The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition. Hello, I'm Kimberly King, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On Today Show, we delve into the world of fermented foods, these powerful foods can give you better digestion, powerful antioxidant and a host of other benefits, so listen, close and learn everything you need to know about fermented foods, plus later, we'll tell you what's going on around town but first up, Michael Laila PhD is the chief research scientist at Dr. Marla premium products. Dr. Laila is a formulate user and advocate of dietary supplement nutritional foods and healthy lifestyles. Before joining, Dr. Marco Dr. Leila was the technical director at Now foods, also responsible for new products science nutrition, regulatory and quality.

Dr. Laila has a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. Madison has written, presented webinars and various aspects of Triton quality dietary supplements and health, and we welcome him to the mother's market radio show, Dr. Laila, how are you?

Well, great, thank you, and I'm happy to be here.

It's great to have you here, why don't you fill our audience a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to the show's topic.

Sure, let me talk to you a little bit about Dr. Macola.

So Dr. Macola, he's a... Do a doctor, he grew up in the Chicago land area, and he started his clinical practice about 25 years ago, and when he initially, he began to prescribe the allopathic medicine, the regular drugs that they were all taught... As physicians to prescribe. And what happened was he was finding that that wasn't successful, it wasn't working for many of his patients, and he got into natural products, and from there he learned... He did a whole bunch of research and he began to orient his clinical practice to natural products, who you began to really understand natural products and began to work with his patients on improving their health. He was so impressed with what he did. That he started his own company. He started his own website.

Today, Mala dot com is the number one natural health site in the world. We publish over two million newsletters a day, we have over 12 million unique visitors to our websites every month, so we have a huge following, and Dr. McCall also started selling products about 18 years ago today, he sold his first book, and since then we've now sold many different kinds of health products, all the way from dietary supplements, to foods, natural foods, to appliances, to personal care products. So there's a whole bunch of different products that Dr. macula cells, and now we're also selling in the health food store, so you can get Dr. Macola products in the health food stores.

Fantastic, it's amazing, isn't it? How he's grown.

Today we're talking about fermentation, which is fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about what is fermentation.

Sure. Well, let me start off by saying that Dr. Macola started talking about fermentation probably 10 to 15 years ago, the importance of consuming fermented products, we all know some of these products, you offer all kinds of ethnic crowd, all kinds of fermented products that we are reasonably familiar with, but we don't take it on a regular basis in many cultures, fermented products are taken regularly, NATO, for example, fermented soy, these are all fermented products that are consumed as food regularly, and Dr. Macola, been talking about them for years and years and years, the importance of fermented products in your health and your wellness. Now, what's fermentation? Well, fermentation is a biochemical process where foods are treated with enzymes or probiotics or alcohol, so there are many different kinds of fermentation processes that give rise to these different fermented foods that we're familiar with.

So what fermentation does, it does a couple of things for the foods, the first thing is it improves the digest ability of the foods, makes it easier to digest, easier on the stomach. The second thing is the fermentation process gives rise to an expanded vocabulary of antioxidants, bio-flavonoids, and all those important bio compounds that are present in foods, fermentation actually enhances that and expand them. And fermion has been done for thousands of years. Fermentation is very safe and it's typically down with an enzyme or a probiotic or adding alcohol to the food, and so there many, many or heat... There are many, many different ways that you can make fermented foods, and different cultures have learnt to make fermented foods in different ways, so what we've done at Dr. Macola is to take those fermented foods and create fermented supplements, so it's a whole new line of products that are fermented in their supplements to supplement your health. Fascinating, so you just talked a little bit about the chemistry of what is fermentation, I don't know if there's anything else that I've missed in any of that at this particular... Well, sure, there are many different types of fermentation processes as I mentioned, and some of them give rise to common data guest that bubbles out, it's innocuous, it's no problem, it doesn't smell or anything, but there are other fermentation processes where you can get some solar gases that are produced... If you ferment vegetables, for example, with a probiotic formula, you're going to get a software lousy order kind of fermentation, and you have to crack open the jar a little bit and let those gases escape during the fermentation process, so it's kind of uncomfortable to do at home. Especially in a closed room.

