It helps to love at least a couple of fermented foods. Like, e.g., plain full fat yogurt and kombucha. The kombucha you can buy and then just a drink a bit every day. You don’t need the whole thing. Most cultures have some sort of fermented food. Yum.
Kombucha was an acquired taste...that I have acquired. It's very weird, because it used to upset my stomach (probably from the alcohol) but not so much anymore.
I haven't looked into it, but honestly I always felt like Activia was more of a marketing strategy than anything else. Maybe they have select bacterial strains that they've researched, or even higher numbers but otherwise all yogurts will have probiotics in them.
this is a hot topic, thank you for writing about it! Its one ive dipped into personally. Functional Medicine focuses on the gut microbiome as a birthplace for health and disease (my language), they seem to have good reason for this perspective.
My own study/exploration into nutrition was driven by a need to cultivate a healthier gut + immune system, and has led me towards a primarily unprocessed or whole foods diet (a personal opinion is that 'plant base' may be misleading, because its tagged into foods which are highly processed, such as 'plant based meat' -my 2 cents)..... I appreciate the comments abt fermented foods.
Ive started to explore the question of WHY the body is impaired from functioning optimally... this led to inquiring if there are environment factors which impact the gut... I found Stephanie Seneff's book Toxic Legacy, a detailed review of her research on Glyphosate- its biochemical and pathophyiologic effect on living organisms... its an incredibly informative and damning report on big-Ag's affect on the quality of our food. She's a research scientist from MIT, Glyphosate is one of her focuses, aka roundup (a herbicide, dessicant but also an ANTIBIOTIC). She describes how it disturbs the balance of microbes in the human gut (plus a host of other deleterious mechanisms and proposed effects). I encourage anyone interested to listen to her lectures online (before diving into her dense book), shes very knowledgeable, informative and may shape decisions made around food shopping.
Thank you Dr. Lazarevic for your personal perspective. I could have written a ton more but this post would have gone into pages and would have come down to, "it depends" since the microbiome is so dependent upon the context.
You are absolutely right about plant-based, as many foods are may not contain meat but are still heavily processed. This is sort of the issue happening with things such as The Impossible Burger when you realize how much work and processing goes on. It's sort of the same with vegetarian fish sticks, or tofurkey, which are made to taste like the foods in question and therefore have to have many additives included to mimic the taste.
So any foods should be looked at from the perspective of how processed they are.
I've seen the glyphosate comment around. It's certainly true that many of the things in our environment are likely harming us. It's interesting to consider how much many of these effects may be attenuated by eating foods nutritional foods. For example, if glyphosate is found in the environment would eating fruits and vegetables that have glyphosate still be able to provide some counter activity? But this is based on me having done no research into glyphosate and so I'm really speaking off the cuff here. Regardless, it's very true that many environmental toxins are likely having an effect on us. Apparently antibiotics are noted in wastewater, so that's suggestive that use of antibiotics may also be altering the bacteria in the environment as well.
Wasn't Stephanie the one who proposed a role for glyphosate in the covid pandemic? I'm also curious about the potential impacts of GMO foods on the gut and overall health.
It helps to love at least a couple of fermented foods. Like, e.g., plain full fat yogurt and kombucha. The kombucha you can buy and then just a drink a bit every day. You don’t need the whole thing. Most cultures have some sort of fermented food. Yum.
Kombucha was an acquired taste...that I have acquired. It's very weird, because it used to upset my stomach (probably from the alcohol) but not so much anymore.
Agree! I love kombucha. I buy Activia yogurt because I’ve heard it has the best variety of live cultures. What’s your opinion on that?
I haven't looked into it, but honestly I always felt like Activia was more of a marketing strategy than anything else. Maybe they have select bacterial strains that they've researched, or even higher numbers but otherwise all yogurts will have probiotics in them.
Hi Aimee, I live in a place where I can order full fat raw milk Greek yogurt. So that’s what I do. It’s delicious!
this is a hot topic, thank you for writing about it! Its one ive dipped into personally. Functional Medicine focuses on the gut microbiome as a birthplace for health and disease (my language), they seem to have good reason for this perspective.
My own study/exploration into nutrition was driven by a need to cultivate a healthier gut + immune system, and has led me towards a primarily unprocessed or whole foods diet (a personal opinion is that 'plant base' may be misleading, because its tagged into foods which are highly processed, such as 'plant based meat' -my 2 cents)..... I appreciate the comments abt fermented foods.
Ive started to explore the question of WHY the body is impaired from functioning optimally... this led to inquiring if there are environment factors which impact the gut... I found Stephanie Seneff's book Toxic Legacy, a detailed review of her research on Glyphosate- its biochemical and pathophyiologic effect on living organisms... its an incredibly informative and damning report on big-Ag's affect on the quality of our food. She's a research scientist from MIT, Glyphosate is one of her focuses, aka roundup (a herbicide, dessicant but also an ANTIBIOTIC). She describes how it disturbs the balance of microbes in the human gut (plus a host of other deleterious mechanisms and proposed effects). I encourage anyone interested to listen to her lectures online (before diving into her dense book), shes very knowledgeable, informative and may shape decisions made around food shopping.
Modern, thanks for this post.
Thank you Dr. Lazarevic for your personal perspective. I could have written a ton more but this post would have gone into pages and would have come down to, "it depends" since the microbiome is so dependent upon the context.
You are absolutely right about plant-based, as many foods are may not contain meat but are still heavily processed. This is sort of the issue happening with things such as The Impossible Burger when you realize how much work and processing goes on. It's sort of the same with vegetarian fish sticks, or tofurkey, which are made to taste like the foods in question and therefore have to have many additives included to mimic the taste.
So any foods should be looked at from the perspective of how processed they are.
I've seen the glyphosate comment around. It's certainly true that many of the things in our environment are likely harming us. It's interesting to consider how much many of these effects may be attenuated by eating foods nutritional foods. For example, if glyphosate is found in the environment would eating fruits and vegetables that have glyphosate still be able to provide some counter activity? But this is based on me having done no research into glyphosate and so I'm really speaking off the cuff here. Regardless, it's very true that many environmental toxins are likely having an effect on us. Apparently antibiotics are noted in wastewater, so that's suggestive that use of antibiotics may also be altering the bacteria in the environment as well.
Wasn't Stephanie the one who proposed a role for glyphosate in the covid pandemic? I'm also curious about the potential impacts of GMO foods on the gut and overall health.