Best Natural Probiotics & Food Sources
In boosting your health, the foods that you ingest serve a role in maintaining your health status. Due to the radical changes in lifestyles that have come about based on the nature of work and life, when combined with the varying sources of foods require you to be careful about what foods or drinks you ingests. Currently, there are many types of foods in the market; some are organic while others are heavily processed. In order to get the good bacteria into your body and retain a conducive environment for their survival and colonization, there is need for making a good choice on the foods that you should consume.
Natural Probiotics: What are they?
When you intend to boost your probiotics count, it is advisable to source them from natural sources. These sources mainly include the foods and drinks that have been prepared in a way to preserve the probiotics for benefiting your body. As such, the natural probiotics are in a state that they would occur in their natural environment, mainly in the foods that you ingest.
As the world health organization (WHO) and the food and agricultural organization of the United Nations (FAO) note in their report that was working to draft guidelines for the evaluation of probiotics in food, different types of food may have different strains of probiotics. The source of the probiotics has an impact on both the probiotics count in your body as well as the duration they would take to colonize the body for health benefits to be realized.
Natural probiotics are found in foods that occur naturally in the environments or drinks that are not processed to extents that include extra chemical inclusion to make them rich in probiotics. For instance, the use of natural yoghurt as a source of probiotics is advocated for as a source of natural probiotics. Considering that their availability is in the natural environment, they are thus considered as natural probiotic sources hence the probiotics that come from them are natural probiotics.
With this in mind, it is important therefore to make wise choices when settling for a given source of probiotics for your body. For instance, the choice to use cultured natural yoghurt would avail the required probiotics but at the same time, it would consume more time to prepare. To aid in your settling on the best alternative, here are some sources of natural probiotics discussed below.
Foods with natural Probiotics (Natural probiotic foods)
Naturally, probiotics come from foods that occur naturally in the environment. When undertaking to prepare any of these foods, you should be do it in a way to preserve the good bacteria that they contain.
Miso Soup
This is a very popular Japanese breakfast food. It is well known for its many ingredients which are often guided by the region in which it is prepared, the seasonal recipes used and the liking or preference of the person preparing. Miso soup has been claimed to have more than 160 strains of bacteria as well as richness in antioxidants and the B vitamins.
Should you intend to use this natural source for probiotics, it is worthy to note that the miso paste is the key source of the probiotics. The paste is also Japanese and is make by the fermentation of soya beans with a fungus and salt. The fungus is known as Aspergillus oryzae. There may be variations in the ingredients but once prepared accurately, miso soup serves to be a good source of natural probiotics.
Sourdough Bread
Sourdough bread is also a good source of natural probiotics that you may consider preparing to use in boosting your probiotics. It is made with varying aspects of the fermentation getting to play a role. For instance, the use of naturally occurring lactobacilli is key in the process as well as the use of yeasts. The lactobacilli servers to create a conducive environment for the probiotics to thrive naturally. A biological process termed as biological leavening comes to play by allowing a symbiotic relationship of the lactobacillus and the yeast. When you opt for this, consider the preparation as a key step to ensuring that you get the best number and quality of probiotics possible.
Sour Pickles
These are also considered as key sources of natural probiotics. Prepared mainly by the use of lacto-fermentation process, sour pickles are primarily cucumbers that have been pickled in vinegar or brine and then allowed to ferment over a duration of time. It can be immersed in acidic solutions or be soured. The fermentation, leads to the good bacteria building and increasing in numbers to the extent that when ingested, the sour pickles would give you the probiotics in fair quantities and in good health status. Like other natural probiotic foods, the preparation process too has a major impact on the health of the bacteria ingested hence the need to follow the right procedure.
Try Tempeh
Credited to have originated from Indonesia, try tempeh is a natural probiotic food that comprises mainly of fermented soy bean. The preparation process too varies from region to region but critical aspects to the provision of probiotics should not be skipped. When preparing it, you should ensure that there is the natural culturing stage, which will act to bind the soybeans in to a form which looks like a cake. The culturing process, just like the fermentation process serves to give a chance for the good bacteria to build in numbers to be of value when you ingest the food.
Yoghurt
Credited to be the most common source of probiotics is yoghurt. However, not all yoghurt serves to be of value in this regard. Only natural yoghurt. In the preparation of natural yoghurt, the fermentation stage is key. This stage gives the probiotics a chance to build in numbers to a level that they can be of help to you as you consume the natural yoghurt.
However, not all yogurt forms avails the necessary good bacteria. Only the naturally cultured one. It is important therefore, to enquire on how the one availed for instance during shopping, on how it was prepared. Note that the fermentation process that goes into the preparation of natural yoghurt avails a chance for the good bacteria to thrive and therefore has a sufficient number of good bacteria.
Kefir
Kefir is another credible source of natural probiotics. It is one of the oldest form of cultured milk sources that have great health benefits. It is considered to have about ten strains of bacteria with more predominance in lactic streptococci, lactobacillus caucasicus and saccharomyces kefir. Kefir has a lot of other associated benefits which includes the improved healing from wounds, prevention of illness and also includes a variety of vitamins.
Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut is credited to be one of the richest source of probiotics. It is made by use of cabbages that are shredded and salt. They are finely combined after the shredding is done. Later, the combination mixture is packaged into a container that is airtight with the intent of allowing it to ferment for a duration of about three days. The temperature observed is about 23 degree Celsius.
The resulting product has a wide range of lactic acid bacteria. The most predominant form is lactobacillus plantarum. Sauerkraut has been noted to avail about 13 strains of bacteria implying that the richness makes it one of the most probiotic rich food elements. Further, the combination avails about 100 times of the probiotics that most supplements would avail. It is low in fat and calories in addition to being a good source of vitamins A, B, C, D and E.
Best Natural Probiotics
As part of the decision making process on which source gives the most benefits based on the quality of probiotics they avail, there are some considerations that if observed, the probiotic settled on would be good.
The probiotic count in the food source will be a good indicator on the suitability of a given source against or as compared to another. Those foods whose ability to provide more probiotics based on the count are more generally preferred. For instance, Kefir and sauerkraut are credited to provide the highest amounts of probiotics.
The number of strains that are present in the food source would also give the natural food source a more improved rating as whether it ranks as the best or not. There are sources that only have one strain while others have more. Generally, therefore, the more the number of strains available, the better the source is ranked. There exists commercial sources of probiotics, which have an impact on the probiotics count in the body.
References
I thought the bacteria in sourdough starter/mother is killed when the bread is actually baked because of the high temp?!