By Staff Writer - February, 5th 2014

Every food expert on the planet will tell you that the healthiest foods are usually the freshest. But the latest beneficial food group isn’t a bit farm to table—it’s fermented—meaning ingredients like cabbage and cucumbers have been left to sit and steep until their sugars and carbs become bacteria-boosting agents. Wellness experts are currently enthralled by how these pungent, probiotic powerhouses, which boost the good bacteria in your digestive tract, can help heal a multitude of health issues, likeleaky gut and IBS, and can even lead to weight loss, better skin, and boosted immunity.

by Sayer Ji

Between the hard and fast dichotomies of cooked and raw, dead and alive, is this beautiful thing called fermented.  A place where many of the digestive challenges associated with raw foods (e.g. enzyme inhibitors, anti-nutrients, lectins) are overcome in favor of not just preserving their benefits (e.g. enzyme activity, vitamin content, life energy), but amplifying them. Also overcome are the adverse consequences of cooking, e.g. enzyme destruction, vitamin activity degradation, oxidized fats, denatured proteins, etc., while still benefiting from the enhanced digestibility and assimilation that certain cooking applications offer.  Fermented food is in many ways the complementary union of cooked and raw, as well as their transcendence – an image, not unlike the Tai Chi, comes to mind.

In fact, fermentation has almost heretical power in the realm of both medicine and nutrition, being quite capable of literally “raising the dead,” as well, revitalizing and infusing with living and …

Source