Then you had to work out a way preserving it, so you could eat it all year round. That's where ferments came in.

The classic is using a salt brine to ferment the foods meant that they would last and last and last. Captain Cook took sauerkraut, which is a very traditional fermented food, away with him in the First Fleet. His crew was the first crew to not have scurvy. Sauerkraut has a huge amount of Vitamin C in it. These guys, because it was fermented and it was preserved, it can go on the boats, and they could have a constant source of beautiful vegetables, because they were preserved. Of course, they were teaming with all those beautiful probiotics.

As industrialization came, so did refrigerators, and the importance and the absolute need for fermented foods stopped. We started to just buy what we needed and cooking it straight up, and then we started eating out of boxes, and then we started having processed food. Everything went a bit pear-shaped. These beautiful traditions of fermenting have really been lost. I certainly wasn't taught by my mother. My grandma didn't teach me. It wasn't something that's in our culture now. It really is a lost dying art.

I'm really excited though that there has been this great surge of interest in fermented foods probably in the last two to three years. I've been researching and understanding this area for about 10 years now, and it is pretty cool to start to see fermented foods getting a bit of that rock star status, and it's all a bit cool. I don't care. I'm stoked with that as long as people are eating fermented foods. What's happening now is we have people that aren't eating fermented foods, and people who are quite scared of fermented foods, because it's not in our culture and it's not in our tradition.

It's been in cultures and traditions, as I said, for eons in time, and in all cultures. The Japanese have been fermenting and eating natto, which is a fermented soy, for absolute eons. It's very high in protein and high in Vitamin K2. A lot of European countries had sauerkraut and still do, which is the cabbage, the fermented cabbage. If you look at the Koreans, they have kimchi, which is fermented cabbage with chili and garlic and all sorts of different spices. The Bulgarians, they have their yogurt, their cow's yogurt. The Russians and their Turkish have their kefir, which is the raw mil kefir, and sometimes even camel kefir.

Then also the Indians, they have their lassi, which is like a yogurt drink. Even in Egypt, there's the leavened bread, which is a fermented bread, with using beautiful cultures to grow and make sure that the bread puffs up and so beautiful to eat. All cultures have fermented food. The indigenous Australians, our aboriginal Australians, they used to ferment the grasses and make a bread out of the fermented grasses. Everyone fermented, because they knew that they could preserve and maintain the food.

With all of that knowledge, it's a real shame that it's gone. What's also gone with that knowledge is the understanding how to eat fermented foods. Before we go into that, I want to actually just to give you a brief explanation of what the hell are fermented foods. Fermented foods are basically your vegetables in a jar, and then added to it is a brine, which is a salt solution, or you add cultures to those vegetables. Then you put the lead on, and then you leave it to ferment for anywhere up to eight weeks to months and months and months.

 
What happens is that those cultures or that brine enables and grows these beautiful probiotics and these beautiful cultures within their ferment. They multiply and they eat up the sugars from the vegetables. They eat the sugars. They multiply, and multiply, and multiply, and those beautiful bacteria is what keeps it alive and preserved, and it's what's amazing, and the reason why we're eat it. It's so beneficial.

 
Our bodies are mostly made up of bacteria. Some of the research coming through says that we are 90% bacteria and only 10% DNA. I've also read 70% bacteria and 30% DNA. I'll keep you updated on that when we've got some more confirmation, but the key is that we're mostly bacteria. If we're not eating bacteria, replenishing our body with beautiful beneficial bacteria, microbes, fermented foods, then we're not going to be able to keep that balance that we need for robust health.

 
Our bacteria within our body talks to our genes, and when we have beneficial bacteria, it obviously talks to our genes and enables our genes to express themselves beneficially. We can have that vibrant health. You've got that 90% of your body is bacteria. What if it was not beneficial bacteria? We can have pathogens like those parasites or like those infections, and they can take up that 90%. That's where we find chronic health. That's where we find autoimmune conditions. That's where we find mental health problems. It's where we find diarrhea. You name it. It's horrible what happens when that balance shifts.

