From agriculture to cultured: A journey through the growing season

We are now at the point in the growing season when vegetables and fruits flow from the garden into the kitchen in abundance. Most days, my kitchen counter is overflowing with vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, chard, kale, cabbage… You get the picture. There is much more food than I can eat. An abundance of food is really a rich people problem; I remind myself every time I get overwhelmed. I remember in grade school learning about "The Ant and The Grasshopper," a classic fable about an ant who worked all summer to store food for the cold winter months, and a grasshopper who partied into the early morning hours. When winter arrived, the ant retreated into her full pantry, and the grasshopper was left starving in the frozen field. Modern life ensures we have access to vegetables and fruit year-round. Quantity, however, does not imply quality. Food grown in your backyard and preserved for winter days or hours after the harvest carries the highest nutritional value. Growing your food and preserving the harvest for winter has health benefits not just because the food you grow is nutrient dense, fresh, and yummy, but also because gardening; touching the soil was found to support your gut microbiome. The microbiome is both our ancestors, who emerged with us from the primordial swamp, and partners in our evolution into the complex organism we are today. These critters live in our bodies in a mutual interdependency: we provide room and board, and they improve metabolism, immunity, and nervous system function. One way to support a well-balanced microbiome composition is to eat wild fermented foods. What are wild fermented foods? Fermentation is the process of introducing bacteria into foods. The bacteria digest the food and transform it. In some cases, like yogurt and cheese, the bacteria that initiate metabolism are specifically selected. The bacterial strain gives different cheeses their unique flavor. In wild fermented foods, you provide food to bacteria that live in the "wild" and invite them to eat. In wild fermentation, foods don't spoil because the metabolic process happens in an environment devoid of oxygen. Both the type of bacteria involved, and the environment determine whether the result is spoiled food or highly nutritious, healthy food. Until 1920, refrigerators were not common in American households. For most people, access to fresh food in the winter was very limited. People, even in big cities like New York, often had a small garden where they grew food and stored it in a root cellar. Recipes for jams, preserves, and fermentation were passed from mother to daughter, just as stories, holiday traditions, and other elements of culture were. Living in close proximity, eating the same diet, and sharing a genetic makeup meant that strains of bacteria were passed down the family tree across generations. Fermentation was much more than a way to preserve the abundance for winter; it became one of the foundations of food culture. The disconnection between agriculture and our kitchen started during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The attack on food culture came from two fronts. On the one hand large-scale farms pushed small family farms out of the culture. Farming became a business run with machines, using hybrid seeds and pesticides. Most people now source their food packed in plastic from a supermarket shelf. The connection between garden and kitchen was severed. Historically, a lot of the labor associated with growing, preserving and preparing food was performed by women within the household. As women moved into the workforce during the Great Depression, fewer people were available to do that labor, and skills and traditions grew less common. Two generations later, a culture that was common wisdom and practice in every household became a hobby practiced mostly by hippies. The way of growing and preserving food that was common among people experiencing poverty because it reduced the cost of buying food in the winter is practiced mostly by the middle and upper classes. Reclaim fermentation When we lose the culture of cultured foods, we lose not just a recipe but a part of who we are as humans who evolved with bacteria. Bacteria constantly metabolize the soil and fertilize it. In the body, bacteria ferment fiber and resistant starch from the food you eat and produce short chain fatty acids like butyrate that regulate your bowel movements, keep your immune system in check, and affect gut integrity and the gut brain axis. Supporting healthy bacteria is essential for your wellbeing. Fermentation is easy and cheap. Growing your health starts with the culture you bring into your everyday life, not the medicine, supplements, or herbs you take.