EXTREME CUISINE: Probiotic foods a key part of a healthy diet, writes Haydn Shaughnessy
Outside my window, there are three acres of prime Irish pasture. In fact, it's so prime that the cattle don't go there very often. Maybe for one month of the year they can smell the same salt air I do. For the rest of the time, the pasture is growing grass for silage, the smelly, preserved stuff cattle ruminate on during the winter.
When you look at a patch of land like that, and the setting sun reflects the whitewash of an old lighthouse in the distance, your mind can wander. You get to thinking, as the Americans say in the movies.
Last night I got to thinking about how families in this part of Ireland a hundred or so years ago would have had only six acres of land to keep themselves, and the family would be much larger than mine. Those of you who have tried growing your own food will be sensitive to the limitations of a small piece of land and even more aware that what grows tends to appear all at once - potatoes, tomatoes, herbs, cabbage, beetroot.
When you think of eating local, fresh and organic food, you have to think also that fresh is perishable, and because it all turns up at around the same time, humans became adept at preserving foods.
Preserved foods connect us to the past and to the planet. The UN has a half-hearted programme to uncover and preserve in writing the great human preservation styles and techniques.
I am a convert to preserved foods and the reason why goes to the heart of what we should eat. History, people, culture (the soul in other words), knowledge, skills, health! I believe we are meant to consume vast amounts of probiotic food. Preserved more or less equals probiotic.
A few of the foods we consume as preserves, particularly fermented preserves, have a probiotic origin. Salami, chorizo, dried hams, cheese, yoghurt, wine, beer and pickles were all formerly probiotic foods.
Our ancestors would have been consuming "probiotic" bacteria from these foods all day long, starting with a salted or smoked fish, ham or cheese in the morning, a preserved cabbage at dinner, and finishing up with a beer or a glass of wine.
At one time, even sausages were fermented products. Botulism, a bacterium that causes fatal illnesses, is derived from the Latin word for sausage, according to Wikipedia and food chemist Harold McGee.
Because of the risk factor, sausages were over-salted. Gradually, they ceased being made through fermentation because of the reduced attractions of highly salted food. They are still out there though, as properly made pepperoni and hard salamis hanging in delicatessens.
What is the connection between fermented foods, pickles and probiotics? Probiotic foods are generally acidic, but beneficially so. They have a low pH. The pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a food or drink. A pH level below 4.6 is considered safe against anaerobic bacteria - the ones that can grow in a tin or jar where there is no oxygen.
Foods with a very low pH cannot grow harmful bacteria. In fact, the reactions that create a low pH are triggered by the presence of beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus, the very bacterium that is added these days to a probiotic yoghurt. Preserved foods are the product of a battle between good and bad bacteria - and the good always win.
At a conference last year, scientists from the alimentary pharmabiotic centre at University College Cork described how they had used probiotics to cure a cow that was dying from mastitis. Prior to the use of probiotics the cow had, of course, been treated with all the regular antibiotics. The cow was on its way to the slaughterhouse. Probiotics saved its life.
Most foods that were formerly rich in probiotics are these days pasteurised to get rid of germs, while meats have large doses of nitrates added.
The requirements of industry are that food is prepared quickly. Because of this, preserved meats are injected with brine or the long, slow process of maturing a meat is interrupted by the nitrate shaker. Nitrates are themselves potentially toxic, but we have inherited a belief that a chemical toxin is less risky than a natural one.
As a consequence of these changes, we have become the generation that has forgone the daily probiotic deluge. Instead, we make do with the occasional supplement - if we are conscious enough of the need.
As researchers advance our understanding, it is an almost certain bet they will conclude we are starved of probiotics. Already scientists are tantalisingly close to acknowledging that probiotics will replace antibiotics in many therapeutic applications.
Retailed foods with an added probiotic culture are an inadequate alternative - the bacteria probably don't survive their journey through the shops, never mind the journey into our digestive tracts. Soon we will discover that we need vast quantities of probiotics. Preserving food is a short cut into the future.