I know for me, my balance was all over the place. I was mostly pathogens and no beneficial bacteria. I had to change that balance. Fermented foods are such a great way to change that balance. You're nurturing your body. You're adding beautiful ferments in there, bacteria in there to change that balance. It's very, very important to understand without fermented foods and beneficial microbes, we can't change the state of our health. There's obviously lots that we need to do, and we're just talking about one specific thing today, but it is absolutely vital.

I want to talk also a little bit about wild ferments and cultured ferments, because it's important for people who have had specific troubles, or autoimmune conditions, or chronic health conditions. Wild ferments, when you use things like kefir greens, scobies for kombucha, or when you use sourdoughs, those sorts of things. Now, within those grains, scobies, you don't know the specific bacteria that's in there to help with the ferment. Look, through science, we certain understand. We've had lots of those things tested and measured. We have a good understanding of what grows in there, but every ferment is different. You can have something fermenting in your house, and then you'll have the bacteria from what's living in your house, and that will also come into your ferment and adding to the different strains in your ferment. A wild ferment is just amazing. It's just such a great way of adding these foods in.

A cultured ferment on the other hand is when you make your ferment by just using specific culture strains that you know, and so when you ferment, you are absolutely sure and you know what you're culturing and the strains that you're using. Now, for someone who's got some chronic health issues, or someone who has been very sensitive to fermented foods, the cultured strains are the way to go. That's why I developed my cultures was because I was quite sensitive to fermented foods to start with, because some of the wild ferments caused more imbalance for me, and so I started with the cultured ferments to get a bit of balance and a bit of equilibrium. Then once that started, then I was able to do to the wild ferments. We'll get into that in a little bit, but I just want to really get that explanation of the wild ferments and the cultured ferments.

 
Why would we eat fermented foods? I mean, we've talked about the fact that they've got those beneficial microbes in there. They're teaming with thousands of microbes, and it's just incredible. I mean, when we did our lab tests for our cultures, in one cup of yogurt, there's 41 billion CFU. Now, CFU is colony-forming units. It's basically just a measurement of how you measure the strength of the probiotics within that fermented foods. You know when we have a car tire and we measure its PSI, it's the same thing with fermented foods. We use CFU to measure the strength of it. One cup of fermented foods could have up to 41 billion CFU, whereas when you look at like a probiotic pill, some of them only have about 3 million CFU. The fermented foods are absolute power pack of beneficial probiotics, so they're absolutely worth doing. They survive in the got a lot longer when they're in a food source. They're much cheaper, and it's much better to have food as your medicine rather than taking pills as your medicine.

The benefits of fermented foods are quite diverse. First off, they help you increase the digestibility of the foods that you're eating. Some foods, especially plants, have toxins in them, which humans shouldn't eat. Some of them need to be broken down. Our ancestors knew this. Our ancestors knew to activate nuts, so you soak the nuts overnight to break down the phytic acid on the outside of the nuts, because the birds don't eat that, and we shouldn't. It can really disrupt our gut, and it can drain our zinc and B6. Fermenting breaks that down. Fermenting breaks down plant fiber. Fermenting breaks down any of those cellulose walls in the plant matter. It's absolutely vital. If you've got a slow digestion, if your digestion is difficult, fermented foods will really, really help with that.

It can also help with B vitamins. It creates Vitamin 2 ... Oh, sorry, creates K2. It increases, literally, overall, our minerals and our nutrient levels, so vitamins, minerals, nutrients. It can boost our immunity. Fermented foods help to grow those microbes within our gut microbiome. Within our gut microbiome, we have things like Lactobacillus strains, and a variety of those. We have Bifidobacteria strains, which have a variety of those as well. We have Bacteroide strains, and a variety of those. We have an absolute huge amount, trillions and trillions of microbes in our gut, and the diversity of those is massive. With that, within our gut microbiome, that's where we build a lot of the basic healthy cells for our immune system. Without the diversity within our gut, it's very, very hard to mount an attack and have a robust immune system. Having those microbes in there and eating those fermented foods adds to that immunity.

Now, the next one, I never believed this, because I had an absolute carbohydrate craving and sugar craving. I had a big problem. I would eat chips all the time, and I would eat biscuits all the time, absolutely love carbohydrates and sugar. What was going on for me was I had, as we were talking about before, quite significant pathogens in my body. Now, pathogens love carbohydrates and sugar. That's how they survive. If you feed them, they multiply, and they keep surviving. They're not going anywhere. You are the best host in town if you keep eating sugar and carbohydrates, because they'll keep multiplying, and they take up the space. They takeover. It's not until you add beautiful microbes in and fermented foods, it's not until you add that in and start to crowd out those pathogens do you start to curb those cravings for carbohydrates and sugars.

