The beauty of fermentation is not only to concentrate the ingredients, but also to create something that has therapeutic values.
Fermentation is the perfect example of how life and foods combine to create perfect harmony and balance. All traditional cultures across the world fermented their most prized foods including Soy, Cocoa, Grapes, Maca, Baobab, Turmeric, Ginseng etc. It was in these forms that foods were used in both ceremony and in traditional medicine. Everything is enhanced through fermentation. The colour, the smell, and the taste all become more potent. But more importantly, nutrients are created and transformed to a higher level of complexity. Not only do they increase in their amount but they also become much more bio-available for your body to utilize.
Take Turmeric for example, it has recently been acclaimed as a super herb due to its many health benefits and outpouring of current research. It acts on many areas within the body including the cardiovascular system, liver, cognition, inflammation, skin, digestion and there are even early studies on cancer. However, we are now starting to understand the limitations of this herb. For example, turmeric needs to be taken in significant amounts for a therapeutic action but can cause irritation when taken in large amounts. It is a spice of course! That being said, curcumin, which is known as the active component within turmeric, can be isolated and taken in larger amounts. Unfortunately, curcumin is poorly absorbed and can still cause irritation to the digestive lining. It also has a limited range of actions and has been shown that when curcumin is isolated from turmeric, it can become a pro-oxidant (Molecules, 2015). These points have led to various debates as to the best way to optimize turmeric to provide the most benefit.
In creating a turmeric supplement, the first important point is to keep turmeric whole. By separating and isolating the active compounds (yes, there are more than just curcumin), the other important nutrients are not available to compliment the absorption and action. Secondly, we needed to transform the whole turmeric to optimize it and we can do this through fermentation. However, the form of fermentation is critical to the end result.
Living Alchemy uses the ancient art of fermentation to activate herbs and foods into their superior form for our premier fermented herbal blends, the Signature Series. We produce these formulas using a traditional, month long fermentation containing 35 select species of micro-organisms from kefir and kombucha cultures. This process delivers the complete, activated herb within a living food matrix for exceptional vitality and bio-availability.
The results of our endeavours is a series of formulas that create a new paradigm in whole food supplements, providing a level of nutrition and vitality unrivaled in all, but nature.