So one of the things that we actually have is a fermentation jar lid that goes on the standard mason jars, and it has a one-way valve that allows the gases to escape, and it has an activated common filter which absorbs those odors... There's awful odors, so you can actually do this in your home, in your kitchen, and it's just so easy. Is it just wonderful? So you can cement your own foods, now we're gonna talk about fermented supplements that are already cemented for you and put into a capsule or a tablet, so that's a little different, but you could do your own fermentation as well, so that's a little bit about the chemistry and the fermentation process that sometimes you will get some poor smelling gases that escape... Right. And that's also interesting, but you've seemed to have kept that, so... That's good.

How does the history factor factor into fermentation? Yeah, so fermentation has been used in many different cultures in Chinese culture and Japanese culture, in some European cultures for thousands of years, and so history is very important here, we've learned from the history what works, what does, and what kinds of foods get fermented and give rise to unique and flavorful and exotic and also very healthy different kinds of foods, so we've taken from that knowledge and come up with a group of fermented supplements based on all that knowledge, and at the same time, we encourage everybody to eat fermented foods, to make your own fermented foods, it's a great way to be healthy fermented foods, again, the two big advantages, digest ability much easier on the stomach, and then add expanded Biola Anis and other important compounds that give rise to the health aspects of the food, so they become functional foods, basically.

So how does the fermentation work with the human body then, so with that breakdown, I guess this is the fascinating part about it, so... Yeah, so fermentation is actually happening in your body as well, when you ingest food, your body has enzymes and probiotics that line the stomach in the gut walls, and they also are involved in cementing the foods that you eat, because again, fermented foods are easier to digest in your digestive system, so your body has a natural ability to do that already, and so depletion occurs internally and permutation in the body produces gases as well. Then that's just natural.

Right, it's very natural.

I guess the headline there would be, what are the major benefits of fermentation the... We pull away from that.

Absolutely, so the major benefits of fermentation are this ability, some foods are very difficult to digest, we have teeth that matica the food that break it down as small as possible to help with that digestion, but even then when the foods that have been chewed get into the body, they still need to be broken down, they still need to be better digested, and fermentation helps with that digestion and helps create foods that are easier to digest, so that's one very important benefit. The second important benefit is the health benefits from fermented foods, health benefits from NATO, which is fermented, soy have been known for many, many years, for thousands of years, there are health benefits both for immune support, for digestive support, for bone growth as well. For example, Vitamin K. vitamin K is produced through fermentation, and vitamin K is a very important essential vitamin for both cardiovascular and for bone health, so that's an example of a vitamin that is made from fermentation, so those are some of the major advantages, the importance of eating fermented foods, and why some cultures are so healthy, and if you look at what they eat, fermented, fermented foods are an important part of their daily diet, not just something exotic that's eaten once in a blue moon... Right, I guess... So a question, What happens if you don't properly digest your food when it's sitting... Like if it's, you don't... When you don't eat fermented food, and you're saying that this is helping with a digest in process, so what happens is food that is not digested properly is excreted and number two, it... Right, that's what happens to food that doesn't digest properly, so then now you've eaten this food and you haven't gotten the full nutritious benefit of that food, you've lost it, it's being extreme excreted out and you've lost the advantage of that food, so that's what happens to food that is not digested properly.

Thank you for answering that. Well, this is very interesting information, and right now we have to take a quick break, but more with our interview about fermentation with Dr. Michael and Laila and we're discussing again, fermentation will be right that... And welcome back to the mother's market radio show.

And we wanna remind you that if you missed any portion of today's show, you can find us on iTunes by searching mother's market or download the show from our website, mother's market dot com, click the link for radio and listen to the past shows. Plus download our Healthy Recipes and money savings coupons, all available at mother's market dot com.

And now back to our interview with Dr. Michael Lela, and we're talking about... Fermentation is really interesting. I just, I didn't know about this. So thank you, you're telling us about the importance of fermented foods, so... Let's talk about this.