 
It was quite remarkable for me when I started adding the fermented foods in. I suddenly didn't feel like I needed the biscuits and the chips and all those sorts of things. I really, really just found that I craved bone broth, and vegetables, and ferments. I was really surprised. It actually does work. It was life-changing for me, because I often knew, well, I need to more vegetables, or I need to eat a more balanced diet, but these pathogens that live in our gut, they send messages to our brain to tell us what to eat. They were sending some pretty strong messages to me, and until I changed that, the messages were happening.

 
Once I changed it, I could really start to change my diet. I didn't feel like I was a slave to food anymore, and I didn't feel like I was worthless and I couldn't do it, and I didn't have any will power, and all those sorts of things. I really feel like it was massive problems for me, but really, it was a bug war. The bad bugs and the good bugs fighting against each other, and I was feeding the bad ones. I feel sorry now for those good ones. They just didn't have any of those resources to fight back, which is now what we give them.

Okay. Now, obviously, the fermented foods do crowd out those pathogens. They helped to fight thing like candida and parasites and all those sorts of things. Fermented foods are wonderful for helping to produce a robust amount of stomach acid. Now, stomach acid is vital for digesting our protein, but it's really important for protecting us from parasites coming in, embedding down into our bodies, or infections coming in. We need lots of beautiful stomach acids. When we have stomach acid and we digest our protein, we have beautiful strong nails. We have strong hair, silky hair. We have a nourished brain. It's very important that we digest our food, and we have to do that with those beneficial microbes. As we've talked about, the fermented foods is just like a huge bang of absolutely amazing microbes, so definitely, definitely need to add it in.

Now, one of the questions I get asked in my workshops when I go and speak is how much fermented foods should I have in a day? Now, that's a really good question because everyone is so different. If you've never had fermented foods before, and you're starting out, I would say really small. I would just have a teaspoon a day. Now, that can be a teaspoon of sauerkraut. It could be a teaspoon of yogurt. It could be a little glass of coconut water kefir, or it could be a little bit of beet kvass or some kimchi, whatever you're going to have.

Now, fermented foods are a condiment. Now, I've got a bit obsessed with fermented foods when I started this, and now, our kitchen look a little bit like a science experiment. My husband got into it as well. We were fermenting anything that was in the kitchen that was living, in it went. We were fermenting it. I'm surprised we didn't try and ferment our kids, but we were fermenting everything. What we found was we were so excited about it. We were so excited about it. We had so much fermented foods there, that I think for some days, my diet literally consisted of just eating fermented foods.

Now, I obviously was trying to rebuild my gut microbiome, and it's obviously fine to have fermented foods, but I just had too much. I had to pivot back and realize that, yes, fermented foods are a condiment, and you don't need heaps of them. You just need a little bit. We need to look at traditional cultures once again to give us that information. For example, in Germany, when you get your big bratwurst, or whatever, the big sausages, and they always put a big of sauerkraut on the top. Now, that's a standard fair now, but traditionally, they always had sauerkraut on there, because they know that sauerkraut helps to break down the protein. That's why they have it together.

When we have our yogurt, just a cup of yogurt a day is all you need. When you have your kafir, just half a cup or a cup is all you need. You don't need too much, because otherwise, you're missing out on other foods. It's very important that you do just have it as a condiments worth. With the fermented foods, when you're having those condiments, make sure that you diversify. Make sure that you're having a variety of those. For example, if you are having kombucha all day long, you're only have one particular strain. Kombucha has ... Sorry, one particular type of ferments.

Kombucha has heaps of yeast in there. Yeast is wonderful. It's beneficial, and we certainly have a need for yeast within our body. If you only drink kombucha, and you have it all day long, then what's going to happen is you're going to end up crowding out the gut microbiome with just yeast. There won't be any room left for all of the other beautiful different microbes that you need within your gut. Remember, we were talking about those Bifido strains, and we were talking about those Lactobacillus strains, and we're talking about those Bateroide strain, we need to make sure that we have a diversity, so we don't crowd out one, and one goes down, and another one goes up again, like that game where hit down and something comes up and down. We want to have diversity.

