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In some places in the world it is not necessary to consider food storage. There is an abundance of food growing fresh throughout the seasons. But in most of the world we have a time of springtime and harvest.
You no longer have to worry about not having access to food because your food is now imported from all over the world. You probably don’t know where most of the food you eat is grown.
Grocery stores provide fresh produce, fresh and frozen meat and prepared meals of all kinds. Canned goods line their shelves, all with a little tiny expiry date stamped on them which is rarely read and not considered once the can makes it to a pantry.
The problem with this mentality is that you don’t even know where our food comes from anymore. You have to trust others to provide you with it and as a result end up eating high sugar, mechanically processed, nutrient deficient foods.
The choices of fresh fruit and vegetables is limited to the varieties which transport well, keep their color and can be made to look good on a store shelf. It has nothing to do with its nutrient content.
The great book “The hundred Mile Diet” brought this point into focus.
When you purchase your food at a grocery store you are paying for the foods transportation, storage and overhead costs of the store. This is not a bad thing necessarily but you should be cognizant of the costs both to our bank account as well as the environment.
The thing is that in the summer there is lots of surplus food available. There are tomatoes of all varieties squash, carrots, beets, cabbage and all varieties of potatoes.
There are fruit trees dripping with excess fruit from fruit trees which were planted by someone long forgotten but yearly cursed as the house owner has to clean it all up.
This excess is great if it can be preserved for later but in this day when energy is expensive and the environment is of concern how do you convert fresh food into shelf stable food in the most environmentally friendly manor?
Fermentation!
Does not require high temperatures
Most other forms of food preservation requires heating the food to destroy the spoilage bacteria present in the food. This uses energy. Some methods are more or less energy intensive like canning or pressure treating as is used in most cereals.
Canning requires pasteurizing the food to a high level this requires high temperatures and long hot cycles. Besides this the cans are usually one time use containers which then (if they are lucky) are recycled into new cans or disposed of into land fill sites.
Cereals are heated, rolled with high pressure rollers, dried and then packaged. Since most of the food value which was in the original grain will have been lost additional synthetic vitamins are added. The production of synthetic vitamins also takes energy.
Dehydrating food can be an energy efficient method of food preservation if it is sun dried but most commercial food producers use heat produced by electricity rather than the sun directly.
Fermentation does not need high heat but rather a warm environment where the probiotic bacteria can bubble away producing an environment which is not conducive for the growth of spoilage bacteria. The heat requirements of different fermentation methods and food sources vary from 7 degrees to 35 degrees depending on the type of ferment you are doing.
Most fermentation can be done at room temperature. These include pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, olives and kefir. Lager and sake require low temperatures to produce the best taste while some yogurts and chutneys need 25-30 degrees to be successful.
Does not need refrigeration
To keep most fresh fruits and vegetables from spoiling we place them in a fridge. This cooling of the food slows down the decomposition of the food and therefore keeping it fresh for longer. Refrigerators are one of the largest power suckers in our houses. They also need a coolant which does not last forever and eventually leaks into the atmosphere.
Although the coolant in most refrigerators being manufactured today do not use Freon, the gas they do use still needs to be concentrated and refined (which takes energy).
Most fermented food only requires placing the food in a cool location for long term storage such as a cool basement room (otherwise known as a cellar).
There is an added benefit of using fermentation as a method of food storage.
It won’t last forever! Yes it is true this is a benefit.
If something sits for months untouched in your basement while others get used it is a sure bet it isn’t a favorite. Since it will eventually go off it can be thrown away with no regret.
Not so with canned goods. It seems canned goods hang around forever, even if everyone knows they will never be eaten. They end up cluttering up storage space and gathering dust.
Uses reusable containers
One of the greatest environmental tragedies has to be the damage one time use packaging has done. Your food is packaged in plastic film for transport, repackaged into individual plastic containers. Then it is sold to us and put into another plastic bag. All of these steps use a plastic container once which then gets thrown away.
The challenge here is that these one- time use plastic containers go on to persist in our environment for years. They kill birds and marine life which further reduces our environments ability to remain balanced.
We believe that our garbage will be taken away and someone else will deal with it. Even if we recycle there is no guaranty that it will be dealt with responsibly. There is too much evidence to the contrary.
The only way to ensure it will not get into our environment is to not use it at all.
This is where fermentation comes in. The containers used to ferment are reusable. In this research paper it was found that glass mason jars need to be reused only 7-9 times before the environmental cost per use is lower than plastic or paper containers.
