Kefir.... what not to love!

I've been making Kefir at home for several months and am deeply in love with the process.... not just because it's fun to be raising a garden in a jar, but in knowing how amazingly beneficial it is, and while reaping the health benefits, I can't imagine a future without it...

So what is Kefir?
http://kefirgrains.info/

It's probiotics, on steroids!

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http://timelesshealth.net/kefir/nutritionalvalue2.html
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I found my Kefir grains online (google: Kefir grains) and had to nurse the small packet I got in the mail into the three to four tablespoons of kefir grains that I'm now blessed with! The kefir grains actually grow over time... nothing is dormant when it comes to kefir! :^)

What are Kefir grains?

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http://kefirgrains.info/?p=8
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Once I got the grains I worked out a system that consistently gives me a steady supply of thick and rich Kefir on a daily basis. It's really quite simple, much easier than making yogurt or fermenting vegetables (both are worth doing as well!) If there's any interest I'll go over my process, along with a picture or two showing how it comes together...

I've been turning a number of my friends on to this process locally and the results have been very favorable. My wife and I are so into our daily exposure to kefir that the idea of being without it is simply absurd... :^)

As a culture we need to return to fermented foods....! antibotics have played havoc on our need for a balanced collection of gut flora, and kefir is one of the keys toward reestablishing our deep need for a healthy blend!

Edited by SF Staff

[Adrienne]

Hi Stephen,

Interesting information. The only Kefir I have heard of was the drink ~ tasty drink.

Dream Angel xx

Originally Posted by Dream Angel

Hi Stephen,
Interesting information. The only Kefir I have heard of was the drink ~ tasty drink.
Dream Angel xx

Thanks Dream Angel :^) and indeed this is the drink I'm referring to! It's catching on in the states, it's showing up in the grocery stores, and is very common at all the health food stores!

While the benefit of making ones own is several fold....

... it's much much cheaper to do it your self! I use both organic raw milk (raw milk commercially is available in Washington state) and organic pasteurized whole milk for the milk-end of the process. The raw milk runs around $10 US a gallon, while the pasteurized is around $5... so for $15 dollars we get a full 2 gallons of high grade Kefir!

...when we make it ourselves we have control over the ingredients... the milk is local and fresh, we use stevia as a sweetener, and/or add a fruit of our choice...

...and the kefir itself is as fresh as it gets.... depending on the concentration/consistency that we're going for we can leave it to culture for 24 to 36 hours... then strait into a drink, or to the frig to be consumed within a day or two.... very alive, very customized and quite cheep by comparison...!

I'll be away from the computer for a couple of days but when I return I'll post some instructions and some pictures about how it's put together... this really is an incredible addition to our diet.... truly clean and wonderful stuff! :^)

[Adrienne]

Hi Stephen,

I guess I was confused a little, when it was talking about Kefir grains ? I am thinking grains like oats/ oatmeal and then it talked about fermenting and I am imagining wine or beer, and the sweet scent of the fermentation, lol ! ewww.... maybe I should have read more carefully, and not just skimmed over the article.

A friend of mine mentioned the drink and I was looking for something different, reminds me of a liquid yogurt, which I guess it probably is ? basically. Some very tasty flavors.

I am sure making it yourself has definite benefits. Looking forward to your posts and pictures, when you return.

Enjoy the weekend !

Dream Angel xx

[Arcturus]

whilst i think a small amount of fermented foods is ok occasionally, they can very easily be overdone i feel. i have read in a book i have on dietetics to avoid them altogether. on average the body is slightly alkaline and fermented foods are acidic. a little saurkraut in winter as a warming food maybe. there was a fad for fresh yoghurt boothes in france until everryone started getting arthritic from it. like all fads they have some good in them but can easily become too much. there are many vegetables that promote beneficial bacteria growth. i prefer to keep it simple and not flood the body, not thaty that is what is necessarily being done.

