As a Singapore personal trainer and fitness boot camp instructor, I am often asked questions about nutrition and diet for maximal fat burning, weight loss, fitness and muscle gain. More than half of these questions revolve around how to make a healthy diet even more tasty, nutritious and exciting. Here's a simple tip for adding a wide, wide world of new flavors, textures and aromas to your healthy diet: eat fermented foods! Kimchi, sauerkraut, natto,black garlic, brewed soy sauce, fermented garlic, kefir, pickled Japanese plums - umeboshi - all the stinky foods are good for you! Fermented foods are made by allow micro-organisms to breakdown the carbohydrates and protein in foods. Fermentation takes time and the results brim with healthy substances (fermentation is able to enrich food with protein, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids and vitamins) and fantastic active cultures, including the "pro-biotics" family of microbes. For instance, in kimchi, sauerkraut and yoghurt, you get tons of the "live cultures" like lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.Traditional and MODERN medicine suggests a mindboggling list of health benefits from these microbies, including but not limited to - decreasing the presence of "bad" bacteria in the gut, immune support, adsorption and assimilation of nutrients (so you can build muscles!), prevention of bowel irritability and inflammation and reduction of lactose intolerance. Not just that - fermented cabbage (like in kimchi and unpasteurized sauerkraut), has phytochemicals that can change estrogen metabolism in a way that could reduce cancer risk, phytochemicals with anti-inflammatory effects, are stuffed with super-power antioxidants and contain a high proportion of vitamins and minerals at a low amount of calories. Fermentation is one of the few ways of processing food that actually adds nutritive value to food. So what should we do? Jazz up your lean, healthy diet by adding some lip-puckering, tangy, natural fermented foods a couple of times a week. It will for wonders upping the "fun" factor of your meals! HOWEVER - you've got the get the "real" fermented stuff (and the yoghurt you eat should be natural, no sugar added!). NOT the fake factory-made stuff that's been salted, soaked with chemicals then packaged and shipped to your supermarket. Make an effort to buy the authentic stuff. Here are a few tasty suggestions: Make kimchi omelettes or toss some into your salad - beats practically every single salad dressing! Top your boiled eggs with traditionally fermented, no-additives soy sauce and pepper Have sauerkraut on the side with your chicken - very tasty! I'll end by telling you a scary ole story from my own childhood: When I was a kid, my mom did the freakiest thing ever. She would gather durian pulp (if you don't know what a durian is, you can look it up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian) , salt it down and pack it away into glass jars. When I had finally forgotten those jars even existed, she'd draw one out from the depths of the fridge. My mom would happily smear the salted, fermented, rather odorous yellow gunk over her dinner rice. How did it taste? I don't know - I didn't dare to eat it! But I wish I had. Why? After all, I've learnt how good fermented foods are!
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