Pickles for Health

Accompanying recipe: Dilled Red Radish, Carrot and Cauliflower Pickles

You probably know that quality yogurt and pickles are remarkably healthful fermented foods that aid digestion and strengthen your immune system.  However, not everyone knows that pasteurization strips their superfood ranking by destroying  fragile nutrients such as lactic acid micro-flora. 

Therefore, insist on living fermented foods including sauerkraut, kim chee, cheese, tempeh, miso and traditionally aged meats and fish. Here’s how these cultured foods enhance your health and well being they:

* Increase antibodies that fight infectious disease.
* Strengthen the small intestine and help inhibit pathogenic organisms (such as E.coli, salmonella and yeast overgrowth).
* Create glutathione and superoxide dismustase antioxidants.
* Generate omega-3 fatty acids and GTF chromium.
* Make food more digestible and neutralize some anti-nutrients.

Plus, there’s flavor. Homemade cultured foods have a pleasing tart flavor with a mild tang. Commercial cultured foods are pasteurized or contain preservatives and typically made with excess salt and cheap, acrid-tasting vinegar.

Due to our contemporary lifestyle, we need to augment our intestinal flora.  Here’s why. Within hours of birth your gastrointestinal tract became populated with various desirable yeast, fungi and bacteria. They aid digestion, create nutrients and help maintain a strong immune system.  Ideally, descendants of your original intestinal flora would still be thriving in your gut and helping keep you strong. Unfortunately, it is more probable that you’ve repeatedly killed them off by using:

Antibiotics
Meat with antibiotic residues
Chlorinated water
Alcoholic beverages
Chemicals in foods

To rebuild your intestinal flora, avoid these toxins and enjoy naturally fermented and unpasteurized pickles and other cultured foods. Also, to jump start the repopulation of your digestive assistants, consider taking an acidophilus or probiotic supplement.

I do hope you’ll try the accompanying Dilled Red Radish, Carrot and Cauliflower Pickles recipe. It is easy and rewarding to get in the pickle habit. This recipe is a favorite of my students and their families.

May you be well nourished!

Rebecca Wood