This is a great story and
promises to make a huge market for craft milk products as it is popularized. Even the FDA will have no beef if one uses pasteurized
milk as the initial feedstock.
I have no doubt that the consumer
will demand and support craft agricultural production. A craft dairy on a hundred head dairy
operation is completely reasonable.
There are plenty of pasteurization technologies possible and every dairy
farmer is already trained in the operation of advanced handling gear. Adding a yogurt production line will allow it
to be completely fresh.
Observe I did not mention
organic, but that is coming anyway simply because the protocols are now the
equal of traditional agriculture. What
farmer, with a thousand acre field and with the exact same results that will
not make the switch to get the organic premium.
Anyway, the story is great and
may even have a bit of truth somewhere in it.
Keffir grain
The members of the All Russian Physician’s Society were frantic. They
needed the mysterious source of this magic milk called “kefir” that seemed to
cure so many health problems.
But how to get it?
Desperate, they turned to the Blandov brothers. The Blandovs owned the Moscow Dairy, but also a cheese factory in the Caucasus Mountains , where kefir originated.
Please, the doctors asked, find
a way to get us the source – these “kefir grains” – so we can make a steady
supply of kefir for our patients.
Nikolai Blandov agreed. The Moscow Caucasus near their factory in Kislovodsk.
Her job was to wrap Prince Bek-Mirza Barchorov around her finger, and
get him to give her a supply of these kefir grains.
But the prince’s people believed the grains were a gift from God. He
couldn’t give any away without violating his religion. Irina realized her
mission had failed, and she and her escorts started back for Kislovodsk.
Prince Barchorov had other ideas. He didn’t want to lose Irina.
It was local custom to steal a bride, so he kidnapped Irina, to force
her to marry him. The Blandovs learned of Irina’s kidnapping, and hired agents
who pulled off a daring rescue, capturing the beautiful Irina back from the
prince.
Irina, with the help of the Blandovs, had Prince Barchorov dragged
before Tsar Nicholas II. The prince offered gold and jewels to make up for his
treatment of Irina… but the Tsar ordered him to pay restitution in 10 pounds of
kefir grains.
This is the legend of how one of the healthiest drinks on planet earth,
kefir (pronounced kuh-feer), was brought to the modern world.
The Blandovs, by the way, offered the first bottle of kefir for sale in
Moscow
No One Knows, No One’s Telling
The strange thing is, despite the story of Irina and the prince, the
actual origin of the kefir grains themselves is still a mystery. No one
knows where they came from. And the mountain people aren’t talking.
The people of Caucasus say the kefir
grains are a gift from God, and if they reveal kefir’s secret it will lose its
“magic.”
Some people believe kefir grains are manna, the miracle food God
provided to Moses and the Jews in the Bible.
The name kefir comes from the Turkish word keif, which means
simply “feel good.” Kefir originated with the Ossetians, who became shepherds
in the Caucasus Mountains between Turkey
and Russia , in an area north
of the country now called Georgia
You’ve heard of the explorer Marco Polo? Well, he mentioned kefir in
the chronicles of his travels in the East. But it was mostly forgotten after
that.
Until strange stories of a magical drink made their way into Russia
Whatever its origin, we know that people in Caucasus
have been drinking kefir for over a thousand years. And they are known for
routinely living to well over 100 years old.
Miniature Magic
Kefir grains are nothing like the foods we call grains today. Each one
looks like a small version of a cauliflower. The granules are made up of
colonies of healthy bacteria that grow together, symbiotically, in a culture of
the milk protein casein. And it’s all held together by a sugary matrix named
kefiran,
The bacteria are the same types of “flora” that are an integral part of
your digestive system, and may even help you make B vitamins.
Kefir is a cousin to other cultured products like yogurt, sour cream
and buttermilk, except much more powerful. It’s made in the old tradition of
fermentation.
Today, many of the foods we eat are preserved through processing or
pasteurization. This uses heat from outside sources to kill off live cultures.
It also strips the food of many helpful bacteria and nutrients. For yogurt, the
live flora are then added back in.
But kefir is fermented. That means preserving with the help of heat generated
by the food itself, and the beneficial flora. Before refrigerators, this is how
you would have made food last for a few days without spoiling.
The kefir grains contain a complex flora of lactic acid bacteria
(lactobacilli, lactococci, leuconostocs), acetic acid bacteria, and yeast
mixture.
