What do cheese, sourdough, and yogurt have in common? Microbes! In this episode, postdoc Veronica Marie Sinotte from Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics, University of Copenhagen takes us on a journey through the ancient art (and science) of fermentation—how humans stumbled upon "controlled rot," why our ancestors relied on it for survival, and what modern research says about its impact on gut health. Could your microbiome be shaping your cravings? And are some of the world’s stinkiest foods actually good for you?
Your hosts are PhD Christina Lehmkuhl Noer and Professor Tom Gilbert. Sound and recording by Christian Grimes Schmidt from Centre for Online and Blended Learning and editing by Christina Lehmkuhl Noer and Ella Zoe Lattenkamp.
The Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics and this podcast are generously funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.
00:00:00 Veronica Sinotte
There's lots of different things. It creates connection, community, awareness of where your food comes from. It might be tastier, and maybe all those things that overall benefit your health.
00:00:13 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Welcome to another episode of Microbial Connections, where my co-host Tom and I, we will talk to experts about their fascinating research on the connection between microbes.
00:00:25 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
My name is Christina Noer.
00:00:27 Tom Gilbert
And I'm Tom Gilbert and we're both at the Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics in Copenhagen and today we're excited because we've asked our colleague, Dr Veronica Sinotte, to join us to talk about the importance of fermented foods in shaping our microbiome, as well as to dive into some other interesting aspects about fermented foods.
00:00:47 Veronica Sinotte
Thank you.
00:00:48 Tom Gilbert
And what do you have with you in front of you?
00:00:49 Veronica Sinotte
So today I have brought three different types of yoghurt, so this fermented food made of milk and would as to firsttaste, some of these yoghurts.
00:01:02 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
So you have. Exciting.
00:01:03 Veronica Sinotte
You have them in three cups with no identification on them, but numbers, so I'd like you to taste yoghurt #1.
00:01:13 Veronica Sinotte
Sour a nice light acidity.
00:01:16 Veronica Sinotte
Light texture.
00:01:17 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Not very thick.
00:01:19 Veronica Sinotte
Once you feel like you've tasted that sufficiently and gotten all your tasting notes down bit chalky, I have quite a sour after taste in my mouth.
00:01:25 Tom Gilbert
Chalky with that black? Yeah.
00:01:29 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
OK, #2.
00:01:31 Veronica Sinotte
All right. And then #2 and free field to compare this so #1?
00:01:35 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Thick texture. This reminds me of the Danish Uma.
00:01:41 Tom Gilbert
It's less sour. It's one salty slightly.
00:01:43 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, it's a bit salty. I think it's like a cost strong acidity compared to the last one. You like it better? OK.
00:01:47 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
I like it better than the first one.
00:01:51 Veronica Sinotte
And then the third one, let's give it a taste that comes from the Danish grocery store.
00:01:56 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
It's even thicker again.
00:01:57 Tom Gilbert
Less dense maybe?
00:02:00 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah. So the texture is definitely different.
00:02:02 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
I like this one.
00:02:03 Veronica Sinotte
As well, I like this one. This one is my favourite. I think it's my favourite.
00:02:07 Veronica Sinotte
Well, I think it has more round acidity. I feel the acidity on all of the parts, more parts of my tongue. Do you think it it smells different or has a stronger or lesser?
00:02:17 Tom Gilbert
There's a familiar lesson. Having caveat there, I did have COVID like 6 times almost.
00:02:27 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Thats impressive 6 times.
00:02:29 Veronica Sinotte
Wow. OK, I'd like to reveal the identities of these yoghurts. Yes, so you can. So the first is your normal yoghurt and it's made from what they called yoghurt culture.
00:02:34 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Please do.
00:02:43 Veronica Sinotte
So this means it has two types of bacteria, Lactobacillus del bronchi, bulk carrot cus and streptococcus thermophilus. This is a very standard yoghurt, and then #2A Odata Alva, so a 38.