Originally Posted by Dream Angel

Hi Stephen,

I guess I was confused a little, when it was talking about Kefir grains ? I am thinking grains like oats/ oatmeal and then it talked about fermenting and I am imagining wine or beer, and the sweet scent of the fermentation, lol ! ewww.... maybe I should have read more carefully, and not just skimmed over the article.

I was actually very confused about the grains thing as well, when I first ran into the term! I started googling intently for info, then located a source, then shortly was putting the little beasties to work! When ordered they come in a little packet about the size of half a teaspoon. It takes about a week to wake them up, then slowly they start growing till now, from that little bit, I have several tablespoons worth....and growing...

Here's one video I found where it looks like they're making kefir for a fairly large family. The grains are very well developed and clearly they've been using them for awhile! It sounds like they have a good source for raw milk, which is clearly the best way to go about it! :^)

Making Real Kefir From Kefir Grains (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCvDKrHUutE

Originally Posted by necta3

whilst i think a small amount of fermented foods is ok occasionally, they can very easily be overdone i feel. i have read in a book i have on dietetics to avoid them altogether. on average the body is slightly alkaline and fermented foods are acidic. a little saurkraut in winter as a warming food maybe. there was a fad for fresh yoghurt boothes in france until everryone started getting arthritic from it. like all fads they have some good in them but can easily become too much. there are many vegetables that promote beneficial bacteria growth. i prefer to keep it simple and not flood the body, not thaty that is what is necessarily being done.

Now this was interesting to research, thanks Neta3!
and so you sent me a googling and I found this.... :^)

Barbara D. Allan is the author of a heavily popular book "Conquering Arthritis"... she healed herself of arthritis while using the techniques in her book.



She seems to be building the core approach of her treatment around home fermented pro-biotics. She favors both dairy and non-dairy sources.


Here's a page she sponsors talking about the non dairy sources
http://www.conqueringarthritis.com/rheumatoidarthritistreatmentprobioticsupplements.h tm

And here's her fermenting blog where she covers dairy as well:
http://www.squidoo.com/rheumatoid-arthritis-treatment-non-dairy-sources-of-probiotics-supplements

In this video she's showing how she makes her own kefir:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqBbzOyix3k

She's also in favor of an alkalizing diet... mixed heavily with fermented foods.. so she's sensitive to that subject as well.

Since our bodies are essentially 90% of organisms, other than ourselves, it only makes sense that we would want to stay ahead of the curve, by helping control the population of which organisms are getting the upper hand. Both the GAPS diet and the Weston Price approach are fully committed to fermented live foods... or better described as probiotics on steroids!

I know there are proponents of the PH approach who are heavily against such a thing, but I feel they're fully wrong in taking that stance... were we to drain our body of such organisms we'd be a tenth of our size, and we clearly wouldn't last more than a few seconds...

My only real fermenting question that I'm currently wrestling with is whether to brew my own beer or not..? I have all the stuff for running my first batch since christmas (about $200 worth) but have paused in the process for two reasons. I'm not certain that this form of fermenting is necessarily all that helpful when it come to health... and I'm not keen on a heavy exposure to grains... I've already fermented my own ginger ale, using real ginger, that turned out really good! But I do love a good home brewed beer as well... I'll likely cave-in and just go-for-it! :^)

[Arcturus]

i completerly agree that we should have a good supply of beneficial micro-organisms in the body but i think you'll find that there is a difference between the ones in fermented foods and those populated by the body itself, in that the latter are generally alkaline in the tissues or mildly acidic in the colon and the former are quite acidic from the get go.

i have a well known kombucha book and both the writer and his wife suffer from arthritis. in the book "natural dietetics" by renowned health" author henry lindlahr, he recommends against fermented foods, as does polarity therapy originator dr. randolph stone (who wrote of the connection found in france between yoghurt and arthritis.

i wouldn't say there are hard fast rules though...if ultimately your diet alkalises you then it's helpful.

