BabeintheWoods said...
I am a firm believer in fermented foods. There is a lot of good information at www.westonaprice.org/.
Modern society shouldn't pooh-pooh ancient peoples who have learned thru years of experience the value of fermenting their veggies.
Here's an
awesome book on fermentation that I think is worth checking out. It's considered the gold standard by many people, including Michael Pollan who wrote the forward for it. Very in depth and explains the history and reasoning behind it.
A couple interesting things I learned:
1) Each fermented batch has its own diverse set of bacteria ( environmental / weather changes perpetuate this ), so you never know what diverse species you'll be ingesting with each buy. Everything matters - pesticides, air quality, farm quality, etc, so best to get it from an ecologically sustainable farm.
2) These species aren't transient and will repopulate the gut, meaning that they are more potent than commercial dairy or probiotics. This is simply due to the sheer numbers of microorganisms inside each batch, making them more ideal after antibiotic therapy.