Probiotics – An Ancestral Supplement
We’ve all heard that taking probiotics is good for our health and for our gut. We know that the bacteria we use, especially in Better Guts, have a huge amount of clinical research and evidence behind them. They’ve been studied for their health benefits in people for so long that at this point the body of clinical proof really speaks for itself.
But where did the idea come from?
Many people today advocate a traditional diet, with ancestral lifestyles becoming increasingly popular, and a feeling that we need to get back to basics becoming ever more prevalent. As part of that, people will often say, to be fair not incorrectly, that our ancestors didn’t have supplements. They didn’t take vitamins in pills, cod liver oil in tablets, or bacteria in capsules, so why would we need these things now if we never had them before?
Well, the truth is, we did have them before, just not in quite the same way. In this article we’re going to explore the ancestral roots of probiotics. What was it that people ate? How did it support their health? And how does this translate to the modern day?
A Worldwide Phenomenon
The first thing we have to understand is this, probiotic foods were popular across the whole world, long before we ever started really exploring across continents! Almost every culture in the world had a traditional probiotic food they made and consumed on a daily basis, something most of us do not do today. This shows us that this isn’t just a cultural phenomenon, but a deep understanding across all traditional cultures across the planet that ferments were good for us!
Of course, they didn’t understand why. They had no way of looking close enough to know that they were eating trillions of beneficial bacteria with every mouthful, and so were taking a probiotic. What they did know is that this food kept them healthy! They could see the effects and feel the effects, and that was all the evidence they needed. Let’s have a look at some of the examples of what was made, and what it did.
Fermented Vegetables
There are two real categories of ancestral probiotics that we’ll look at, and the first is vegetables. No matter where you go in the world there is a traditional form of fermented vegetable that people always used to consume. We’ve all heard of Saukraut, that sour fermented cabbage that is so famous in German and Polish culture, but really eaten across the whole of Europe and the USA today. But this isn’t the only example.
The Koreans have Kimchi, their own fermented cabbage product, using not the same cabbage that we have in Europe but a variety of brassicas native to that area of the world. The Chinese too have their own versions of this in the form of Paocai, again, a fermented cabbage product.
It’s not just cabbage though, vegetables of all varieties have been fermented the world over for thousands of years! The Japanese and Indonesians famously ferment Soy products to produce Natto and Tempeh, products that are not only teeming with beneficial bacteria but also unlock the full benefit of the food they grow on.
Across the whole of Europe people have always eaten pickled vegetables too, in the form of cucumbers, carrots, onions and all sorts of others. The thing to remember is, the traditionally pickled vegetables in brine are fermented! They’re partially broken down by bacteria, and so are teeming with beneficial microbes. In South America they make Curtido (also cabbage). In the middle east it’s Torshi, a variety of fermented vegetables that varies by region, and in south central Asia many varieties of Achar (pickled vegetables) are traditionally fermented.
Most fermented vegetables across the world were populated largely by Lactic Acid-producing Bacteria, or LAB for short. These little wonders have been associated with a very wide variety of health benefits ranging from general gut wellbeing and digestive wellbeing through to effects on the immune system, brain function, allergies, digestive disorders such as IBS and IBD, and many others. This family of bacteria is the same family as L.Rhamnosus GG, the very microbe we use in our LGG supplement! That’s no accident.
Products like Natto and Tempeh had different bacteria, often Bacillis Subtillis, and even fungi and yeasts that helped to ferment the food. An important thing to understand is that a lot of the time the nutrients in vegetables can be hard for our bodies to digest, but that’s where the bacteria are our best friends! They break down the complex structures that these nutrients are in, allowing our bodies to get the most out of the food we eat! This fact is the whole foundation of gut health. When you hear nutritionists tell you to eat more fibre, the fibre isn’t for you, it’s for your bacteria.
So you see, every culture in the world took probiotics for thousands of years, they just didn’t know that was what they were taking! All they knew were the health benefits it brought, not to mention the fact that it preserved their vegetables. But ask yourself this: how many people eat fermented vegetables today? And of those people, how many eat them every day? This ancestral habit is becoming increasingly unusual.
