Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
Ben Greenfield
Lesson Info
7. Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:57 2Seven Big Issues in Training
11:58 3The Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Train
11:15 4Mobility
10:27 5Balance
06:30 6Fueling for Performance
06:47 7Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
07:13 8Ultimate Human Performance Juice & Smoothie
03:23Lesson Info
Fermented Foods & Sweeteners
now speaking of mitigating the damage and protecting your body Your immune system as you'll learn later on in great detail is present in your gut like 90% of your immune system is in your gut and the bacteria in your gut are capable of producing vitamins. They're capable of helping to produce neurotransmitters. And one of the big missing components you know we talked about notoriously neglected components of fitness yesterday notoriously neglected components of diet in many cases include fermented foods and we do a ton of fermentation and fermented foods. And um I find some examples of actually well the main example I think we have here is sauerkraut, sauerkraut and we have some kombucha here most cultures all around the world have some form of fermented food. It's the oldest form of storing your food. It's basically salting using salt to preserve food. And unfortunately no it grows in the salt will grow bacteria to grow generally good bacteria. It can grow bad bacteria. And um if you ...
get into fermenting you should obviously learn what to know what to look for when that is present. Um However um our culture in our world has become very fearful of just bacteria in general. Um And I mean there's good reason to be fearful of bad bacteria but this is generally like I said if you're gonna ferment your own food you need to obviously educate yourself on what a bad batch looks like and it's pretty obvious it'll be like mold and green and stuff on top but you know people have killed themselves by growing bad bacteria. There is um if you refuse to search for example on the internet for Jessa. Greenfield fermentation, there's an entire almost a 90 minute long video of Jessa demonstrating how to make some of our favorite fermented foods. But very very easy to make. Can you give like the 32nd overview of making your own kombucha? Yeah. Well first. Well I don't think I actually told people to make Keefer Keefer. You just need milk and the key for greens and you put them together and set it on your counter for a 1-2 days however sour you want it to be in flavor and then it's done and then you put it in your fridge and it will last up to like two weeks. It lasts longer than regular milk because it has the lactic acids and it's preserved. So it's a very simple explanation. But that's really all it is it's very very simple. $9. You have to purchase the key for greens though. Um And then kombu to you also have to start out it's called a mother or Scobee. It's like a giant booger really it's really quite ugly. Um But you grew very strong tea and very sweet tea because the mother actually thrives on the sugar and the t. Now people always so concerned about putting white sugar into this and you really shouldn't be because what happens is the mother of the Scobie will actually metabolize it and they consume it. So it's not really even present and actually the longer you let it ferment, the more vinegar it becomes because less of the sugar is there. So um you can taste, it generally takes two weeks to ferment. So you have the strong tea in the sweet tea and you want to at room temperature because if you put a mother in hot tea, it's gonna kill it. It's alive being, it's actually alive, it doesn't move but it's alive. Um So you don't want to kill the mother, so you want the tdb room temperature and then you put the mother in and you're going to, this is one of the few fermentation processes that actually has to have oxygen to happen. Um Most of things like Sauerkraut and Cape Fear needs seal, it needs to be sealed. Um So you put I put like a T shirt material because where we live in the summer we get fruit flies. Um and if you use cheesecloth, those things, they love this stuff and they can get in there and then the lay eggs and then you're gonna have a big mess. So t shirt material works really, really great, they can't get in there and it allows oxygen to come in and you put it away in a closet for about two weeks and then you come back um taste it if you like the way it tastes longer. If you want to be bubble here, if you, if you leave it there longer, it's gonna take some more vinegary too. So like I said, the longer you ferment the more vinegar it becomes. You can add a lot of people like to add juices to it to give it a nice flavor. My favorite is just putting ginger, I make a ginger syrup and I put it in there and it gives it a nice ginger flavor. So that's my particular one. Fantastic for the tummy you mentioned about sweetening with a ginger based syrup. Before we take a few more questions, I want to ask you about sweeteners. I notice we have honey down here and I get a lot of questions from people about how to sweeten your foods and you know what we used as a sweetener and whether you should just use stevia and avoid sweeteners altogether. What's kind of your take when it comes to using sweeteners and what do you use when you're cooking, baking etcetera? I'm going to use a sweetener. I'm using the real deal. I don't like stevia and I don't like what? Yeah, any of those because basically what it does is it ends up tricking your body into thinking that it's receiving these calories that it's actually not receiving and then your body ends up craving these calories because it never received them. So kind of, the wide diet soda makes you fat argument, it's it's the fact that you consume an artificial sweetener, your body releases digestive hormones because it senses that it's tasted something sweet and then you've got all these digestive hormones circulating in your hungry and so you want to go eat something. So usually, uh, using artificial sweeteners comes back to bite you later on. I like to use local raw honey. If you buy local honey, it's generally always raw because the pasteurization process is so expensive for them to do that, it is not worth it for them to do. So if you're buying local honey, your chances of it being raw are really good. Even though it doesn't say raw on there, which I learned from my honey beekeeper friends. And I've actually never understood what organic county is because bees kind of generally just go wherever they, you know what I mean? And they generally stay in a radius, but I don't quite understand organic. Um, so buying raw honey has all of the, it's um, what's the word I'm looking for him? It's got a ton of antibacterial. I use it like, um, chinese people have been using it forever. Honey on wounds. We'll burn victims actually have really benefited from honey and reduce scarring in that sort of thing. So, um, I use it as I use it in topical body products. I use it to sweeten things. Um, it's also got, why am I blanking on the word? Like berries have it? Lots of polyphenols and antioxidants antioxidants. It's got a ton of antioxidants in it.