00:02:58 Veronica Sinotte
And this is made of of some more microbes, so that it's a bit more diverse. So they have what they called melkasseur culture.
00:03:06 Veronica Sinotte
Which is what you use to make cannon milk buttermilk.
00:03:11 Veronica Sinotte
So maybe this is something like Lactobacillus to bronchie bulk carraccase or lactococcus lactus. There's many fancy names for these bacteria, right? And then they have their famous Lactobacillus acetophyllus. So this is this bacteria that makes it really strong and acidic.
00:03:28 Veronica Sinotte
And it gives it its name and then finally we have Cultura yoghurt which was #3 and this has.
00:03:35 Veronica Sinotte
Many different types of bacteria in it, so we have one Lactobacillus to monkey bacteria us to streptococcus thermophilus normal yoghurt bacteria 3 Lactobacillus acetophyllis which is in the 8 number 28 of trava Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus KCR. Can you?
00:03:54 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Actually read all these names.
00:03:56 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Good. When you buy it. Is it on there or do you have to Google it and?
00:04:02 Veronica Sinotte
I think it might have been all of the names that were on it, but sometimes they just say yoga culture. Yeah, or sour milk culture. Milk is your culture. It's because the FAO, the United Nations organisation that runs all the food kind of roles and legislation.
00:04:21 Veronica Sinotte
Has decided that to call something yoghurt you must have two different microbes in it. Lactobacillus do bronchi, bokericus that's number one and this other one streptococcus thermophilus.
00:04:32 Veronica Sinotte
At a certain amount of bacteria in a certain acidity. So maybe that's why they don't have the exact scientific names. All of them.
00:04:39 Tom Gilbert
The name of Garakas is actually pretty fascinating, because what I know of you and your research, you are very much interested in Bulgarian yoghurt.
00:04:48 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
And you. You brought something else as well for us today, yes.
00:04:51 Veronica Sinotte
Yes. So on this just here on the table, I also have a small container that has yoghurt in it and that is a yoghurt that came from Bulgaria.
00:05:02 Veronica Sinotte
And most likely has Lactobacillus or bronchi bulgaricus in it, and I didn't make it for you today because it takes a bit of time to to make a firm mount.
00:05:14 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Can we smell it?
00:05:15 Veronica Sinotte
Yes, you may open it and smell it.
00:05:17 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Just to see if the smell is different from them, the one from the stores smells of yoghurt. Do you want to smell?
00:05:24 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, and it tastes of yoghurt. I think it's just a little bit more acidic.
00:05:25 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
It's smells kind of similar.
00:05:29 Tom Gilbert
Yeah, I see. Vinegary to.
00:05:31 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
It, but it's also the start of this one, right, so it's not.
00:05:31 Veronica Sinotte
Yes. Yeah. So it could be a bit old. So that's interesting. You say it's a bit vinegary.
00:05:39 Veronica Sinotte
This yoghurt, where did the bacteria not come from? This comes from a household in Bulgaria that has made yoghurt for generations, so it could have actually some more different types of of bacteria in it than what might be in the grocery store.
00:05:55 Veronica Sinotte
And a little bit less finely controlled in a scientific way, but there's a lot of wisdom and knowing behind that yoghurt because it's controlled by.
00:06:04 Veronica Sinotte
The taste of the woman that made it, who is about 70 or 80 years old and that knows what good yoghurt tastes like.
00:06:11 Tom Gilbert
So this particular culture has been maintained for decades or longer in the House and slowly changing, and I guess as you say, possibly getting more diverse, which is interesting because the three yoghurts you gave us to start with the third one, which was actually my favourite 1 was.
00:06:25 Tom Gilbert
A more diverse microbial culture. Right? So, so one might one expects to taste more like that third one or.
00:06:32 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, perhaps it does taste a bit like it, and it may be a bit more diverse, but it also could have changed since I've been making it in my own home. According to my own tastes, right? And my own microbes that might get in there.
