The Secret Keys Of Cultured And Fermented Foods In Health, Wellness, Longevity

This article is an edited excerpt from the new book, Truly Cultured: Rejuvenating Taste, Health and Community with Naturally Fermented Foods by Wholistic Health Expert, Nancy Lee Bentley. This groundbreaking treasury captures the essence, mystery, how-to's and health benefits of our most ancient, vital and treasured, cultured foods. Beyond its beautiful four color photos and user-friendly recipes and hints, it is a tribute to fermentation and the microorganisms that enable it, revealing a key, a secret missing link to real eating enjoyment, health, longevity, fellowship and community, personal and planetary transformation. This is what being "Truly Cultured", from soil to spirit, really means ~ a life worth celebrating.

The Secret Keys of Cultured and Fermented Foods in Health, Wellness, Longevity

“If you were an alien watching primetime TV for the first time, you might conclude that we need drugs to stay healthy,” observes Wholistic Health Expert, Nancy Lee Bentley, at the beginning of her new Book Truly Cultured: Rejuvenatiing Taste, Health and Community with Naturally Fermented Foods. Yet, as this fascinating book reveals about the miraculous micro- organisms and their incredibly adaptable nature, our health problems are now more insidious, chronic degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes. Despite development of more vigorous anti-microbials, our modern “war on bugs” germ mentality is rapidly losing the battle. That’s because, Guess what ~ and as you’ll discover in this amazing book~ They’re not the enemy!

As Nancy points out, it’s no accident that this is happening in both our bodies and on our farms. For these are reflections of each other, an example of the ancient alchemists’ principle of “as above, so below, as inside, so outside.” Surprise, they are actually connected! The flavor of the vegetables we eat, measured by brix or sugar levels in the plant, are directed related to the level of minerals in the soil. The same way that antibiotic resistance in the body is really just a mirror of pesticide resistance in the field. These factors hold essential keys to unraveling the enigmas of our time, including rebalancing both our inner and our outer ecology, a central theme about the archetype of fermentation and the amazing microorganisms profiled in this exciting book. It’s about seeing and making connections to find our way back to health.

The Basis of “Dis-ease”

Especially since Pasteur in the last century, we’ve tended to look at disease as a disruptive, degenerative process in the body caused by a specific germ or agent. Yet, as Truly Cultured clearly points out, Pasteur’s short-sided look down the microscope got us on the wrong path, shifting the responsibility for health away from each of us to so-called “outside experts” putting fear into the equation by blaming the microbes. When everyone knows -- or soon will, after reading this informative, yet light-hearted, sometimes downright funny book -- that you don’t blame the rats for creating garbage dumps. The microbes aren’t the enemy, they’re actually the responsive, responsible maintenance and cleanup crew, trying to adapt to the environment we put them in and save the cells.

So the ancient word “disease” is actually better understood when viewed as “dis-ease,” inferring discomfort, dissension or disconnection on other levels, such as the mind and the body, conflict between emotional and spiritual levels, that set up the conditions for problems to develop. Health is not just the absence of disease. Health is a combination of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness, with all parts working in harmony, balance, and ease.

Preventing Disease Versus Curing It

While today’s reductionist scientists ( thanks to Pasteur) tend to focus on curing disease, holistic practitioners take the wider view and focus on health. Ancient wisdom, even among primitive peoples, has always known that “everything is connected.” We live in an interdependent world, in a matrix of interconnected energies and realities. Shamans and sages throughout millennia have known that sickness isn’t just something that starts with the body. And this applies just as equally today, Nancy Lee Bentley reminds us, whether we’re talking about chronic disease in the body or the microorganisms that help make up the humus in the soil.

“Hopefully, our current environmental problems like global warming and acid rain, along with mysterious, out-of-the-blue quandaries like disappearing bees and astounding rates of autism, are helping us to get the message: no one thing causes or cures problems. Invariably, it’s a combination of elements involved in the breakdown or rebuilding of health, like other parts of life.” says Nancy. And invariably, the microbes and fermentation are involved.

So Are Fermented Foods, the Forgotten Key, the Magic Bullet to Health?

