We guarantee positive results, less heartburn, bloated feelings, etc., if you follow our plan. Eat a 2 ounce serving with every meal, unless it’s fruit. That is only a few bites; just have it as a side dish or add it to your mix, sandwich, whatev. If you eat more than 3/4 lb. of food you may want to eat more kraut.

Some considerations:

A small gas war will erupt as a result of the turf battles for control of your inner terrain. This will pass, excuse the pun, and after 2-3 weeks or less, your terrain will be properly inhabited with a helpful colony of beneficial micro-organisms. Continue to feed them with a daily dose of sauerkraut or fermented pickles and use them to help digest your regular meals.

They are very addictive because of how much help they are to your life, but at that amount it’s really only the equivalent of one jar a week. A small price to pay for healthy digestion.

The deal…buy some of our sauerkraut at listed locations, or through Azure Standard. If you follow our challenge to the letter, and you don’t show any improvement, so sorry, but keep trying. No really, it will work eventually, but if you agree to continue for a another month with no results we’ll refund your receipts, and say “thanks for trying our challenge,” and you will get your 8 or 9 jars money back, we guarantee. Now if we start to sense abuses we’ll stop doing it, but we trust our fellow citizens and that’s our offer.

May the force be with you!

- By Ari LeVaux via AlterNet

A recent study found large amount of bacteriophage DNA in kimchi, suggesting a significant role of bacteriophages in the fermentation process. Kimchi is just one of many bacteria-rich (and presumably phage-rich) foods, like yogurt and sauerkraut, that many people consider to be superfoods. There are countless kinds of fermented foods in many diets, both old and new.

The Paleo diet — short for Paleolithic — is a modern diet that’s based on the foods humans would have had access to during our evolutionary formative years. According to the Paleo diet, modern-day foods like sugar, grains, and processed carbohydrates shift the balance toward undesirable flora, while animal- and vegetable-based dishes, including fermented foods and vinegar, encourage good bacteria. It’s no wonder, according to the Paleo worldview, that foods that have been with us since the beginning are the ones that keep our bodies in proper balance-with the help of our old friends bacteria.

The “Gut and Psychology Syndrome” (GAPS) diet (it’s also the name of the related book) is built on the premise of a link between mental and intestinal health. The diet mixes probiotic supplements with a regimen of foods designed to tilt the playing field so the good bacteria take over.

Probiotic supplements are essentially “good bacteria” by the millions, in pill form. Doctors often recommend them after a round of antibiotics, which can kill the good bacteria in your body along with the bad.

Much of what we’re learning in labs is validating ancient wisdom, like the importance of fermented foods. And along these bacterial lines, science is also finding an important function for an organ it once dismissed as a useless evolutionary relic: the appendix. Now they’re realizing that the appendix probably has immunological functions related to the fact that it acts as a reservoir of spare bacteria in case your gut flora gets killed off or flushed out, say, in a nasty bout of diarrhea.

We’re still at the beginning of the bacterial learning curve. A research team recently determined that humans can be classified into three categories depending on the type of bacteria in their guts. Such bacterial affiliation is found in all humans, and is unrelated to race or to the gut-bacteria type of one’s parents. At this point we have no idea what this means, or where it will lead.

But we can be sure that as we continue learning about our relationship with bacteria, kids will continue eating nature’s probiotic wherever they can find it. And the more we learn, the smarter they seem.

Read the full article

June 2009 – Tara Duggan @ the San Francisco Chronicle

The full-length article mentions that pairing wine w/ sauerkraut and other high-acid foods is a challenge. We find that our sauerkraut goes great with all kinds of wine and fits great on a cheese/cracker plate. Happy eating!

Canning may still be having its comeback in this DIY era, but traditionally fermented vegetables – such as sauerkraut, kimchi and barrel-fermented pickles – take urban homesteaders to the next level of old-style food preservation. An easy and delicious way to put up the harvest, fermenting appeals both to the slow food and the health food crowds. It also fascinates those curious about food chemistry, whether a professional cook or passionate home tinkerer.

“There’s a renaissance of interest in fermented foods,” says Jessica Prentice, cookbook author and co-founder of the Locavores, the group who helped bring attention to using strictly local ingredients. At last month’s fermentation festival in Freestone (Sonoma County), Prentice demonstrated how to make kimchi and sauerkraut. She considers the amount of attention being given to fermented foods – including by teenage vegans and hip young urbanites – at the level of a “movement.”

The vast majority of store-bought pickles rely on vinegar for sourness, and most commercial sauerkraut is pasteurized at vast processing plants. Fermented pickles and unpasteurized sauerkrauts are made from raw vegetables that sit in a salty brine at cool room temperature for several weeks. This encourages the growth of beneficial, naturally occurring lactic bacteria, which destroys potentially harmful bacteria and creates lactic acid. Lactic fermentation causes the vegetables to become mildly, pleasantly sour and tender.

[Read the Full Article]

Swine influenza (also called swine flu, pigfluenza, hog flu, and pig flu) refers to influenza caused by those strains of influenza virus that usually infect pigs and are called swine influenza virus (SIV).

[wikipedia]

We are not promoting Pickled Planet Sauerkraut as a cure for any illness, but it is widely known that the best preventative defense against any disease is a strong, healthy immune system. And one way to keep your immune system healthy, and beat the swine flu epidemic, is by promoting happy intestinal flora through eating foods with plenty of vitamins, beneficial micro-organisms, and lactic acid.

Where can you find a healthy, organic, live, raw food that delivers these health benefits? Well, right here, with some Pickled Planet Live Organic Sauerkraut.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

[More Sauerkraut News]

Sauerkraut and Swine Flu in the Press and Blogosphere:

The Swine Flu Diet (5/4/09)

The Swine Flu Survival Kit (5/09)

Swine Flu Protection (4/30/09)

Swine Flu – Don’t Panic! (4/29/09)

Oink, Oink, Oink (4/26/09)

Flu Preparedness Advice (4/25/09)

Sauerkraut for Health (4/25/09)

Is Sauerkraut the Next Chicken Soup? (11/4/05)

Bird Flu: Sauerkraut Cure (11/14/05)

Sauerkraut Could Fight Bird Flu (11/15/05)

Health Benefits of Sauerkraut (11/23/05)

Pickled Planet is happy to be featured in the latest issue of Ashland’s own LocalsGuide. Shields Bialasik wrote a great article, with fun notes on the history of sauerkraut. Did you know Ghengis Khan may have introduced the art of lacto-fermenting as early as 1237?

The article also has good information about the benefits of eating Pickled Planet Organic Raw Sauerkraut over that generic or brand canned sauerkraut. Our raw sauerkraut is a great way to easily enhance your intestinal flora. If you are new to raw and live foods, this may be just the place to start.

For more info, grab a copy of the LocalsGuide today.