00:06:48 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
But can you say that there's like a general not rule, but that the more microbes that are in the yoghurt, the better it tastes or the more full taste it has?
00:06:59 Veronica Sinotte
Hmm, that's a hard thing to to say for certain, right? Because sometimes.
00:07:03 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Yeah.
00:07:04 Veronica Sinotte
You may have two really delicious microbes that make really delicious food, and then you add in a few more, and then you get some more.
00:07:14 Veronica Sinotte
Different acids and compounds that give it that different aroma even.
00:07:19 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Before we talk more about yoghurt and the cultures, I would like to just let us define like what is fermented foods because I know it's it's more than just yoghurt.
00:07:30 Veronica Sinotte
Yes. So a fermented food is any food transformed by microorganisms in it. Some people call it controlled rot. In the case of this yoghurt, it was just milk before we added microbes. In this case bacteria. So is cheese. Cheese is just milk. Before you start to add.
00:07:31 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
So yeah.
00:07:51 Veronica Sinotte
Different microbes, bacteria and fungi to make it, and sourdough bread, for example, is just water and flour. And then you add thyme and microorganisms.
00:08:01 Veronica Sinotte
There is definitely this aspect of deliberation in this you are adding microbes to that right.
00:08:14 Tom Gilbert
And I could, I mean, going back to your Bulgarian source, I know they now deliberately added, but I mean, where did this process start? How long has it been going on for? Do these microbes come from?
00:08:16 Veronica Sinotte
Well, I guess there's two stories you can tell with yoghurt. So the first one is where does this bacteria Lactobacillus to bronchi bulgaricus come from? That's in all restrains.
00:08:26 Veronica Sinotte
So in the late 1800s, early 1900s, scientists named Ellie Metchnikoff went to Bulgaria, and he was fascinated with the people there, their food, and that they were really robust and strong. They lived a long time.
00:08:41 Veronica Sinotte
And he said it must be their food. What are they eating? They're eating a lot of yoghurt. So this microbiologist isolated some of the first bacteria from yoghurt and brought it back to the Pasture Institute where he studied it and named it Lactobacillus del bronchi bogaricus after Bulgaria.
00:08:59 Veronica Sinotte
And this got really popular and you started promoting the consumption of yoghurt used to be able to buy it at the at the pharmacy and then this became popular in western societies or more industrialised societies. So that's the first story of where, where is your yoghurt come from?
00:09:14 Veronica Sinotte
But actually there's a second one, and it's that we've been eating yoghurt or not we but our ancestors maybe have been eating yoghurt for thousands of years, so it's actually very old. When did we start consuming milk that was maybe about 10,000 years ago. If you talk to some archaeologists.
00:09:33 Veronica Sinotte
And their guess is that we've probably started fermenting that milk one way or another quite quickly after that.
00:09:40 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Do you think it was a way that they used to preserve their food back in those days or?
00:09:47 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, definitely. So once these microbes get in the food, in this case, they're acidifying it, right? We said the yoghurt was tangy and delicious.
00:09:57 Veronica Sinotte
But that tanniness that acid prevents other microbes that maybe would be pathogens or cause spoilage from entering into the ferment. So it's absolutely number one way of preservation, where our ancestral ferments, were they delicious.
00:10:13 Veronica Sinotte
Not sure, but they probably helped preserve the food and that was a huge advantage as you have surpluses of milk surpluses of grain.
00:10:21 Veronica Sinotte
And I think it's one of the reasons it became really important in society.
00:10:25 Tom Gilbert
So do you. Was it a deliberate process? You think? I mean, how do you think these initial ferments started right back at the start, it was just a milk was left out and went tangy and they?
00:10:34 Veronica Sinotte
Like the taste or? Yeah, I think that's probably how it happened.
00:10:39 Veronica Sinotte
Sometimes you leave some milk out and it starts to clot and gets a bit sour. And those are microbes at work. I wouldn't advise to do that at home.
