Guatemalan Kefir and Cod Liver Oil March 7, 2008

I had a very interesting conversation this morning with our nanny, Yensi.

She told me that her husband asked why our daughter Kate is so much bigger than their daughter, Julianna. He had watched the videos of the two girls on YouTube.

Julianna is 15 months and Kate is only 10 months. Julianna is only 20 pounds. Kate is at least 24, maybe 25 pounds.

I told Yensi, “I think it’s all the liver and raw milk we feed her.”

She said, “I think you are right. We started giving Julianna the raw milk two weeks ago. We’re also giving her the chicken liver. In two weeks, she has gained two pounds.”

I gave Yensi the Weston A. Price brochure this morning. I printed off the Spanish version from the website. She was stunned when she read about “aceite de hígado de bacalao”. That’s Spanish for cod liver oil. She has been feeding Kate cod liver oil for weeks now. But she never knew what it was. When she saw the words “aceite de hígado de bacalao” she realized what it was. “My mother fed us this!” she said.

She bought a bottle of my cod liver oil — I always buy it in bulk to get a 15% discount. She is going to start giving it to Julianna.

She said her mother also fed them liver and egg yolks and they always drank raw milk. No wonder she has such perfect teeth! She has a very wide palette, perfectly straight white teeth. Never had a single cavity. Never had braces.

Her husband has a narrower palette. He snores, she said. She asked me how he could have a narrower palette when he was eating the same things she was as a child in Guatemala?

I asked her how old he was when he came to the US. She said he was only 4. She was 7 when she came. Makes sense — her jaw and palette were a lot more formed when she came.

It’s sad because now her younger brothers are having a lot of health problems. They all have cavities and crooked teeth. Yensi, too, started having chronic headaches only 5 years after she came to America. Her sister-in-law started having very bad digestion problems.

Meanwhile she and her parents and her grandparents never needed braces, never had a cavity. She said her ancestors all live to over 100 years old. It’s only the ones who have come here to this country who have started to experience health problems.

Coincidence? Or could it be nutritional deficiencies?

She also told me that the kombucha we drink tasted like the chicha they have in their country. We looked it up online and found that chicha is a name for a fermented beverage in South American countries. Then she told me that they make a drink like kefir. They call it bulgaros. It makes sense — the word bulgaros comes from Bulgaria or Bulgarian, and kefir comes Bulgaria. She said her sister-in-law had just gotten some bulgaros grains and they were using the raw milk to make the drink.

We were talking about the importance of soaking grains, nuts, beans and seeds before you eat them. In Sally Fallon’s “Nourishing Traditions” she says that eating grains, nuts, seeds or beans that are unsoaked or unfermented is not good for you. They are too hard to digest so your body can’t break them down, and hence, can’t absorb the nutrients. Furthermore, grains, nuts, seeds and beans have phytates or anti-nutrients. These phytates actually block absorption of the good nutrients!

So if you are going to eat any nuts, grains, beans or seeds, they need to be soaked in warm filtered water with either whey or kefir or yogurt. You can also use lemon juice or vinegar if you are allergic to dairy. They need to be soaked for a minimum of several hours and can be soaked up to several days. If you eat a diet rich in unsoaked/unfermented grains (what the USDA food pyramid currently recommends), all the vitamins and minerals you eat from other foods are being blocked and are not being absorbed.

I asked Yensi if they soak their grains in Guatemala. She said, “We never bought bread. We always made our own. And we always soaked it for two weeks.”

Today we’re going to bottle the kombucha. I’m going to give her some of my SCOBYs.

I will also ask Yensi if she will let me take a picture of her smile. You’ve got to see how gorgeous her teeth are!