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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Why Your Kids Need Fermented Foods w/ Dr. Rouchouze (Pedcast)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

Why Your Kids Need Fermented Foods w/ Dr. Rouchouze (Pedcast)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2016-10-30 21:29:01
Description:     Special Guest: Charlotte Rouchouze, www.thechildrenstable.com         Introduction   Pick up any medical journal or health magazine and it won’t be long before you hear some discussion about the health benefits of probiotics and fermented foods. Interest in how the microbial world enhances your child’s health is more than a fad or craze; it is becoming fundamental to understanding how your child stays healthy. This knowledge is literally transforming medicine. That is why today’s pedcast is so important and why we are so lucky to have one of my favorite guests returning to Portable Practical Pediatrics, Dr. Charlotte Rouchouze, a food expert and host of the popular blog, The Children’s Table. Welcome Dr. Rouchouze- thank you so much for taking time to join me and my audience today.     Q1. First of all, what the heck is fermentation?   CR: First and foremost, fermentation is a transformation. It is a way of transforming food using invisible yeasts and microbes that are naturally occurring in the environment. In a way we might think of it as harnessing decay for our own uses. The vehicles for this transformation can include a variety of “bugs” such as yeast or lactobacilli- they’re the little guys that do the work, basically digesting certain parts of the food and altering it in various ways. Specifically, the process usually involves converting sugars to alcohols, gases, or acids. If starch or sugar-rich foods are left to ferment with active yeast, the fermentation will produce carbon dioxide, invite probiotic bacteria, and slowly convert carbohydrates to alcohol.   Fermentation has been used for thousands of years as a way of preserving food, but with the advent of modern processed food, fermentation was largely replaced with other methods that are less time consuming to produce, more consistent, and allow food to be kept at any temperature and humidity. These include high heat canning, freezing, the development and use of shelf-stable fats and preservatives, and perhaps most importantly, refining, which reduces the perishability of food by removing the perishable parts. But we’re realizing there was more to fermented foods than longer life. And the new methods strip some crucial things from traditional preserved food.   Q2. How is a fermented food different than non-fermented foods and why should parents care if a food is fermented or not?   CR: The resulting food is different in a variety of ways. 1) Generally it is more digestible and has more easily available nutrients; 2) it is protected from spoilage thanks to the fermenting bacteria and resulting acids pushing away the dangerous bacteria; 3) it may have a lower glycemic load thanks to the microorganisms consuming the sugars. For example, sourdough bread has been shown to have a lower glycemic load than plain white bread. 4) it has a unique and enhanced flavor; and finally 5) it is enriched with all the microorganisms that do all this work, which have been shown to improve gut health.   Now, I did learn that just because a food is fermented, doesn’t mean it necessarily still has live cultures. So there is a distinction to be made there. Once bread is baked, the cultures are killed. If a product is boiled or pasteurized following fermentation, it will no longer contain live bacteria. Similarly, alcohol no longer contains probiotics as far as I know. You can still derive certain benefits from fermented foods such as digestibility, increased availability of vitamins, etc. without there being live cultures, but the benefits that you hear about regarding probiotics would require a product that is live, and would most likely be found in the fresh or refrigerated sections of the grocery store. Q3. What about kids? How can kids get health and nutrition benefits from fermented foods?   CR: Kids with digestive problems might be the most likely to benefit from fermented foods.
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