Sure, well, let's get back into fermented foods, and their importance of fermented foods is really to... There are two major importance for cemented foods, the first is that fermentation improved, improves the digestible of foods, it improves the digest ability of all foods, but as through the thousands of years, we've learned to ferment different kinds of foods, we've looked which foods tastes better when they're fermented, and therefore, our foods have aligned ourselves with that as well, in terms of good taste and taste in different cultures is a different thing too, so for Japanese taste is a little different that the fermented soy or NATO is of a particularly good taste in Japanese culture.

So European cultures, for example, and we like yogas, which are also fermented foods as well, so there are many, many different kinds of fermented foods and the digest ability of foods is one important aspect, the other important aspect is improved nutrition, so the fermentation process creates new bio-flavonoids, new compounds within the food that are safe, they are natural, they happen during the fermentation process, and these additional compounds or additional anti-oxidants, for example, Biola nod, they improve the nutritious value of the food, so not only the discrimination make food easier to digest it makes it more nutritious.

So yeah, it has a dual purpose there, doesn't it... Right, and thank you for... By the way, you kinda answered my question about for each area with the sour crowd from perhaps in Europe and then in the Japan and Japanese too, with the, say, the production of natural vitamin K, We talked kohat, is that from fermented foods? And the major benefits of K.

Yeah, so Vitamin K is an essential vitamin, all vitamins are essential, that means they're not made by the body, which means we have to get vitamin K from our foods, and so Vitamin K is one of the less known vitamins, if you were to... Somebody will name the vitamins and people will be able to say, vitamin C, vitamin D and vitamin K. are we gonna hear that? Not very often, but it's a very important vitamin, it's involved in biochemical processes within the cell, and it is created and enhanced with fermented foods, for example, taking soy and fermenting soy to NATO, you get large amounts of vitamin K produced. fermenting cabbage, for example, will lead to vitamin K being created in the fermented foods, so fermented foods is a great way to get vitamin K, You can also supplement with vitamin K, there's a number of supplements on the market, vitamin K2 specifically that are actually derived from fermented foods, and what specifically does vitamin K do for your body? Even to something about bones and cardiovascular... Yes, so Vitamin K2 is really important in cellular function for cardiovascular, so there's been some studies that have shown that vessel tidy, for example, improves with vitamin K2, and there are other cardiovascular benefits, reduced cardiovascular events, for example, that occur when you consume Vitamin K2. On the one side, it's the four-legged stool, calcium, magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K, Either K1-K2 that work together in the cell to generate bone and to create the structures needed for bone strength and bone stability.

So vitamin K2 is very important there. There's new research coming out, Vitamin K is also important in muscle health, there was a study that I reviewed recently that showed that vitamin K reduces cramps. Great for nocturnal cramps. Older women have an eternal cramps, pregnant women sometimes if cramps, athletes have Gramps, vitamin K2 is a great supplement specifically for muscle health, and that's good to know, especially Emeth Lee and all of those that you mentioned now that to... Okay, so what... You mentioned earlier, we talked a little bit about supplements, and this would lead right into it, so dr. Marcella also has a line of supplements, Dr. Colas, a line of supplements in, in the last year we've introduced for fermented food supplements.

So let's talk about them. There is a fermented Clore, there's a fermented ginseng, a fermented black garlic and fermented mushrooms. So we've got a slew of fermented products and full talk later, we're actually gonna be coming out with more because they're so interesting and so beneficial.

So let's go through some of those. So Corella Clore is an alga, it's a green alga, it's apace with nutrients, and it's a great source, especially for vegetarians that don't want to consume a lot of their nutrients from meat, so this would be a great alternative from algae. The problem with Corella is Corella is not digestible by our bodies, so if you've seen supplements on the market, read the print, the fine print carefully, it says broken cell wall.

So what they do is they take Corella, which is basically a green and powder ISE it and then mash it mechanically, and what that does, it breaks down the cell walls of the Corella, which allows them us as humans to digest the chorale.

Now, it's not meshing is not very efficient, so you don't get all the choral absorbed, we talked about whatever is not digested gets excreted, so you're wasting some of that chore.