When you drink kefir, the flora goes right to work for you. These mini
soldiers help re-colonize the good flora in your gut. They also get rid of
harmful organisms, like too much H. Pylori, the bacteria that cause ulcers.
Kefir grains also seem to have the unique ability to unlock peptides
from milk.1 In regular milk, these peptides stay hidden, or encrypted. But
when you ferment the milk with kefir grains, it unlocks these peptides to give
you benefits including:
Lower blood pressure
Increased immune strength
Normal cholesterol function
Improved protein digestion
And despite the fact that kefir is made from milk, most people who are
lactose intolerant can drink kefir easily.
Kefir is also a very nutrient-dense food, so it fills you up and keeps
you from getting that “empty stomach” feeling, like you get after eating
processed, starchy snacks.
It can have as much as 35% protein, lots of vitamins A, B and K, and
also phosphorous. Phosphorous helps you digest fats and carbohydrates to use as
energy. The flora in kefir also add to your digestive enzymes, helping you
break down foods and use the nutrients more efficiently.
There’s no way to know for sure, but these two benefits might be why
people who drink kefir say they have so much energy.
And do you want to know what my favorite thing about kefir is?
Modern science can’t duplicate it. Even though they know exactly what’s
in kefir, they can’t make the real thing.
Scientists have all the ability and technology in the world to alter
molecules and make synthetic drugs. But they can’t create kefir grains no
matter how hard they try.
I love that.
In fact real kefir grains can only be obtained from growing and
dividing already existing kefir grains.
Kefir is one of my favorite examples of how nature has science beat.
Here are four other things to love about kefir, each of which separates
it from all other cultured milk products to make it unique.
Nearly all other fermented products have only one, or at most three,
kinds of flora. Kefir has four main groups, and 40 to 60 different strains of
healthy bacteria and yeast.
You never need to obtain more real kefir grains once you have some.
They grow, and you divide them to make more.
With proper care, real kefir grains last forever.
Kefir has yeast… and that means kefir is a slightly alcoholic drink.
Depending on the fermentation process, temperature, time and the type
of culture used (what you ferment the kefir in), the alcohol content will vary
from 0.06% to 3% alcohol.
Shaking the container while the kefir is fermenting will give you
higher alcohol content. In the Caucasus Mountains ,
you would have made kefir in an animal skin bag, and then hung the bag on your
front door to make sure it was jostled around.
It was even a custom that everyone who came in or went out of a home
with a kefir bag on the door had a responsibility to give the bag a poke or a
shake to help mix it.
To make kefir today, you don’t need an animal skin bag. You simply add
the kefir grains to fresh milk from any source – coconut, rice, goat, cow or
sheep milk – and let it ferment at room temperature for 18 to 24 hours. The
next day, you have your kefir! And, if you let it ferment another 24 hours, the
B vitamin content increases.
The end product is a creamy drink with a tangy, slightly sour but
refreshing taste. And the great thing is, if you want you can add flavor to it
by mixing in whatever kind of fruit you like.
My favorite is strawberry.
I get my kefir from Amber, my friend and farmer who also gets me my
organic eggs. She makes me and my staff yogurt, too. She delivers the yogurt
and kefir in these giant glass jars filled to the top… almost too good to be
true.
If you don’t have a local organic grower or farm that makes kefir or
has kefir grains, there are now quite a few places you can get them from.
Some health food stores are starting to sell packaged brands. These are
another reason why I don’t trust too many foods that come in a box. That’s
because store-bought kefir isn’t the real thing.
To package it, they have to stop the yeast process or the sealed
containers would explode on the store shelves. That means it’s not made from
real kefir grains. They’re imitations that only have a few strains of flora and
no yeast activity, which gives you some of the biggest health benefits.
To obtain real kefir grains, there are two things you can do. The first
is to buy them. There are many websites you can order your kefir grains from.
Here are the three I think are the most reliable:
Also, you can have your kefir grains given to you. In that case, there
are two other websites you should know about. One is a directory of free and
for sale kefir grains all over the US
The other is a website for people who shvare real live kefir grains:
_______________________________________________________
1 Miller. N.P., Scholz-Ahrens, K.E., Roos. N. and Schrezenmcir, J.,
“Bioactive peptides and proteins from foods: Indication for health effects,” Eur.
J. Nutra, 2008;47:171-182
2 Guzel-Seydim, et al, “Review: Functional Properties of Kefir,” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 2011;51: 261-268
2 Guzel-Seydim, et al, “Review: Functional Properties of Kefir,” Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition 2011;51: 261-268
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