Noble Rot

Is “probiotic” the new “low fat”?  Or the new “low carb”?  Or just the new “I’m terribly sorry but I seem to have misplaced my common sense, have you seen it?  It’s not very large and it’s never been used…”

I keep seeing ad copy for “probiotic” things.  Just recently I saw it blazoned across a bag of dog food and I sort of hit my rant threshold, because honestly, really, truly? I don’t get it.

Microorganisms come in three basic types.  There are the ones that can hurt you, a fairly small group.  There are the ones that are neutral where you’re concerned, by far the lion’s share.  And there are the ones that coexist profitably with your body, often in a symbiotic relationship where you benefit from having them around and they benefit from having you as their host.

That part I understand.

What I don’t understand is how people aren’t throwing rocks and rotten fruit (full of microorganisms!) at the ad execs who seem to think it is legitimate to not only promote “probiotics” as some sort of “nutraceutical” that will give you a Kryptonite intestinal tract and make your dick bigger besides, but to sell them for significantly more than you’d pay for, say, just some dumb container of regular old live-culture yogurt.

Here’s why I’m just not seeing the point of the “probiotic” juggernaut. With very little involvement on my part, I can convert an ordinary cabbage, a couple quarts of water, and a small amount of salt into a powerhouse substance chock-full of antioxidants and “probiotics” in about 2 or 3 weeks time, and I can do it for free.

It’s called making sauerkraut.  Any idiot who can cut up a cabbage and dissolve some salt in some water can do it.  You certainly don’t have to know what a microorganism is, or which ones need to go into the sauerkraut crock.    The microorganisms volunteer their efforts.  They just show up.  People made sauerkraut, and all kinds of other fermented foods besides, for thousands of years before anyone even thought about inventing the microscope. Limiting which ones will grow is taken care of thanks to a little elementary chemistry: brine encourages the growth of only certain sorts, and submerging the cabbage in the brine further limits things by permitting only anaerobic microorganisms to thrive.

Fascinatingly enough, the same thing is true of letting a great variety of other foods rot in a controlled way, or, in other words, ferment.  Milk will get you yogurt, kefir, sour cream, buttermilk, and cheese, among other things.  In countries where they aren’t so damned afraid of a few  microbes as it seems America is, butter is also made from cultured cream.  (If you’ve ever traveled abroad and wondered why the butter in Europe is better than it is here, that’d be why.  Culture your own cream at home and make your own butter and you may never switch back.) Sourdough bread is the result of spontaneous local microbes, and the reason San Francisco sourdough tastes different from what I make here in Baltimore is because the local microbes aren’t the same.  Many forms of pickles are, of course, fermented.  Miso.  Soy sauce.  At least a thousand condiments ranging from Chinese chili and broad bean paste to Vietnamese fish sauce.  And let us not forget to pause a moment in praise of beer, wine, mead, and all the other delicious adult beverages whose delectable transformations occur through the benificent offices of the friendly microbe.  Yes, of course, in modern food production, microbes of very specific types are often added intentionally to insure certain sorts of consistency.  But originally all these foods and many, many more were made with wild microorganisms.  And every single one of these foods, wild-cultured or inoculated, depends on microorganisms acting on and in it for its very existence.

So why the hell is anyone paying extra for “probiotic” foods when there are plenty of foods out there with happy little beneficial microbes already resident?  As far as I can tell, it’s because there’s an artificially generated market for it. First through the  expedient of killing off the microbes in fermented food before it is sold, which seems pretty underhanded to me since the microbes are part of what makes it a fermented food.  Then people are reminded, via advertising, that beneficial bacteria are good for you… and told that in order to get them, they’ll have to buy the fermented food that has had its microbes killed off, then new ones added.  This practice strikes me as both idiotic and larcenous, and if I were you, I would strongly consider giving up the bad habit of standing there in line with your wallet out waiting for the opportunity to pony up the premiums that pay the doubtless princely salaries of the marketing geniuses who thought up this little boondoggle.

Me? I buy yogurt that hasn’t been heat-treated to kill off the bugs that made it into yogurt in the first place.  My kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and some of my pickles keep fermenting slowly in the fridge until I finish eating them.  If I really need buttermilk for something, I’ll let some milk clabber. (Look it up.)  Like I said, I make my own sauerkraut, and pickled beets, and pickled turnips, and whatever else piques my fancy.  I haven’t tried brewing at home yet, but I have quite a few friends who do and I am sometimes the happy beneficiary of their bubbling, microorganism-rich vats.

You want “probiotics”?  Eat fermented foods that haven’t been pasteurized.  Ferment them yourself if you want to, it’s pretty easy.  Simple as that.  It’s how the entire population of the globe has been getting its beneficial microorganism infusions for thousands of years. You can even give your dog some.