00:10:49 Veronica Sinotte
But yeah, how? How did these microbes get into our food thousands of years ago?
00:10:53 Veronica Sinotte
I mean, it could have even been on the utters of the cows, right, and we have lactic acid bacteria in US cows. Have it in them. Could some of the cow microbes gotten into the milk and started fermenting it in that process, for example?
00:11:08 Tom Gilbert
But it's interesting what you say about the preservation and the keeping out the pathogens because I guess I mean there are a wide range of ferments out there and I guess.
00:11:18 Tom Gilbert
Once you view it as a controlled rot, I guess it could in theory raise a worry about when deferments become problematic, right? I mean, can anybody put milk out and it'll become a yoghurt? Or is there a risk it could get infected with something else and and kill you or so on so it's quite a fascinating thought process.
00:11:35 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, but I would think it happened through trial and error. It became part of culture and part of history and that kind of fermentation process just like maybe it's a bit of trial and error foraging for plants in the forest. But.
00:11:52 Veronica Sinotte
So what you should and shouldn't eat, or what tastes good and what taste off and go with your gut.
00:12:01 Veronica Sinotte
We can. We can talk about what that means later. It has a lot of meaning behind it. The phrase, but like, go with your instincts. Right? Does it smell like it might be taste OK, or does it smell rotten? Does it smell off? I think that's something I've learned from.
00:12:17 Veronica Sinotte
People that make ferment professionally either from their heritage or from working at a really fancy restaurant.
00:12:22 Veronica Sinotte
Restaurant they're not going in and sequencing all the microbes to see exactly what's there like we are. They just go and taste it, and it might be smell, even funky. And they'll just have give it a little smell and give it a tiny tiny taste and say, oh, no, we shouldn't eat that. It's they trust their tongue and they trust their nose, right?
00:12:42 Tom Gilbert
Interestingly, because one of the ideas of what smells and tastes we find unpleasant is because there's somehow associated with chemicals which are toxic, right, which then raises questions about how people can possibly eat things like sustuming. I believe it's called these very horrendously fermented fish. Right? Or?
00:12:50 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah.
00:12:58 Tom Gilbert
Or those cheeses that you unwrap and you get hit by this.
00:13:02 Tom Gilbert
This wall of smell. So. So it is it is certainly very interesting to me that you can of course use your senses to detect what might be toxic, but sometimes people seem to be going towards that flavour, right?
00:13:11 Tom Gilbert
Yeah, it's it's a complex relationship.
00:13:13 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Maybe it's an acquired taste that you get used to generations.
00:13:16 Tom Gilbert
Well, that was actually my question is yes. So I mean I'm I'm curious about when they started fermenting, you've already mentioned there are benefits for preserving food, right? But I guess at some point then?
00:13:27 Tom Gilbert
It does transition into an acquired taste that some people prefer, for example, or.
00:13:32 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, absolutely. So it could be a necessity of preservation. You need to preserve your shark you caught or something like this. But it kind of comes to the question, how do tastes form?
00:13:43 Veronica Sinotte
Some researchers, not myself, have studied that even some of the foods that the mother eats, the child in the womb will start to have taste preferences according to what the mother is eating.
00:13:54 Veronica Sinotte
And then what about your community, right? If everyone in your community thinks that this food is delicious and you eat it from childhood, that could be an essential part of shaping tastes and preference and food preference.
00:14:08 Veronica Sinotte
And then finally, there's some really interesting discussion now about how much your gut microbiome microbes living inside you, how they could.
00:14:17 Veronica Sinotte
Shape your taste preferences. The gut microbiome, the one that lives inside you, is shaped by your mom. It is shaped by your community. It's shaped by what you eat, so there's lots of things that could shape a taste, yeah.
00:14:30 Tom Gilbert
Mean that's.
00:14:30 Tom Gilbert
Fascinating idea that your gut microbes may even be conditioned you to want to eat more things like them, which I guess it makes sense in an ecological point of view because you'd want to base you fill the community with things that you need or that are similar to you. So.
