St Joseph’s Hospital have had a very busy week. Researchers from their Lawson Research Institute have started a initiative just this past week with the purpose of it to take a deeper dive into the health benefits of fermented foods and how they benefit humans.
Leader of the initiative Jeremy Burton, says the main reason they decided to start this initiative was because “we’ve done some drug studies and found that some parts of the drug had little components you find in fermented food like acetate”
“If these components get down into the microbiome, so all the microbe down in your intestinal tract, that we could actually have some major health benefits.” Burton says.
The Canadian Fermented Foods Initiative (CFFI) has researchers in not just London working on it, we are seeing researchers and even industry experts from all around Canada and even Europe.
Bags of some fermented nuts in Jeremy Burtons office (Noah Paradis/XFM News)
Burton says the research has came with some challenges though.
“The challenge with fermented foods is that we label everything as a fermented food. If it’s kombucha, or kimchi, or yogurt. But you know really these are quite different. The microbes involved in making these different products is really different.”
Burton says the main way they are trying to overcome this challenge is to try and break them into separate categories.
The main question Burton and his team is looking to answer through this initiative is if these foods can become a part of our every day lives.
One of the books in Jeremy Burtons office (Noah Paradis/XFM News)
“We hope to find our if Canadians include fermented foods as a bigger part of their diet.”
With there already being a ton of proven benefits to eating fermented foods such as less cancer, and lower cardio problems, these foods may be able to become a part of not just our every day diet, but individuals could make a full fermented food diet.