Despite our busy busy lives, media marketing and even messages in movies like “The Secret” that we can have it all now, there are no “Fix Me Quick” Magic Bullets or band aids for polluted streams -- or for chronic degenerative health conditions that so many are plagued with now. But while fermented foods don’t act like site-specific pills or drugs to alleviate symptoms and “cure” disease, per se, they are key contributors, missing links to health.

The microorganisms involved in the process of fermentation are instrumental in the foundations of health because they promote good digestion and healthy “gut flora.” Most people don’t realize that digestion is 80% of immunity, our frontline of defense in maintaining a healthy body. And the essential cultured foods these original microprocessors create are the very ones we’re just not getting enough of in our modern diet to provide a critical, bottomline buffer support for health.

Fortunately, most of our favorite foods – the cheese, chocolate, coffee, tea, condiments, yogurts and kefirs, sausages and sourdough breads – all ALL fermented or cultured foods. Not all are equally healthy, though. Which is, in part, why Nancy Lee Bentley wrote this profound, yet very practical “cookbook and nourishment guide.” It’s the lacto-fermented, the old style early fermented foods –like the homestyle yogurts and crockery pickles that contain the good and friendly lactobacteria we need to eat – and ideally make ourselves. As opposed to the pasteurized and highly processed commercial fermented foods, many of which are accellerated with yeast, that predominate the food landscape.

And fortunately, contrary to what you might think, they’re not difficult to make. It’s more about planning, working them into our schedule, or better yet, having get togethers, forming our own “food circles” and enjoying some well-earned fellowship, while we create batches of these healthy goodies to pass around and share.

Why bother? Besides skyrocking rates of obesity, diabetes and other degenerative diseases, ADHD, GERD and an alphabet soup of weird and mysterious problems with health, we have disappearing bees, GMO’s, resistant pests, famine and dustbowls, there are a host of other environmental and other challenges that ultimately boil down to imbalances in our micro and macro ecology. Problems directly traced back to microorganisms and the mysterious process of fermentation that have time and time again ensured the health of many cultures – long before any medical degrees or pharmaceuticals were invented.

Besides personal health, the ecology of our food system, just like our land, is definitely out of balance. Unquestionably unsustainable, the U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. Food travels up to 3,000 miles before it’s sold to consumers.

We in the western world continue to consume at a rate that qualifies us as “energy hogs.” Five percent of the world's population, we consume 25 percent of its resources, generating roughly 30% of its waste. The earth literally cannot sustain our current lifestyle, and a massive change in the food industry, the whole food system, is crucial to our survival. Microorganisms and fermentation, Nancy Lee maintains, also hold a key here.

The bottomline: It’s looking like the bacteria are smarter than we are.

They’re laughing at us, and our trying to kill them off, when in reality, We are Bacteria and They are US. And, at least know they’re interdependent and must work together in order to survive. We have a lot of lessons to learn from this tiny creatures. It’s not just about probiotics and gut health, it’s about learning to co-exist and embrace the community of ALL life.

Fermentation and Culturing to the Rescue

Truly Cultured demonstrates that a new, sustainable way of living is not only viable, but possible through the age-old key of fermentation. After all, it is older than fire and our first food processing and preservation technique that Nancy Lee feels can hold a key to reviving our ailing local economies once again. In fact, Nancy Lee sprinkles the book with numerous examples of fermentation and other “food circles” from sourdough bakeries to breweries to community kitchens that are currently rejuvenating the health, the community involvement and the economics of many local communities through the continent.

You’ll find many more examples of the benefits of this age old, health-promoting natural processing and preservation technique and how they can easily apply to helping us solve our problems today in this comprehensive new book. Truly Cultured is a unique, informative yet easy to read “Nourishment” guidebook, and a rich, savory compendium of facts, folklore, classic and favorite recipes about the pleasures and benefits of some of the world’s most enjoyable – and healthful foods. Nancy Lee Bentley demystifies a complex, dynamic, controversial subject into a simple, commonsense, bottomline key to health.

Rediscover the essentials, learn why and how easy it is to once again embrace and incorporate truly cultured, fermented foods back into our daily eating -- for pleasure, renewed health, longevity...even our ultimate survival. Get Truly Cultured.

www.TrulyCultured.com