 Bacteria is dangerous, that fermentation is dangerous for you. Okay, well here, check out my shirt. Please pass the bacteria. Hey everyone, I'm here with Sandro Katz, the Johnny Appleseed of Wild Fermentation, and today he's going to share the top three misconceptions of fermentation. So the first one that people ask a lot is, I hate fermented foods, they're all really strong flavored or stinky or things like that. So what's your thoughts on that? Well, sometimes those are the foods that people recognize as being fermented, but fermentation is so integral to all of our food traditions that almost every person in almost every part of the world eats and drinks products of fermentation every day. So if you drink coffee, that's fermented. If you eat bread, that's fermented. If you eat cheese, that's fermented. If you eat cured meats, they're fermented. If you put a condiment on that sandwich with those things, that involves fermentation. Just such an incredible range of foods and beverages that people eat every day are fermented that you would really have to go out of your way to completely avoid fermented foods. All of the food that we eat is populated by microorganisms and it always provides practical benefits, whether it's making food more easily digestible, making nutrients more bioavailable, making foods preserved for longer periods of time, producing alcohol. There's always some kind of a practical benefit to the process. Number two is bacteria is dangerous, that fermentation is dangerous for you. Okay, well here, check out my shirt. Please pass the bacteria. It turns out that bacteria is the matrix for all life. You know, all people, all animals, all plants, all fungi are descended from bacteria and other single cell organisms and none of us have ever lived without them. So, you know, a healthy human being is host to more than a trillion bacteria, which enable us to effectively digest food. They synthesize certain nutrients for us, so we don't have to find them in our food. What we call our immune system is largely work of bacteria and then we're learning that almost every system of our bodies, including our brains, are regulated by bacteria in ways that we don't fully understand. So, number three, you know, speaking of all this bacteria, people, a lot of people have this idea that, well, in order to have the right amount of bacteria and the right bacteria, you need to use some laboratory stuff, advance things, and you need to understand microbiology. What's your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, sure, the science of microbiology has certainly illuminated what people have been doing for thousands of years. But, you know, all of the fermentation practices people have been doing for hundreds or thousands of years. And, you know, people figured these things out without microscopes, without laboratories. And so, you know, the important thing to understand is that everything we eat is populated by a broad range of different kinds of organisms. And the big question in fermentation is, which ones are going to develop? And that's always a matter of creating conditions that are favorable to those. So, like fermenting vegetables, which I think is the easiest thing to ferment. It was my gateway into fermentation. It's 100% safe. There's no case history of illness or food poisoning. You know, it's the perfect place to start. The bacteria is on the vegetables and the condition we're trying to create is simply to get the vegetables submerged. So, either you shred your vegetables and salt them and pull juice out of the vegetables and get them submerged under their own juices, or you mix up a brine solution and put chunks of vegetables or whole vegetables into the brine solution. And, either way, the vegetables are protected from the flow of oxygen, lactic acid bacteria that are always present on the bacteria dominate. They produce lactic acid. And if there happen to be some cells of salmonella, E. coli, other organisms we associate with food poisoning, well, the very convenient and elegant fact is that none of them can survive in an acidic environment. So, once those lactic acid bacteria become active, they create an acidic environment which will destroy any organisms they could cause problems for us. So, if people want to experiment with this in their home kitchens, they do not need to have a microscope. They do not need to be able to, you know, control everything. They do not need to use chemicals to sterilize their vessels. You can just do it, you know, in simple everyday vessels, like jars in your kitchen, and just try it. Check out my website, wildfermentation.com. I've got lots of information to get you started. Can I give this one a whiff? Yeah, yeah, for sure. This one's a new one for me. What did you call this one? This is a Chinese style of fermenting vegetables in a spiced brine called Pau Tsai. That's alive. So, a lot simpler than you would think, and if for brand new people out there that are wanting to get started, what would be a suggestion of maybe a couple of beginner ferments that really get people started? I think that sauerkraut is the perfect way to start. Just shred some vegetables, salt them to taste, spend three minutes squeezing them or pounding them, and that basically breaks down cell walls and helps them release juice quickly. Once they're nice and juicy, pack them into a jar, make sure that you press hard to get the vegetables submerged, and then you just wait, you know, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, the longer you wait, the more acids will accumulate. People who might be worried about strong flavors might enjoy it after three or five days. People who enjoy stronger flavors might want to wait two weeks. Thank you all for tuning in. I hope that this has been some education and inspiration to get started with fermentation. I've followed Sander's work for probably seven, eight years, and it's great to be able to introduce him to all of you. His books are just the absolute incredible resource for having, you know, in your kitchen or on your bookshelf and so much information online as well. Thanks for taking time with me, Sander. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. All right. See you, everyone.