Within a day, make sure there's a bit of yogurt, a bit of kefir, a bit sauerkraut. There are so many different ways that you can have fermented foods. I mean, you can have fermented cashew cheese. There are so many amazing ways of getting ferments in, but just make sure that you have diversity. It's the one mistake that I see all the time, and it can actually really cause problems. Please make sure that there's diversity, diversity, diversity. Just start slow, start small, and then add in a little bit with each meal. 

For example, if you are having breakfast, for breakfast, you might have a fruit salad, and you have your yogurt on the top. There's your fermented foods for that meal, and then as we talked about, you might have a beautiful seven salad, for example. Then you put your sauerkraut on the top. Then for dinner, you might have a nice cup of coconut water kefir whilst you're eating your dinner to help you digest your dinner. It's not a massive thing, but every single day, just a little bit here and there. It doesn't become overwhelming when you just add it in like that, and it becomes your routine, and you just do it with ever meal. It's not hard in the end. We must understand those diversity of those strains. We must be able to make sure we're doing all of the different ones, and not just one.

Okay. Are you too scared to make fermented foods? Most people are, so when I go to workshops or I talk to people, they go, "I really want to make fermented foods, but I'm so scared that I'm going to ruin it, or it'll grow mold, or I get it wrong, or I'll make it wrong." Absolutely, I can understand why that would be quite scary. I mean, we don't have any of our beautiful elders to teach us these things anymore, so we've got to learn it ourselves.

When you make fermented foods, just like anything, you just got to give it a go. You can go to some beautiful classes. There's wonderful fermenting classes. I've got some great videos that we can put up in the Facebook page about making just really basic kefir and basic yogurt. If you want to start small, they're the best ones to make, because they are so quick and easy. I mean, I can make a batch as I'm getting the kids ready for school and doing lunchboxes. They're that quick and easy. You can do that, or you can go with as creative as fermenting your own meat. There's all sorts of things you can do, but just start.

 
Another thing that's fun to do is fermenting is actually quite a social joyous thing to do. You want to put lots of love into it. Getting together with a bunch of people on a Sunday afternoon or something, everyone brings their produce they might've got it from the market, some beautiful organic cabbage or something like that. You all sit down, and as you're nattering and listening to music and enjoying each other's company, you can be chopping up and making your ferments.

Then at the end of the day, you take home one of the ones that you made. You take home what your friend made and what your other friend made, and you're sharing out the ones that you made, and suddenly, you've got enough ferments for a whole month. You've shared some time together a new experience making ferments, and then you're sharing the loads. That's something that traditional culture is used to doing. I would highly recommend it the first time, and then every time that you want to make ferments, do it with your friends. Do it as a community. Make the time. Go, and it's such a great way of sharing it.

Now, with the fermented foods, you can make it using a brine, as I said, which is just salt and water, or you can make it with the cultures. I'm not going to go into that here, because it's a different discussion, but there are two different ways of doing it. That just goes back to the wild ferment, which is where you use the brine, so for example, making a sauerkraut or a kimchi, or the cultured ferment, which is you've already got those cultures ready to go, and that would be the yogurt or making some kefir, for example. You can get started on either one of those, and just start slowly but surely, and making sure that you're getting the right amount each day, and that you're going at the pace that your body can handle.

Now, on that note, it's important to point out that some people eat fermented foods and their body just does not like it. For me, I thought once I started learning about fermented foods, I thought, "Okay, this is it. My problems are solved. I'm going to start eating fermented foods, and everything is going to change." What actually happened was I started eating fermented foods. I had a horrible, horrible bloating, terrible gas, brain fog, rash, diarrhea. Everything just went wrong. Now, I'm not going to put you off fermented foods. Very small amount of people have this problem. It's really important for me to tell you, because some of you may have this problem, and I want to tell you why it's happening, so you don't get scared of fermented foods. Just hear me out on this one, and don't freak out over the fermented foods.

