How regular foods become superfoods that enhance your health and fitness.
You may know of the fermentation process as being an effective way of extending the shelf-life of foods and of preparing certain foods to enhance various tastes/smells.
You may also be familiar with it due to the fact that it’s the process required to make beer and wine.
An extended shelf life, the flavours that are created and the fact that it creates your beloved beer and wine are its least impressive features:
This fermentation process can actually turn regular foods into superfoods that are nutritionally better and contain impressive health-enhancing compounds!
During the fermentation process, microorganisms break down the food and produce various chemicals (eg. alcohol, organic acids etc.).
When it comes to health-enhancing effects, during the process of fermentation – thanks to these microorganisms – the nutritional value and function of the food can be enhanced.
This includes things like an increase in the food’s vitamin and mineral content, how easily it can be digested, the removal of unwanted qualities and the creation of a number of compounds that can do wonders for your health.
Fermentation can result in an increase in the content of certain vitamins and minerals. For example, during the fermentation of dairy products, the content of vitamin b12 can be increased up to 10 times! (1)
Other vitamins and minerals like vitamin B2, B9, K, calcium, magnesium, potassium and zinc are also increased. (2)
- There is an increase in your ability to digest the food’s protein and an increase in the amount of calcium you can absorb. (2) (3)
- If you’re usually intolerant of a raw food (eg. from the lactose in milk), you may be able to tolerate the transformed food after fermentation as a lot of people are. (eg. Cheddar or Kefir) (3)
- After fermentation, you can more easily absorb the polyphenols in some plant foods (a strong antioxidant)! (3)
- There’s a lowering of ‘anti-nutritional’ factors (compounds that make it harder to digest certain foods). (1)
So, in other words, after fermentation you’re getting more ‘good stuff’ out of the food than you would have if it wasn’t fermented.
“… fermented dairy products are recommended as a non-pharmacological strategy for the management of hypertension ...” (2)
During fermentation, some impressive compounds are created!
An example is fermented dairy foods (such as yoghurt and kefir), which end up containing peptides like ‘VPP’, ‘IPP’ and other compounds like CLA, EPS and GABA. (2) (3)
Without going into what these are and what they stand for, this is how they can help your heart health:
- VPP and IPP can be used as a diet strategy for treating high blood pressure (they also have anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects). (2)
- CLA is anti-inflammatory, anti-atherosclerotic, anti-carcinogenic and has blood pressure-lowering activity. (2)
- EPS has cholesterol-lowering benefits as it can bind up cholesterol and lower the levels in your blood! It also helps regulate your immune system, improves DNA repair, has antioxidant properties, helps with influenza virus and has anti-tumour effects etc. (2) (3)
- GABA also assists with blood pressure (as well as having anti-depressant and anti-diabetic effects) (2)
You can probably see how all of these compounds (found in something like kefir) can have impressive effects on maintaining a healthy heart!
But they don’t just contribute to a healthy heart, there’s more ...
Other areas of health/fitness that these compounds and peptides may assist with include:
DNA repair, cancer protection, gut protection, anti-bacterial and anti-microbial effects, immune system functioning, bone health enhancement, fighting obesity and skeletal muscle metabolism enhancement.(2) (3)
The list is long.
I’m sure you get the picture that some of these compounds and peptides that are created through fermentation have far-reaching health benefits!
Another cool thing about fermented foods is how they can positively influence your gut health.
We all have a ‘gut microbiome’. It’s located in your gut (small and large intestine) and consists of a huge number of microbes working together (or against each other). Your gut health is important; here’s why:
- It’s Important for immune system and metabolic factors. (4)
- It Influences your behaviour, emotional responses and perception, and may play a role in neurodegenerative disorders. (5)
- It can influence your sleep and how you respond to stress. (6)
- It plays a role in how you collect, store and use the energy you get from your diet. (7)
- It has a regulatory role on anxiety, mood, cognition and pain. (8)
- It can even influence your exercise performance and how well you recover/respond. (9)
You might be familiar with people talking about the ‘gut-brain’ connection, but there are also the ‘gut-skin’ and ‘gut-muscle’ connection etc.
Your gut health influences your entire body, so it’s a great idea to take good care of it.
Fermented foods may be an effective way to transport a number of beneficial microbes into your gut so that they join the microbe community – or help to get rid of microbes that don’t belong there – (probiotics) and they also deliver nutrients that benefit the good microbes already present there (prebiotics). (3)
“[Fermented Foods are] one of the most attractive food matrices to deliver beneficial live bacteria.” (Melini et al., 2019)
Thanks to what’s called the ‘food matrix’, which acts like a protective cover for these microbes (who are hitching a ride in the fermented food) so they can get through gastric transit and make it into your gut (where they positively influence the microbe community and lead to ‘better gut health’). (3)
Not only that, but the food also brings with it other benefits that have been formed during fermentation, such as ‘SCFAs’ (short chain fatty acids) and higher amounts of polyphenols (which have impressive antioxidant abilities). (3)
Both ‘SCFA’s and polyphenols are huge contributors and some of the main drivers to improving your gut health!
The process of fermentation does a lot more than extend the shelf-life and change the flavours of food. It turns ordinary food into superfoods that have increased vitamins and minerals, can be digested better, contain compounds that work wonders on all areas of your health/fitness and can directly improve your gut health so you reap all of the body-wide benefits of having a healthier gut.
It’s definitely worthwhile adding some fermented foods (kimchi, yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, apple cider vinegar, fermented olives, kombucha, miso, fermented cheeses etc.) into your daily diet!
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