00:14:42 Tom Gilbert
Crazy.
00:14:42 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah. Or your mouth microbes, right? We have generally the same microbes in our mouth, but there's a big difference, a bit of a difference from person to person. And this is something that researchers are also really excited about. Now starting to think about. Could it already be in our mouths that, you know, the microbes are shaping how we taste food?
00:15:00 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Wow. So do we know anything about the benefits of eating fermented foods you were telling us how?
00:15:08 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
So the Bulgarian people seem very fit and healthy and maybe that it could be something in the yoghurt they were eating or do we know anything?
00:15:18 Veronica Sinotte
About that, yes. So that's the observation from Ellie Metznikoff.
00:15:24 Veronica Sinotte
You know, 120 years ago, it does have some basis in science is what we're starting to learn today. So there's been studies that have compared people and and how healthy they themselves and essentially their gut microbiome can become from eating more fermented.
00:15:40 Veronica Sinotte
And they've compared that to plant based diet of diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Right. So we have the fruit and vegetable diet and we're comparing that to the ferment diet.
00:15:50 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Yeah, because the food and vegetable diet is also supposedly good for your.
00:15:54 Veronica Sinotte
Yes, and definitely is healthy and they still these researchers still believe that's absolutely healthy, but they were curious about these ferments. This is research out of Stanford University. They found that the people that were eating like 6 fermented foods quite a lot a day, they're.
00:15:55 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Yeah.
00:16:10 Veronica Sinotte
Gut microbiome was actually slightly more diverse, which is kind of a marker of how healthy your gut microbiome is.
00:16:16 Veronica Sinotte
Compared to those that were just eating a diet rich in plant foods, right in fruits and vegetables, and then some of their markers, I think certain immune markers looked a bit healthier. So maybe it was helping the immune system. What we're learning is, yes, ferments could be healthy and they could promote your health and your gut health.
00:16:36 Veronica Sinotte
But this is still new research and is ongoing, so just what?
00:16:39 Veronica Sinotte
We.
00:16:39 Veronica Sinotte
Be eating how much and exactly how healthy they are.
00:16:43 Veronica Sinotte
Has yet to be fully understood right? We shouldn't be drinking 4 pints of beer and calling it a fermented food and thinking it's healthy.
00:16:48 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
No.
00:16:53 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
I was wondering So what is the difference between these homemade yoghurts and then the ones you brought today from the stores? It sounds like there must be so many more diverse microbes in the ones that you.
00:17:07 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
The homemade.
00:17:08 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Is that true or yeah I understand.
00:17:10 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah, that definitely is the case. So people have surveyed yoghurt from households around Bulgaria, for example, and they found that there's more diversity in these yoghurts. There's more different strains or species of this lactic acid bacteria, different types of lactic acid bacteria.
00:17:28 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Do you think that that they are still equally beneficial or do you think if I had the time to make my own yoghurt, it would be better for my gut microbiome than buying the?
00:17:39 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Stores.
00:17:40 Veronica Sinotte
I don't know.
00:17:42 Veronica Sinotte
Think that's the right answer? As a scientist to say I don't know until there's really good scientific evidence for it.
00:17:46 Tom Gilbert
But I guess you could argue there's a more unique flavour, so if I I know there's like a movement to like try and getting new flavours you haven't tried before. This explains maybe some of the beer flavours that are appearing and so on, so I guess.
00:18:01 Tom Gilbert
If you're driven by sensation and unique sensations, then it would of course make sense to make.
00:18:06 Veronica Sinotte
It yourself? Yeah. So I totally advocate eating ferments. I think it's even better if you can make them yourselves. It's a lot of fun, right? I think you can get some unique flavours. You get to know your ferment.
00:18:18 Veronica Sinotte
There's lots of different things. It creates connection, community, awareness of where your food comes from. It might be tastier, and maybe all those things that overall benefit your health.