What happened was that when I did my stool test, so when I did my stool test and sent it off, and the lab had a look at the microbes that were living within my gut, I had all sorts of imbalances. When I started having the traditional wild fermented foods, it was actually pushing some of my imbalances even more out of whack. For example, I had a high count of Streptococcus in my body. When I was going to the supermarket or I was making traditional yogurt, it uses a strain called Streptococcus [thermises 00:31:11]. That's how they use it to ferment the yogurt. What I was actually doing was eating more Streptococcus strains, and I had a huge amount in my body already. I was making matters worse.

If you've got some chronic health issues, or if you overreact to fermented foods, I would highly recommend that you get a stool test, because not only will it save you heaps of time and money, because then you work with your practitioner and you read the test and go, "Oh, well, that's why I can't handle that fermented food, and I need more of these particular strains, because they're going to balance things out for me." It'll just save you so much time. You won't have to guess. You won't have to think, " Oh, is this going to be right? Is that going to be right?" You might be buying beautiful handmade ferments from the health food store, or spending all your time making them, and they're not quite right for you.

We have some people that ... At Kultured Wellness, we organize those stool test. We have our beautiful practitioners that guide you through, unpacking what's in my stool test, and what ferments do I need, and what's happening, and we have people that find out what's going on in their test and starting to eat the right fermented foods, and suddenly, they can handle them. Suddenly, they don't have the big dramatic reaction to them. Don't give up on fermented foods if you have had that experience. It's just you've got to find the right strains for you. 

The test will be amazing. If you would like some more information on that, just pop it in the comments below, and either myself or one of my team will be able to write back to you and help you organize that. The test is really awesome. They send the kit to you, and then you send it back to them. You don't have to bother about going and doing it somewhere. It's very, very, very easy. It is a window into what's going on for you. It's just so beneficial. I would highly recommend it if you're struggling to get past eating fermented foods, and getting past why haven't I cured my gut, why can't I get to the bottom of this? The testing, the stool samples and the testing, we use Bioscreen Labs, and they're in Melbourne, so they're wonderful.

That's just a little bit of a snapshot into fermented foods and why it's so important. Don't be scared of fermented foods. Just jump on in and give it a go. Start small. I'm a huge fan of the GAPS, which is the Gut and Psychology Syndrome Philosophy of Dr. Natasha McBride. I'm a huge fan of her work, and she talks about if you're starting sauerkraut, just even having a little teaspoon of the liquid, not even having the actual cabbage just yet, just starting with the liquid, so so small, so gentle, just until your body recovers.

If you'd like some more information on fermenting, one of my fermenting heroes is Sandor Katz, K-A-T-Z. Sandor Katz is like the fermenting man. He will ferment anything from meats to kefirs. He has just got such a wonderful gift of working with ferments. If you're that person that's tried a basic sauerkraut or basic sort of ferment, and you'd really like to ramp up your fermenting knowledge, his book and his website and his work is just absolutely fantastic. I you want to start really small, go for the Kultured Wellness cultures. They are super easy, super, super simple. They're bomb-proof. You can't go wrong. Also, if you're that person that has reacted to fermented foods in the past, those cultures I developed because of my problems with starting with fermented foods, and I knew that those cultures are very, very neutral to the body. They won't cause a flair. You could get started with those cultures.

Thank you for joining me in this video. It's been so wonderful to get started, and of course, what a way to start but with fermented foods, and talking all about how important they are into including in your diet and crowding out those pathogens, just nourishing our body with microbes to help us to gain that vitality, and remember to start small, and don't be overwhelmed. Already, we've created this amazing community in here. I'm so excited to see all of you joining up. Make sure you check in with each other, and share your experience, because everyone in here is going to have the same questions or stories. Please reach out. It's a really safe space to have a great conversation, so that's very important.

Now, we've also got a little quiz just about fermenting. It's just like a bit of a snapshot of, okay, how am I going with my fermented foods, how often do I have them? Do I react to them, those sorts of things. Make sure you fill out the quiz and hold on to your scores or your answers, so we can have a look as we go through to the videos of how you're going. Once again, I'm so glad that you're here and you're learning. If you have any questions or you want to know more, please put them in the comments. I'll catch you in the next video. We're going to be talking about stool. Of course, you cannot discuss gut health without ferments and without stools, and talking about stools. I hope you have a wonderful time learning, and we'll see you in the next video.