Pickled Foods are Foods With A Purpose
Please find the March 18, 2010 Wholly Macro Delivery Menu below in the Weekly Menu section of this newsletter. It is full of super healthy super foods, to nourish you on many levels, especially with the busy lifestyle that we all seem to lead these days. What could be better and more convenient than having a package full of freshly prepared high energy food, like none other available in all of South Florida, delivered right to your front door each week?
There are a handful of restaurants, and an even smaller handful of delivery businesses like ours, in this entire country, that make food of the caliber that we prepare. And this is not about taste, although obviously taste and presentation are an important goal. This is more about the quality and energetics of the food, and the way it is combined and balanced to deliver optimum and varied vitality and nutrition to your entire body and all of it's various organs, in the easiest way possible for your body to utilize.
What is the point of working your body to the max trying to digest food that delivers very little to NO energy and nutrition?? Even worse, some of those foods actually go beyond doing nothing positive for your body, they actually cause your body harm.
We are all about Food With A Purpose here at Wholly Macro. And that purpose is Health!
One of the super healthy dishes on this week's menu is the very understated and often times mis-understood pickled vegetable dish (fifth one down).
"Pickles" are a fermented food that cultures from around the world have been enjoying since time eternal. Think sauerkraut and kimchi.
The process of fermentation (pickling) makes food more digestible and nutritious. Live, unpasteurized, fermented foods have the ability to carry beneficial bacteria directly into our digestive systems. Fermentation preserves nutrients, and breaks them down into more easily digestible forms. The soybean for example, is an extraordinarily rich protein and phyto nutrient dense food that is hard to digest unless fermented. In the form of miso, tempeh, tofu, and soy sauce, the complex proteins and nutrients of the soybean are broken into readily digestible amino acids that are full of beneficial "good" bacteria, compliments of the fermenting / pickling process.
The same "beneficial" bacteria that many people are familiar with in yogurt, can be created from non-dairy food sources by pickling vegetables, beans, and grains. And these pickles show the same benefits, functioning as antioxidants that scavenge cancer precursors known as free radicals from the cells of your body, creating omega fatty acids which are essential for cell membrane and immune system functions, and generating copious amounts of naturally occurring ingredients such as digestive enzymes.
In other words, pickling makes food more nutritious!
It has actually been scientifically shown that these healthy bacteria that are created through the process of pickling, AKA Probiotics, can relieve many chronic emotional and physical maladies, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Anxiety, and Depression. In an emerging field of study known as enteric neuroscience (an interface of neuropsychiatry and gastroenterology), studies are exploring in depth, the influential role of probiotics on the central nervous system, mood related psychiatric symptoms, and gastrointestinal health.
It is important to note that pickled / fermented foods must be live. In other words, they must be unpasturized, in order to contain viable, beneficial, probiotic bacteria. All dairy foods, including yogurt, are pasteurized. So even though theoretically they are meant to contain these healthy bacteria, they don't in actuality. The healthy bacteria are destroyed during the pasteurization process.
The same principle holds true for plant based pickles such as sauerkraut, cucumber pickles, miso, etc. If you find these products on the shelf of the store, un-refrigerated, chances are they do not contain live bacteria.
If you don't make pickles yourself, or purchase them for yourself such as in our pickled vegetable dish this week, please make sure you buy them from the refrigerator case and that they say un-pasteurized on the label.
BTW, shiso (such as the Wholly Macro dish Shiso and Dulse Pickled Cauliflower and Snap Peas), is a plant that has customarily been used in Asia in the pickling process. It contains many minerals, especially iron, that the process of pickling allows to manifest into a powerhouse of multiple, multiplied minerals that are just waiting to be utilized in our bodies.
In health to you as always.
Gayle and Jaime / Wholly Macro
There are a handful of restaurants, and an even smaller handful of delivery businesses like ours, in this entire country, that make food of the caliber that we prepare. And this is not about taste, although obviously taste and presentation are an important goal. This is more about the quality and energetics of the food, and the way it is combined and balanced to deliver optimum and varied vitality and nutrition to your entire body and all of it's various organs, in the easiest way possible for your body to utilize.
What is the point of working your body to the max trying to digest food that delivers very little to NO energy and nutrition?? Even worse, some of those foods actually go beyond doing nothing positive for your body, they actually cause your body harm.
We are all about Food With A Purpose here at Wholly Macro. And that purpose is Health!
One of the super healthy dishes on this week's menu is the very understated and often times mis-understood pickled vegetable dish (fifth one down).
"Pickles" are a fermented food that cultures from around the world have been enjoying since time eternal. Think sauerkraut and kimchi.
The process of fermentation (pickling) makes food more digestible and nutritious. Live, unpasteurized, fermented foods have the ability to carry beneficial bacteria directly into our digestive systems. Fermentation preserves nutrients, and breaks them down into more easily digestible forms. The soybean for example, is an extraordinarily rich protein and phyto nutrient dense food that is hard to digest unless fermented. In the form of miso, tempeh, tofu, and soy sauce, the complex proteins and nutrients of the soybean are broken into readily digestible amino acids that are full of beneficial "good" bacteria, compliments of the fermenting / pickling process.
The same "beneficial" bacteria that many people are familiar with in yogurt, can be created from non-dairy food sources by pickling vegetables, beans, and grains. And these pickles show the same benefits, functioning as antioxidants that scavenge cancer precursors known as free radicals from the cells of your body, creating omega fatty acids which are essential for cell membrane and immune system functions, and generating copious amounts of naturally occurring ingredients such as digestive enzymes.
In other words, pickling makes food more nutritious!
It has actually been scientifically shown that these healthy bacteria that are created through the process of pickling, AKA Probiotics, can relieve many chronic emotional and physical maladies, such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Anxiety, and Depression. In an emerging field of study known as enteric neuroscience (an interface of neuropsychiatry and gastroenterology), studies are exploring in depth, the influential role of probiotics on the central nervous system, mood related psychiatric symptoms, and gastrointestinal health.
It is important to note that pickled / fermented foods must be live. In other words, they must be unpasturized, in order to contain viable, beneficial, probiotic bacteria. All dairy foods, including yogurt, are pasteurized. So even though theoretically they are meant to contain these healthy bacteria, they don't in actuality. The healthy bacteria are destroyed during the pasteurization process.
The same principle holds true for plant based pickles such as sauerkraut, cucumber pickles, miso, etc. If you find these products on the shelf of the store, un-refrigerated, chances are they do not contain live bacteria.
If you don't make pickles yourself, or purchase them for yourself such as in our pickled vegetable dish this week, please make sure you buy them from the refrigerator case and that they say un-pasteurized on the label.
BTW, shiso (such as the Wholly Macro dish Shiso and Dulse Pickled Cauliflower and Snap Peas), is a plant that has customarily been used in Asia in the pickling process. It contains many minerals, especially iron, that the process of pickling allows to manifest into a powerhouse of multiple, multiplied minerals that are just waiting to be utilized in our bodies.
In health to you as always.
Gayle and Jaime / Wholly Macro