00:18:30 Tom Gilbert
You've already mentioned that a benefit of eating fermented foods is one has maybe a more diverse gut microbiome, which presumably both confer some kind of resistance to invasion from patients, but also just gives you the ability to produce many things you.
00:18:41 Tom Gilbert
Need are.
00:18:43 Tom Gilbert
Times in your life when it could be particularly beneficial to increase fermented foods, and there are times when it might be dangerous to eat them as well.
00:18:50 Veronica Sinotte
I think as a healthy adult, it's a good thing that would be beneficial potentially for your diet and a lot of fun and add new flavours to your life. And as your age.
00:18:58 Tom Gilbert
Which for example.
00:18:59 Tom Gilbert
You've had antibiotics, for example. Is that a time when it might make sense to very consciously add them to your?
00:19:04 Veronica Sinotte
Body or yeah, I think if you're trying to boost your microbial diversity, where studies have found that eating fermented foods can help the microbes in your gut make your gut more diverse. That's.
00:19:15 Veronica Sinotte
To to eat some extra ferments so often you might be prescribed probiotics in addition to having antibiotic dose. I mean what we have sitting on the table. These yoghurts are natural probiotics and you certainly don't have to take them in the pill form and this.
00:19:31 Veronica Sinotte
Form.
00:19:32 Veronica Sinotte
Even better, I think, than the pill form, because it also has all these chemicals that microbes produce that are actually really helpful for generating diversity in your gut, right?
00:19:44 Tom Gilbert
So.
00:19:44 Tom Gilbert
World speculation here. There's a lot of interest in personalised medicine these days. Tailoring medicines for people and treatments for people and.
00:19:52 Tom Gilbert
Could you imagine a future where there's some kind of like personalised or tailored fermentation solutions, right. Do you think this is an area worth exploring or is it someone of these areas is so complex that probably.
00:20:06 Tom Gilbert
It's not possible or it's just not worth doing because it's just fine eating the regular fermented stuff.
00:20:12 Veronica Sinotte
Think it is really complex and hard to answer because we're still figuring out just how our own gut microbiomes work and recognising. Of course, it's very personal.
00:20:24 Veronica Sinotte
But to think about this trend of personalised medicine, which I think is the future, it could be that you are kind of tailoring your kombucha to have certain bacteria on it based on whatever your stool sample says.
00:20:39 Veronica Sinotte
And your health conditions are there'd be some questions in there. Is that really the right microbe that would interact with your gut also with your own human genes and genomes?
00:20:48 Veronica Sinotte
And kind of that phenotype that you have with your microbes and then is it getting to your gut right and like is it passing through your stomach and really getting into where it might, you might want to have this microbial interaction so.
00:21:03 Veronica Sinotte
You can imagine maybe something in a capsule would be released at a certain time in your intestinal tract. That might be more beneficial if you really want specific delivery to a specific place where specific microbes.
00:21:15 Veronica Sinotte
Live, whereas special kombucha would have to pass through your mouth, and those microbes in your stomach and the microbes and acidity before it gets to your small intestine, for example.
00:21:27 Tom Gilbert
But think it's super interesting point about whether the microbes affect your go through, because actually we imagine when we eat our yoghurt that we've taken a lot of microbes that somehow establish inside us and do things. But it may be that if you eat a nice micro rich diet already because you eat ferment, you've got such a robust microbial system that whatever you take just goes straight through, right?
00:21:46 Tom Gilbert
And which actually would then advocate for eating as many of them as you can, because then you've got this kind of nice permanent diversity of them. So it's fascinating. So going back to fermentation in this. So there's this benefit for food preservation. There's very good evidence as benefits for your body or so.
00:22:03 Tom Gilbert
And I'm kind of curious, what do we know about the history of it? Like, so you mentioned it comes out of Bulgaria, the yoghurt for example.
00:22:10 Tom Gilbert
I mean further back in time you mentioned it might be quite ancient. Is it a human thing only? I mean, what do we know about maybe the origins of fermentation or the exploitation of fermentation?