So the fermentation process is a biochemical process that goes in and biochemically degrades all the cell walls in the choral, so all the chorale is absorbed, so you get the full benefit of full digestible with the fermented Clares, let's move on to the fermented genting ginseng. So Jin saying is a great supplement. It helps with energy. It is great for athletes at improved improves reaction time, there are whole slow benefits for ginseng and most supplements consume Jen saying in the form of a power in a capsule, so then it gets taken into the body and then has to digest itself and get into the bloodstream, and then it has its affect, fermenting the gen saying speeds up that digestion process. So what happens is when you take fermenting, you feel the effect right away very, very quickly, it takes about 15 minutes for the capsule to digest, 10 minutes even sometimes much less, and then you begin to feel the effects of the gin seeing very, very rapidly. In fact, one thing you can do is actually break open that's in a lead cap, in the liquid cap and just put it under your tongue, and you can feel the effects and the taste of the Ginseng right away, so it's a great fast-acting supplement bouncing on the wall that... You mean that energy?

That after lunch, homeroom, the black garlic.

So black garlic, so black collar has been used, it's an age process, it uses an enzymatic process to ferment garlic and it turns black, and it's actually Carmelite, so it's actually used in foods, fermented black garlic is very sweet because of the commission, it's a great tasting.

So we've created a supplement based on the Gallic, so it enhances the immune effects of garlic, so it's standardized. There is a specific immune ingredient, which is, it's three letters sac, and it's a long complex formula, so we won't get into that, but it's well known, and it's one of the important Biola in IDs in garlic, and the fermentation process enhances this and we standardize that. So on the label it, it'll say exactly how much of the SAC is in The Black garlic, so you're getting the an enhanced benefit of the garlic.

And the last one, the last fermented food that we have currently are fermented mushrooms, so in this, we use a different process, it's a solid-state fermentation process, so the mushroom spores, and we have seven different mushrooms that are in the blend here, the mushroom spores are in they actually embedded into a burlap bag, and we use oats as the feed material and we inoculate the bag with the different sports that are necessary for the inoculation and the mushrooms ferment, and The Lyceum, which is the part under the ground is collected.

There are different theories about where the mushrooms, the part that's above the ground, the actual mushroom that you see is the most nutritious, but we in alternation process take from under the ground, the mistletoe STEM pot and then under the ground... Yes, and those are the two pods, not the top pot that we would eat normally for mushrooms, and we've created this fermented mushroom complex.

There are a number of studies in Japan on fermentation of mushrooms and their importance and their health benefits, and there are all kinds of different benefits related to chronic diseases that have been demonstrated to have helped with fermented mushrooms, so that's the value of the fermented mushrooms.

Wow, and that is also in the supplement form, and it's in the supplement, it's now in a capsule, and we're coming out with new fermented supplements over the next few months, there'll be a fermenting in is great for digestion and comfort and fermentation will enhance that.

That's great. Well, a couple of last questions before we have to wrap up, but what are some other compounds that can be produced through fermentation?

Yes, so in our plant kingdom at many of our plants have antioxidants, they have what are called Biola Noida and other compounds that in the plants that provide the health benefits, and we've learned about these health benefits traditionally through traditional medicine, basically. And so the Filmation process enhances these compounds, the antioxidants, the bio-flavonoids in particular, that I found in plans, and basically expand the repertoire of them and enhance some of them as well.

Great, and my last question is, how can fermentation help improve ingredient processing?

So ingredients sometimes are very difficult to process, and that's why many times you have to add exciting to the ingredients to make them process easier. Well, what we're finding with fermented products as they flow easier, they're easier to process, and we can make our capsules easier, which means we can use less recipients recipients are these added ingredients that have no nutritious value that you have to have in there because otherwise you can't make the capsule. And so we're being able to use less and less, which is getting us closer and closer to clean label, 'cause that's where we'd like to be, we'd like to have every single supplement that the gold that rainbow... The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is, there's nothing else in there, but that supplement and fermentation gets us closer there.

Excellent, well, the best of luck to you and thank you so much for being here and telling us all about what fermentation is... Well, thank you for having me.

Sure, and thanks for your time, Dr. Laila, some great advice and we really appreciate your knowledge in the meantime, you can get more information on the website, it's called Marca dot com. It's M-E-R-C-O-L-A. we look forward to your next visit.

Thanks for listening to the mother's market radio show, and for shopping at mother's market, the advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,