Time for a fermented foods pyramid? You’ve got billions of mouths to feed …
The next speaker in the fermentation session was Dr Kayellen Umeakunne from the Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, who told delegates that a combination of changing diets and lifestyles, hospital births (more caesarians), less breastfeeding, antibiotic use, and our ‘war on germs’ has wreaked havoc with our gut bacteria.
To improve the ratio of good to bad bacteria in our guts, we should all be eating more fermented foods, probiotics (live ‘good’ bacteria) and prebiotics (stuff that the good bacteria can feed on - resistant starch, non-starch polysaccharides, dietary fiber, oligosaccharides), she said.
“We should develop a fermented food pyramid. You’ve got 1013 mouths to feed. You’re the host and you’ve got a lot of hungry bacteria to feed!”
