Fermentation: Hipster Trend or Really Healthy?

Fermented food is said to enrich the intestinal flora and strengthen the immune system. But what’s really going on with the fermentation trend?

That’s what it’s about:

Fermentation has been going on for thousands of years

Most of us eat fermented foods every day: whether chocolate, sauerkraut, beer, soy sauce, cheese or yoghurt , none of these foods would exist without bacteria. They break down components of the food and convert them into others, for example sugar into lactic acid in sauerkraut. The bacteria pre-digest our food during fermentation. Sounds disgusting, but it’s really useful: raw ingredients become more digestible, get a more interesting taste and last longer.

Longer shelf life thanks to fermentation

All over the world, people have therefore been fermenting all sorts of foods for thousands of years: from Japanese miso paste to Korean kimchi to German sauerkraut . An advantage: By fermenting, nutrients are made available throughout the year. Before pasteurization was discovered, raw milk, for example, had an extremely short shelf life. Although people didn’t know anything about bacterial cultures back then, they have learned through experimentation over generations how to prepare cheese – and thus make valuable ingredients from the raw milk usable for longer.

Fermenting makes nutrients accessible

Some foods are only edible through the work of the bacteria during fermentation. An example: Poisonous hydrocyanic acid is found in most varieties of cassava, a plant whose root tuber is an important source of calories, especially in tropical and subtropical countries. Fermenting is one way to make cassava edible.

In recent years, however, another factor has emerged as to why nutrition-conscious people are rediscovering fermentation: They expect health benefits from eating lots of living bacteria.

So we should talk about it:

Fermenting is being sold as a healthy trend

In the industrial production of many fermented foods, such as yoghurt or cheese, the majority of the microorganisms on the basic ingredients are first killed off. Then you add selected bacteria and yeast that predictably do exactly what they were bred to do. In contrast, the basic ingredients in “natural” fermentation are not heated, so they are still populated with the microorganisms that live on or in them. Bacteria with desired properties are then added. With “natural” fermentation, instead of individual cultivated cultures, a rich variety of bacteria, fungi or yeast ends up in the food.

Result: Intense and unique flavors. And because the composition of the microorganisms varies greatly depending on the location, the flavors also vary from region to region. In fact, the variety of flavors in raw milk cheese is slightly greater than that of cheese made from pasteurized milk.

Supposed miracle cure

For the followers of fermentation, also called fermentos, it is not just about the taste, but also about health. They assume that when we eat “naturally” fermented foods, we take in millions of living, benign bacteria with every bite, which then end up in the intestine and develop their healthy potential: They are supposed to strengthen the immune system, prevent allergies, prevent constipation or even prevent it have activity against certain types of cancer. The more diverse the cultures are, the better.

But:

More health through the microorganisms is difficult to prove

“Our intestinal flora is like a personal fingerprint,” says Hans Hauner, Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the Technical University of Munich. It forms mainly at birth and in the first few months of life.

At the latest when we are adults, the intestinal biome remains relatively stable . Even after treatment with antibiotics, during which many microorganisms in our body die off, the intestinal flora usually returns to its original composition. But that’s also because most people’s lifestyle and diet are pretty much the same. Basically , the diet has an influence on our intestinal flora .

How many of the living bacteria that we ingest with fermented food can actually settle in the intestine and what effect they may have there is not yet known for sure by scientists.

Health benefits can only be proven for a few products

For fermented milk products, there are studies that show a positive effect on health. A meta-study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found a reduction in blood pressure in participants who consumed a probiotic fermented milk. A Swedish meta-study showed that a diet high in fermented milk (yogurt and sour milk) was associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease .

However, these studies did not examine whether living microorganisms from the milk ended up in the intestines of the test subjects. These studies cannot say anything about whether the positive effect on health is related to this. In addition, the findings cannot be transferred to other fermented foods.

The European Food Safety Authority has a register of all foods that can be advertised as having health benefits. That only affects two fermented foods: red yeast rice and live yogurt cultures . Red yeast rice helps maintain normal blood cholesterol levels, live yoghurt cultures make lactose easier to digest for people with lactose intolerance. Prerequisite for this: There must be more than 108 colony-forming living starter microorganisms per gram. For any other health claims made about products containing live bacteria, there is not enough evidence to allow the European Food Safety Authority to clear them.

Don’t focus on individual foods

Basically, when examining the health benefits of individual foods, the following applies: “You don’t just have to look at an individual food, but the entire diet,” says Professor Bernhard Watzl, head of the Federal Institute for Physiology and Biochemistry of Nutrition. A balanced, varied diet will always have a greater effect on health than individual foods, including probiotic fermented foods.

And now?

Fermented foods are still useful

So far, it has not been possible to prove without a doubt that bacteria in fermented foods basically have a positive effect on health, research on this is still in its infancy . Regardless of this, many fermented foods are rich in vitamins, contain fiber or other important ingredients and are therefore recommended as part of a balanced diet.

Unlike the superfood hype, fermentation is not a short-term nutritional trend with dubious benefits. This type of preservation is thousands of years old and has not only helped to provide people with nutrients all year round, but also contributed to the emergence of culinary cultural assets: France without raw milk camembert, Korea without kimchi, Italy without salami – something would be missing .