Top 12 Fermented Foods With Chicha And Buttermilk
Foods that Heal – Foods that Maintain Weight Loss

by Boyd Jentzsch

THE POWER OF FERMENTED FOODS
FERMENTED FOODS ARE OFTEN THE MOST HEALING FOODS YOU CAN EAT.
PLUS THEY ARE KEY AIDS IN HELPING YOUR KEEP THE WEIGHT OFF.

You can’t easily find many of these 12 Fermented Foods in the store these days, so you have to be on the lookout for them. Some obvious ones, like yogurt, are very popular now (even though the most popular aren’t all that helpful).

Some wonderful Fermented Foods are in stores, but you are likely to pass them up (some are in the dairy case) because you don’t know what they are, or what to look for on the shelf. Yet, once you find and experiment with them, you will discover they are a welcome change from the foods you regularly eat — foods sitting right next to them on the shelves. With amazing health-building benefits, you really ought to give each of these Fermented Foods a try.

Most of the Fermented Foods we will be talking about are “traditional”…surprise, surprise… So, you are invited to make them yourself. Some are available in regular food stores, at Whole Foods, and in ethnic stores, or the ethnic section of your local food store. Are you willing to make up a batch of some Fermented Foods to give them a try, and heal your body the old-fashioned way? I hope so, so I’ve included links to recipes to make many of them. And, if the ones I’ve supplied are not to your liking, do an online search for other recipes because there are passionate fans for all of them out there.

Because many of these Fermented Foods are “from the old country,” and America is an exciting, boisterous mix of cultures from around the world, notice where each of these foods are from…just one more fun way for Fermented Foods to get you healthier, while you are also losing extra weight. Plus, it will give you a taste of cultures form around the world.

I have a personal connection to each of these Fermented Foods. I will share some of that along the way as I tell a brief story about each. From my own personal health challenges over the years I can tell you that Fermented Foods have been very instrumental in my recovery. In many cases, I probably would never have gotten sick if I had been eating them regularly. I have learned my lesson. Fermented Foods are permanently on my daily menu, now. They help me keep my weight off, and are keeping me healthy after many of my peers from high school, college, and Law School have long since faded away.

Enjoy these stories of some of the oldest and healthiest foods on the planet — Fermented Food. Please read each with an eye toward adopting some of them into your life.

TOP 12 FERMENTED FOODS that Heal Your Body
Foods that Help You Lose Weight, and Maintain the Weight Loss
When you are losing weight, you will find these first two Fermented Foods to be satisfying, filling, and low in calories — or much lower than the foods you replace when you eat these instead.

Today: We begin with some of the world’s most widespread Fermented Foods.

12. Chicha

From South and Central America, Chicha is a wide variety of fermented beverages, some alcoholic, some not, with exciting regional and national variations. It is made from numerous sources, including maize (native corn), manioc root (also called yuca or cassava), amaranth, quinoa, apple, grape, or pineapple.

Because of the wide variety of ingredients, it has numerous enticing flavors.

I was first introduced to Chicha on a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico many years ago. I took one of those “private jeep tours” into the hinterlands. High up on a steep jungle mountainside, amidst a noisy and humid forest, a family lived in a small one-room home. It had dirt floors and no door to keep the chickens out. The family offered us some room temperature (they had no electricity) maize Chicha they had made. These subsistence farmers harvested gum from the Chicle tree (from which the gum gets its name) and made or grew everything they ate.

At first, the smell of Chicha seemed off-putting and foreign. The taste was very different from anything I had ever put in my mouth. But, by the bottom of the small glass they served it in, I was ready for more, but was too polite to dare ask for seconds.

Chicha is thought to reduce blood pressure and act as an anti-inflammatory. You don’t need the alcohol versions to enjoy it (many have little alcohol, or none at all). And when you want a very different beverage to replace the diet sodas in your life, Chicha is a healthy, probiotic way to help you lose weight and keep it off.

Here are some Chicha recipes to try.

The best source for a good Chicha recipe is to ask to a Latina immigrant to help you make a batch. It’s a fun way to get to know someone better — every Latina immigrant will tell you stories about how they grew up drinking a local variety of Chicha – and got healthy at the same time. There are so many options Chicha to try, keep at it until you find a couple that suit your taste. (Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia.)

11. Buttermilk

Buttermilk is sometimes referred to as “Grandmother’s Probiotic.” Originally, it was the liquid leftover after churning butter out of milk. The butter takes much of the fat out of the milk, producing a lower-fat fermented milk drink. Slightly sour, this type of buttermilk is termed “traditional buttermilk.”

It is a staple made around the world, from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Czech Republic, Norway, and Germany. Basically any local culture that raised domesticated animals for milking has its own variety (which explains why it is rare in sub-Sahara Africa, where milk was not the primary reason for keeping animals around). In India, it is the leftover liquid after extracting butter from churned yogurt. It is a family staple throughout the entire Indo-Pakistani region.

Left to ferment (or sour), Buttermilk is full of lacto-probiotics. These are exactly the kind of good intestinal bacteria your body thrived on when you were born. Consumed regularly, it gives a major boost to your immune system, much as it did when ii first began to develop in your infant body, and you were enjoyingmother’s milk.

Today, many companies make “cultured buttermilk” from pasteurized, homogenized milk. Some producers want to preserve the illusion that it is made the “traditional way” by adding like flecks of butter to make it look like the old fashioned kind.

Growing up on a small family farm, we had two kinds of cows. One kind produced volumes of milk needed for our large family. The other produced less milk, but it produced milk full of cream. After we milked our “cream” cows, the strained milk was left to separate in large gallon bottles in the fridge. Mom would pour off the thick yellow cream that rose to the surface to make a wonderful assortment of delicious, and fattening foods (strawberries and cream were my favorite). The remainder of the gallon was left out overnight.

The next day it was placed in two-quart bottles, and we kids would take turns shaking those bottles for hours until the yellow flakes appeared, then with incessant shaking it accumulated into larger and larger chunks of “homemade butter.”

We would then pour out the butter, and fight over who got to drink the “leftover” buttermilk. Mom would salt it lightly, sometimes adding different flavors. I remember asking to be the one to make the butter, because I always got the first share of delicious buttermilk as a reward.

I didn’t drink buttermilk because it was healthy, way back then, but you should today.

Many people use Buttermilk these days as an ingredient in cooking. While adding a distinctive flavor to things like pancakes, remember that the cooking process kills all the good bacteria in it. You really ought to experiment with making your own, and preserving the probiotics for your gut health. Here is a good “how-to.”

If you are looking for a calcium-rich, low fat drink, Buttermilk is a great way to help you keep the weight off, and moving forward in your weight loss efforts.

Tomorrow: You will be introduced to 10. Kvass and 9. Rejuvelac. One is an ancient product. The creator of the other borrowed and updated an old Romanian drink for the 21st Century, while she was also converting Americans to the healthful wonders of wheatgrass juice.

 

Top 12 Fermented Foods
Foods that Heal – Foods that Maintain Weight Loss

Here’s a List to the Top 12 Fermented Foods Admired Throughout the World

• Fermented Foods that Heal & Maintain Weight
• Chicha and Buttermilk
• Kvass and Rejuvelac
• Pickles and Yogurt
• Kimchi and Tempeh
• Miso and Kefir
• Cabbage and Cambucha

Don’t forget to send me your weight loss questions, and join me here for a LIVE Weight Loss Wednesdays™ lesson and Q&A, every Wednesday evening at 9:30 PM ET.