I tried an experiment the other week. I had half a cabbage left over from the tuna coleslaws when I was staying away from home on business, so I thought that this would be the time to try making sauerkraut.
It is meant to be very easy to make and I have Mark Sisson to thank for the instructions. In the end it all went a bit wrong, and I suspect it was mostly because I didn’t cut it up finely enough (or have it packed down tightly enough).
Sauerkraut - the failed experiment
The experiment got me thinking about fermented foods and their health benefits.
If you subscribe to the Paleo or Primal way of thinking, then eating fermented foods makes perfect sense. After all, there is very little in the way of natural refridgeration in the wild (unless you live in Antarctica) and it is easy to imagine that people would end up eating foods when they were a little past their best. Loren Cordain, the author of The Paleo Diet doesn’t recommend fermented foods, however this is one area where I struggle to agree with him.
The gut connection
The gut is one of the core parts of our immune system. Logically, the main ways in which bacteria can enter the body is through our mouth or nose. From there they pass through the digestive system, including the gut, and should be passed out of the body at the other end. However, if there is damage to the gut wall then these bacteria can leak out of the gut into the blood stream and provoke infections in the body.
Leaky gut is wide-spread in modern society. It describes the condition where the permeability of the gut membrane is compromised. This can be caused by a host of things including parasites in the gut or yeasts (such as candida) growing on the gut lining. As the yeast grows further into the lining it bores holes into it. Once the gut lining is permeable the gut will start to allow harmful bacteria into the bloodstream but may also allow small particles of food and other matter into the bloodstream as well.
Leaky gut can be resolved by removing the irritants from your diet, which may be done through sprouting or fermenting those foods with antinutrients, and once you have removed the problem-causing foods you still need to heal the gut and a well known way to do this is through probiotics. These can often be found in fermented foods.
Some useful reading on gut health and fermented foods
I’ve collected together below some articles that I’ve come across or rediscovered recently that go into more detail on the issues of gut health and also fermented and sprouted foods, including how these items may help with improving the integrity of the gut.
- Dr. Bryan Walsh wrote an article for Testosterone Nation that talks about each of the parts of the digestive system in turn, explaining what they do, what can go wrong and how you can solve the problems.
- The Whole Health Source recently did an article which included a section about preventing gastrointestinal problems. One of the recommendations is to include raw fermented foods in your diet.
- Mark Sisson has done a long and detailed article on fermented foods, including information about some of the benefits.
- For information about sprouted foods then I recommend reading through this Precision Nutrition article by Ryan Andrews. It includes some really good background information on anti-nutrients as well.
- Ultimate Performance have put it all together. The article explains why good gut health is important for athletes and how to deal with diagnosing, repairing and improving your gut health.
- For those who prefer listening to technical information, Robb Wolf answers questions about Leaky Gut in response to the first question (at about 6 minutes) in episode 14 of the Paleolithic Solution.
Hopefully this will provide some useful starting reading on an area that is, in my opinion, of utmost importance to everyone, both those who train and those who don’t.
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