In 1993, E. coli hamburgers from Jack in the Box restaurants sickened hundreds of children, killing several. Around the same time, E. coli outbreaks in the apple industry led to the requirement that apple juice be pasteurized. In 2006, spinach laced with manure made more people ill. In 2008, salmonella-tainted tomatoes were blamed for another outbreak—until they decided it was actually Jalapeño peppers. It seems as though there’s always something yucky in our food ready to make us sick. No doubt, there are nasty microbial agents in the general food supply all the time. The question is, Why do they make some people deathly ill while leaving the rest of us alone?
with, but our bacterial bosom buddies. Microbiologist Dr. Bonnie Bassler discovered that microbes have social lives too.173 Far from behaving like mindless pre-programmed specks, they form gangs, coordinate efforts, and even scheme against other groups of bacteria. In fact, the turbulent world of micro-organisms shares all the violence and drama of a Spaghetti Western. And the microbial world operates under the same binary rubric. As far as your body’s concerned, when it comes to bacteria and fungi, there really are just two kinds: good and bad.
The first group, often referred to with the umbrella term probiotics, is comprised of the same beneficial bacteria that preserve, detoxify, and enrich our food. These microbes are friendly and very well behaved. After all, we feed and house them, so it is in their best interest to keep us healthy. To that end, they secrete hormones that help coordinate the muscular contractions of intestinal peristalsis, while keeping a sharp look out for bad guys: the pathogens. Probiotics work with our immune system. If pathogens hope to gain a foothold, they have to get past the phalanx of probiotics first. While you’re watching Survivor or Top Chef, microbes in your gut are making alliances and scheming against each other for control of your internal real estate.174 Not only does the outcome of their battles determine whether or not a deadly strain of E Coli in your manure-tainted spinach kills you, studies have shown that live-cultured foods containing probiotics help to prevent a whole range of allergic, autoimmune, and inflammatory diseases.175,176,177
The people who originally mastered the art of fermenting fruits, vegetables, meats, and so on were probably seeking ways to preserve their food. Crops tend to ripen all at once. Fish swim in schools. Many game animals travel in large herds. These periodic abundances necessitated the development of effective food-preservation methods. The microbial world is so obliging that a little salt, a container, and some know-how are all you—I should say the microbes—need. Today we have simpler options for preserving our food, including canning, refrigeration, freezing, pickling (seeping in vinegar) and drying. But in terms of nutrient conservation, each pales in comparison to fermentation, which often adds new nutrients. Even your refrigerator can’t keep fresh fruits and vegetables from declining in nutrient content. Vitamin C, for instance, declines so drastically in storage that refrigerated green beans lose 77% after only seven days off the vine.178
If you’ve never fermented anything, you should. With a little instruction and practice, you can make yourself the best sauerkraut you’ve ever tasted. And it’s ridiculously easy: Shred a cabbage in the food processor. Mix with a full teaspoon of salt and a little liquid from a jar of Bubbies brand pickles (or other fermented vegetable product) and pack into a lightproof container with something heavy, like a jar full of water, sitting on top to keep the cabbage under the liquid. Cover with a towel to keep the bugs off. Wait a week or so, and eat.
Not simple enough? Okay, here’s something even easier. With sprouting, you just let nature take its course.
Seeds of Change: Why Sprouted Grain Bread is Better than Whole Wheat
A lot of my patients tell me that they feel better when they cut wheat from their diet, and more kids than ever are developing celiac disease and other allergies to wheat and products made from wheat. After 10,000 years of cultivation, why the sudden change? There are plenty of potential causes, from the GMOs to the pesticides to the fact that flour is often heavily contaminated with mold toxins and allergenic proteins (insect parts and rat feces).179 Even when organically grown, manufacturers treat wheat flour like a construction material, extruding it into geometric shapes and puffing it into crunchy cereal cushions, rendering the proteins allergenic.180 Whether you suffer from wheat allergies or you just want to buy the healthiest bread available, bread made from sprouted wheat (or other grains) is your best bet.
Wheat seeds are called wheat berries. Like all seeds, wheat berries can be sprouted. These days, the only exposure most of us get to sprouts is at the salad bar. People used to eat sprouted stuff all the time, only they didn’t let the sprouts develop as fully as those in a salad bar. Our ancestors who didn’t have mills were able to acquire more nutrition from their harvests of grain than we do today with all our technological advancements simply by waiting until the germination process begins.
Why does germinating a seed first make it more nutritious? Seeds are designed to greedily hang on to their stored proteins, fats, and minerals over extended periods of time. To that end, the plant sheaths them in a hard, nearly impenetrable carapace and locks down nutrients with chemical binders that digestive enzymes can’t loosen. Moistening the seeds for a few days activates the plant’s own enzymes—including phytase, which digests phytates—to soften the seed, free up bound nutrients, and even create new ones by converting stored starch and fatty acids into proteins and vitamins.
Today’s bread is nothing like the bread described in the Bible. The crust of a Domino’s pizza and bread made by indigenous people around the world are, nutritionally speaking, as alike as a packet of chicken-flavored powder and wild grouse. Modern bread is made of flour, while ancient breads were made of ground, germinated seeds. Although some of the stone artifacts found in places like Peru, the Nile Delta, or North America may look like something you could use to grind wheat berries into dry flour, I suspect the berries were partly germinated first. Wheat berries are as hard as ball bearings. It’s far easier to use seeds softened by germination. I know because I’ve conducted a study.
In grade school, a friend of mine returned from a visit to a Native American reservation with a set of milling stones that we just had to build an afternoon’s drama around. We both plaited our hair in what we understood to be proper squaw fashion and walked out into her backyard to figure out how to make “genuine” Indian bread. It was 1973, when every East Coast mother walked in step with hippy trends, so naturally my friend’s kitchen had plenty of wheat berries with which to experiment. Enthusiastic as we were, those tiny brown pebbles tested our patience to the breaking point, shooting laterally off the grinding stone and onto the ground until we were convinced that this methodology would fail to generate oven-ready dough by the time my mom was to pick me up. We decided to take a short cut. Back in the kitchen, her mother had a jar of lentils soaking in water, softened but not yet fully sprouted. They were smushy enough to hold still under the rolling stone. In no time, we had ourselves a small pile of greenish-yellow lentil “dough.” (More of a paste, really, since lentils have no gluten). Ever since, I’ve been skeptical of anthropologists’ claims that similar stones were used to grind wheat or other hard seeds into flour. More likely, seeds used for making bread were pre-softened by letting nature take its course.
You can soak any kind of seed you want, from kidney beans to wheat berries and more. Simply put some into a jar, cover with water, then cover with a bug-proof cloth and, in anywhere from one to four days, the seeds will start to germinate (you’ll need to change the water once a day). You can tell once they’ve awakened because you’ll see a tiny white rootlet begin to take form. That’s the point at which it’s ready to be used as a vitamin-rich version of an ordinary kidney bean or wheat berry. Or even easier than doing it yourself, you can buy breads made with sprouted grain in health food stores. Usually, you have to look in the freezer section because, without artificial preservatives, these breads mold quickly.
If you can’t find sprouted grain breads, the next best thing is whole wheat. But when shopping for bread, be aware of a savvy marketing trick. The label on brown bread can say wheat flour even though they used white flour because, yes, even white flour originally came from a wheat field. The addition of caramel coloring turns the dough dark, completing the illusion that you’ve bought healthier, whole wheat bread. Until the food producers’ lobbyists strip them of all meaning, you can feel fairly confident when the ingredients include the words whole-wheat flour. Or better yet, sprout some wheat berries and use them to bake your own.