Fermented Dairy
Much like fermented vegetables, just about every culture in the world had a traditional form of fermented dairy. There were of course cultures that couldn’t really keep milking animals due to the climate or topography of the land, but on every continent there were people producing fermented dairy and using it support their health.
Probably the most famous example of this is Kefir, something that’s become so popular you can buy it in many modern supermarkets today. Kefir originally comes from the Caucuses mountains and the Black Sea, and is a fermented dairy product typically made with cows or goat’s milk and kefir ‘grains’, these little rice shaped blobs of bacteria. It’s remarkably simple to make at home, and can be delicious as well as healthy once you get the hang of making it. Kefir is a probiotic powerhouse, no doubt, but it’s not the only one!
Central Asia, Mongolia especially, traditionally drank Koumiss, a fermented horse milk product. Similarly in the middle east they produced Ayran or similar fermented milk products. The Icelandic people are famous for their Skyr yoghurt, often enjoyed across the world today. In Sweden and it’s neighbouring Scandinavian countries they produced Filmjölk, and cultured buttermilk products can be enjoyed across Europe and the USA today.
All of this is not to mention the basic dairy products you can find anywhere in the world today such as cheese!
Now, one really important thing to remember is this, for all of these cultures the milk they used was raw! Pasteurisation wasn’t invented until the 1860’s, and so the milk that was used for these products was teeming with microbes from the moment it was produced. It wasn’t dead like the milk we can buy in the supermarket today, but a live product full of beneficial bacteria.
As we all know, milk contains Lactose, which is a sugar. Lactose is just about one of the most popular foods with bacteria, they love it! Most of these dairy products would have been brimming with LAB (lactic acid producing bacteria), who will have eaten the lactose, as well as a variety of other bacteria depending on the product, and some varieties of yeast. These products have been associated with all sorts of health benefits from helping to calm inflammatory digestive issues through to their effects on cardiovascular health, bone strength, muscle density, cognitive benefits and many more.
One important thing to note though, the versions of these products that you can buy in the supermarket are often pasteurised to preserve shelf life. The thing is, pasteurisation kills all the bacteria! The bacteria are the whole point in eating it! So next time you reach for Kefir in the supermarket, just remember you might not be getting what you think. Yoghurt may well be made by fermenting milk with bacteria, but many brands pasteurise the end product, so it isn’t live.
It’s worth mentioning live dairy drinks, often coming in little bottles, so you can drink one bottle a day. These products often use very beneficial varieties of bacteria, but are not particularly clean in terms of additives. Most of them have a lot of sugar in them, which is bad for you by any metric, as well as various flavourings, colourings, and other additives. So sticking with a good probiotic that’s additive free is probably best.
Ancestral Knowledge – Modern Approach
Ok, so we know that fermented foods are good for us. We know that they’re teeming with beneficial microbes, and we know that basically every culture across the world ate them because of that fact and because of the health benefits they enjoyed as a result. But the question is, how does this translate to the modern day?
Not many people these days eat fermented vegetables, Saukraut is definitely not to everyone’s taste! Most dairy products are pasteurised, and so the bacteria in them are dead. Raw milk is gaining popularity but can still be hard to find and expensive when you do find it. Sometimes living like our ancestors did is just hard to slot into modern life. This is why we make probiotics.
We as a species took our ancestor’s knowledge of what was good for us and asked why. We researched the bacteria that were in there, what they do, how they grow, what they eat, and how they can help us. We isolated those bacteria and grew them, and that’s where probiotics come from today! Both of the bacteria we use at BetterGuts were found this way. LGG was originally isolated from a human gut sample and would have came from the food that person was eating. BB12 was isolated from a fermented dairy sample, again representing the bacteria that people would have traditionally consumed.
So you see, what we do is take ancestral knowledge and translate that to a modern approach, bringing traditional wisdom of health and how to maintain it, and putting it in a form that fits into the busy day to day life of the modern person with modern routines.
So next time you take your Better Guts probiotics, just remember that what you’re taking is the result of thousands of years of ancient wisdom, and that while your ancestors version may have looked and tasted a little different, the principle was the same, taking good bacteria to maintain good health.
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