Drink your bugs

with Hannah Crum

Do you crave sodas? You’re in luck! You can drink “the original sodas” when you add naturally fizzy fermented drinks to your diet! They are more hydrating, and re-mineralizing than plain water. And they have numerous health benefits: they can aid digestion, circulation, improve health concerns, and even clear up skin issues.

Hannah Crum, the author of “The Big Book of Kombucha,” is a fermented drink expert. Today, she discusses a wide variety of fermented drinks: from kefir to kvass, to ginger beer, and more. She dives into the history of these drinks, how to make them, and how they can benefit your body. Hannah stresses the importance of “drinking your bugs” for upping the bacterial diversity of your microbiome. Such diversity is critical for strengthening the immune system, detoxing, boosting energy and more! The result? A strengthened, healthy, and resilient body.

Learn more at her website: kombuchakamp.com

Notes

Most people would not associate soda with a nourishing, traditional diet. But the good news is that you need not forgo all flavorful fizzy drinks. Fermented drinks are actually the original sodas; they existed long before Coca-Cola and have been relished for centuries by a wide variety of cultures. Fermented beverages like kombucha, ginger beer, beet kvass, milk kefir, and water kefir all contain vast quantities of probiotics, making them ideal for balancing the body’s microbiome.

Yeasts break down sugar, creating carbon dioxide, healthy acids, and a small amount of alcohol in the process. Conventional sodas imitate these properties but fail to provide the same benefits. In this episode, you will learn why fermented foods and drinks are indispensable to a healthy diet.

Hannah emphasizes that fermented beverages are easy to make at home, and in fact, homemade fermented goodies provide many more strains of bacteria than commercial products. She discusses the differences between popular fermented beverages in terms of taste and nutrient-value, adding that even pasteurized milk can become a nourishing food when transformed into milk kefir. Ultimately, Hannah stresses the importance of bacterial diversity and the key role it plays in developing a balanced and resilient body.

This episode highlights:

The history of fermented drinks (and the “beer before bread” hypothesis)
Why coconut water kefir can help the body eliminate candida overgrowth
How to access fermented beverages and starter-cultures
The meaning of “lacto-fermented”
Why whey is a highly nutritional byproduct
The unintended consequences of germaphobia
How fermented foods and drinks can improve your digestion and circulation
How the diversity of good bacteria in your gut enhances your immunity and creates a protective “force field”
The Amercian Gut project/human microbiome found that in Africa they had more organisms in their guts than we do
High quality bacteria is what we’re looking to feed on, not quantity
Hannah’s recommendation for those who are new to fermented drinks
How gardening, having the dog lick you, hugging friends also all diversify our microbiome