“When you walk with purpose, you collide with destiny.” Bertice Berry
It's no secret that adding the combination of fiber and fermented foods to your diet can be very beneficial to gut health.
What is a little less apparent is what happens in some cases where fiber and fermentation are present at the same time.
Do they peacefully coexist or does one combatant impose its will on the other?
Sound like the makings of a gladiator fight, in a packed arena, maybe with Russell Crowe in the lead role?
Nah. This battle happens inside a jar of sauerkraut.
For this is the vessel where cabbage and salt do battle. The collateral damage is fiber content.
Well sort of.
Cabbage by itself is quite the nutritious foodstuff, overflowing with Vitamin C and other nutrients, with quite a bit of fiber.
Hold onto that fiber thought, because it gets a bit murky.
What could possibly make cabbage even better?
Fermenting it.
With the fiber content already in the nutritional bank, adding some live microbes to the deposit by way of making sauerkraut, makes this a "cabbage homerun".
Flashback- that is unless your 3rd base coach gives you the stop sign. That happened to me some 50 years ago in Tee Ball by the way.
(Hardest ground ball through a pitcher's legs in the history of baseball. It rolled for miles.)
I digress.
Cabbage is chocked full of fiber, both insoluble and soluble. The latter fiber type is the fermentable version that your gut microbes use to metabolize into short chain fatty acids (SCFA's), doing wonders for your gut.
But during the fermentation process, we "rob Peter to pay Paul" as we decrease the levels of soluble fiber while increasing insoluble fiber.
If pre-Reformation era phrases aren’t your jam, let explain it this way.
The diminished ability to ferment soluble fiber by your gut microbes shifts to a greater impact on what a load of insoluble fiber can do with increased transit times. In other words, sauerkraut "keeps it moving" through the GI tract rather nicely.
Along those lines, eat more than a requisite 2-tablespoon-ish serving size of some lengthier, fermented sauerkraut and another thing moving smartly will be you to the water closet.
You see “father time” actually enhances the quantity and potency of insoluble fiber in cabbage. Along with fine wine, that's another thing that gets better with age.
If this teaser of an explanation hasn't quenched your microbial thirst, here's a great summary of a 2008 study done in Poland.
Afterall, who better than polish researchers (who arguably traffic in more cabbage than anyone else on the planet) to describe worlds colliding between fiber and fermentation.
And can you believe I'm married to one of the ONLY Polish mortals to NOT like cabbage?
As Christopher Cross sang in Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do), I know it's crazy, but it's true.
Thanks for reading.
Jeff