one of the reasons apple cider vinegar is promoted for arthritris is because it digests the whole proteins that are circulating the body and causing issues. this occurs due to lack of or low stomach acid. this is due to acidic tissues being unable to support a healthy acidic stomach. the short term appearence of a cure is to eat acidic foods, thus turning the whole body into an acid stomach to digest the problem causing proteins but once you stop, like most who stop kombucha etc, the symptons return because you haven't addressed the fundamental imbalance by alkalising the tissues and hence enabling proteins to be fully digested in the stomach.
hoper the beers nice! :)

Originally Posted by necta3

i completerly agree that we should have a good supply of beneficial micro-organisms in the body but i think you'll find that there is a difference between the ones in fermented foods and those populated by the body itself, in that the latter are generally alkaline in the tissues or mildly acidic in the colon and the former are quite acidic from the get go.

i have a well known kombucha book and both the writer and his wife suffer from arthritis. in the book "natural dietetics" by renowned health" author henry lindlahr, he recommends against fermented foods, as does polarity therapy originator dr. randolph stone (who wrote of the connection found in france between yoghurt and arthritis.

i wouldn't say there are hard fast rules though...if ultimately your diet alkalises you then it's helpful.

Bingo... it's this last line that's the key ".if ultimately your diet alkalises you then it's helpful."

If we clean up our diet to the point where we're eating whole, cleanly grown, rich variety of foods, then by default we are generally alkalizing our system. There is quibbling over which whole food does what in a, PH context, but generally I feel that much of this is irrelevant. It's the shift itself that's critical. Pulling ourselves back from the concentrated sweeteners, processed vegetable oils, grains, and heavily adulterated/isolated/reconstituted products... that doing this alone will solve much of our woes.

Another thing that deeply comes into play, when we're adjusting nutritionally, is what we're generally telling ourselves about the foods that we're eating. Call it the placebo/nocebo effect, but if we think something will help us, as we consume it then we're sending our system those vibes... but if we're suspicious of everything, at one level or another we're injecting vibes-of-tension into our body as well....

The PH approach seems overly paranoid to me. Item by item we find ourselves navigating through a maze of goodies and dangers... and this over whole foods... seems heavy handed to me, and is a playground for those of us who unconsciously experience entertainment by living under the weight of continuous drama.

So whole targeted foods, rich probiotics, and a playful embracing of taste and adventure. All these are in abundance when we relax to the process... this in the place of being frightened by every move we make.

The one thing that's so obvious and so common in the literature is that for every move we make there's an author out there who screams loudly that we do the opposite. Juice/don't juice... meat/no meat... raw/all cooked... distilled water/spring fed... what a mess should we try and follow all these disparate pied pipers. So my preference has been to rely largely on intuition and this has lead me firmly to the GAP's-WP approach... I love it both intellectually and via the physical experience... and they're less about do's and don'ts as they are about intuition as well. Go with what you're deeply hungry for and listen closely to what our body is telling us...

Which addresses this other level to nutrition that we've essentially discounted in the modern age.. we haven't been giving our body a voice. Once I started adding cultured vegetables, and drinks, my body lit-up like a Christmas tree. There is clearly something to this that's worth exploring much further... that mixed with really good foods... flipped my life around... I'm not one to argue with what works.... :^)

I liked reading about the PH because it encouraged me to eat way more raw fruis and veggies. But your absolutely right, if you're mainly eating that way (like a raw vegan for instance) then you don't have to worry you're PH will sort itself out. But here in America most people don't eat like that, and it can be hard to get started when everyone you know eats junk lol. I have been curious as how to make my own yogurt though. I get raw milk, and I just got an ice cream maker, so I was hoping to make some frozen yogurt.

Anyway I'm curious as to the veggies that promote good bacteria. And apple cider vinegar.. I've been reading good things about it. Should you just do it for a while, and how much??