Remember the three tenants of being environmentally friendly “reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is the reuse part. The more times a jar is used before it is recycled the better it is for the environment.
Once they break they can be either recycled into new jars or can be reincorporated into the environment with little damage to the wildlife. Plastic on the other hand ends up in land fill sites and ultimately the oceans killing wildlife as it continues to recirculate through the food chain. Plastic “rocks” have been found on the beaches on the UK () which have the potential to leak lead into the environment, are resistant to decomposition, and continue to disrupt marine life indefinably.
Fermentation mitigates harmful environmental chemical effects on human health
The amount of pesticides used to protect our crops is astronomical and still growing. In the U.S. alone over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used on our food every year . And because some pesticides are persistent in our environment the amount multiplies rapidly. This has a negative effect on wild plant pollination as these residues reduce the population of pollenating insects. This lowers the number of young plants which reduces the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere.
With a reduction of carbon capturing plants the amount of free carbon in our atmosphere and as a result our oceans increases.
Besides that it is unhealthy to be consuming fruits and vegetables which have pesticide residues on them.
Fermentation methods using LAB bacterial strains (sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, vinegar) has the ability to reduce the amount of absorbable chemical pesticides in our food by breaking some down and binding to others and carrying them out of your body.
Helps decompose organic waste with a minimum of greenhouse gas emissions
It is true that fermentation produces CO2, which is one of the gasses which contribute to the greenhouse effect. This may seem like a contradiction to my statement that fermentation is good for the environment.
Well it is. There are two main gasses which are the main contributors to global warming. The first is CO2 which is now being released into the atmosphere at unprecedented rates through fossil fuel burning. The other one which has 23 times the negative effect on our atmosphere is methane. Methane is produced by livestock mostly from cattle and pigs. Methane is also produced when livestock dung is mixed with compostable material. A great way to produce fertile soil.
Well another way is to use the dregs found in the bottom of fermentation containers as a composting kick starter. It produces great soil while reducing the amount of methane produced. The key here is to aerate the compost, otherwise known as turning it, and use it to grow all those nice vegetables which make great fermentations.
Can be produced locally
One of the reasons your food source is so expensive to the environment is transportation. Often our food comes fresh from distant locations. To make this possible it must be harvested fast and under ripe. Cooled quickly to optimum storage temperature and then packaged, shipped and displayed for sale at our local markets.
Every one of these steps takes energy. Energy which is produced by either burning fossil fuels, damming rivers or from wind farms which kill thousands of endangered birds every year indiscriminately. The amount of environmental damage is unprecedented.
Instead if you were to plant a garden of your own or support an organic farm in your area. Harvest throughout the summer and eat clean, fresh, safe vegetables. Then in the fall harvest all the fall growth and ferment it into sauerkraut, salsa, pickles or all types, tonics, relish, chutneys and whatever else you can find.
You now have an environmentally friendly stocked cellar.
Reduces the amount of pharmaceutical drugs needed
You have been lead to believe that fresh fruits and vegetables are the gold star winners when it comes to healthy eating. That was true when the food was grown in our own backyards or at least close. Now your food is grown in foreign countries using unknown agricultural practices, on over farmed soil which is artificially fertilized or fertilized using contaminated animal sewage.
Food which is produced industrially is grown in the most profitable way possible. This does not include the most healthy or nutritious way. Farmers get paid on volume not on vitamin content.
This process causes sickness. In fact fresh vegetables are the number one cause of food borne illness in the U.S. Leading to prescriptions. Which is a growing problem in your water.
Not only that but it can lead to death.
Fermenting your vegetables is safer then eating them fresh. The fermentation process produces an environment which the pathogenic bacteria which cause disease cannot grow in. It also makes some vitamins and helps absorb hard to digest minerals which support your health.
Now who would have thought that leaving your vegetables on the counter in a jar would be healthier than putting them in the fridge?
Its time to start fermenting
As I read it everyone in the modern world wants to save the planet. But only if it does not inconvenience them. Just as long as it will not affect their lifestyle then the changes are okay but the moment it gets uncomfortable all bets are off.
That is why I think adapting a fermented lifestyle is a good move for us planet loving members of modern society. It reduces our carbon footprint, does not inconvenience us and adds new and delicious flavors to our meals.
If we take it a step further and start to use locally produced organic produce we can make a real dent in our personal carbon footprint while promoting our health.