00:22:20 Veronica Sinotte
So there's been some really cool research coming out from Catherine Amato's lab.
00:22:26 Veronica Sinotte
Where her and her students have been observing monkeys or actually primarily.
00:22:31 Veronica Sinotte
Inmates in the forest and they see that sometimes they intentionally knock down fruits and and leave them and let them rot a bit. Maybe get a little bubbly or and they'll come back and eat these fermented fruits that most likely have alcohol in them, right? It seems to be something we may have been doing for a long time, and if we actually look at our genome.
00:22:52 Veronica Sinotte
You know, and certain primates that we presumably evolved from, we find that we all have this certain.
00:22:58 Veronica Sinotte
In a kind of mutation change in a gene that allows us to process alcohol better kind of detoxify it. So we're 40 times better at metabolising alcohol US and the primates compared to the rest of the kind of more distantly related monkeys, so.
00:23:16 Veronica Sinotte
It becomes this question. Have we been eating something? Some foods that were fermented for a really long time maybe.
00:23:22 Tom Gilbert
That's pretty awesome. So they actively enjoy eating.
00:23:25 Veronica Sinotte
It, yeah. Or or is it about a resource, right? If we think about this fruit, maybe it's a bit hard or maybe it's not easily digestible.
00:23:36 Veronica Sinotte
Kind of. Wait, when it comes off the tree and and then once the microbes start digesting it, they're they're taking this first step and kind of processing the foods. It was easier for the monkeys to eat.
00:23:47 Tom Gilbert
OK. So that's very interesting. So there's a property of fermentation that's just changing the food and making it easier for your body today is I actually heard the other day somebody's saying sourdough is may be beneficial over non Saturdays because there's some kind of partial digestion of the gluten and you know about that.
00:24:02 Veronica Sinotte
Yes, it's.
00:24:04 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
I guess it it could also be a way for the monkeys to be able to eat the fruits longer, right? So if all the fruits ripe at the same time but they have already a full stomach, then maybe they have an opportunity to stretch the season longer.
00:24:11 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah.
00:24:19 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
They can eat there.
00:24:20 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah. Are they consciously kind of preserving their food, right?
00:24:24 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
Yeah.
00:24:25 Tom Gilbert
I guess it could be argued that making your own yoghurt safer than making your own kombucha or beer, because I managed to explain my kombucha all over my kitchen and my wife nearly threw me out.
00:24:34 Tom Gilbert
Less like to happen with yoghurts.
00:24:37 Tom Gilbert
So I mean, maybe following up on what you said so.
00:24:41 Tom Gilbert
At least.
00:24:41 Tom Gilbert
We live here in Denmark. Do it yourself. Ferment seems to be getting more and more popular, right in restaurants seems to be making more and more out of it. And why? Why is that? You think it's just the health reasons? Or is it just because you think they can do it? It's the uniqueness. What's your feeling behind it?
00:24:56 Veronica Sinotte
Oh, I think it's the the flavour you just talked about that, you know, if you're at home making some different ferments, you might have some different taste or flavours, but.
00:25:06 Veronica Sinotte
Fermentation and the the diversity of microbes that you can use in fermentation. They're like it's like a flavour making machines. They're incredible.
00:25:15 Veronica Sinotte
So you can make things that taste a bit bland, acidic, and you can make them pop, or you can.
00:25:24 Veronica Sinotte
Make things have more of a new mommy taste, for example. So that's kind of like a very rich rounded taste that you got from soy sauce or eating meat. Umami flavours.
00:25:34 Veronica Sinotte
And that makes it incredibly exciting, right? So it dramatically expands the repertoire that these foods and flavours that these chefs can play with and and then they don't have to source.
00:25:48 Veronica Sinotte
Foods from all around the world. I think in this new Nordic cuisine, for example.
00:25:54 Veronica Sinotte
Fermentation has been essential for using local ingredients, but being able to transform them and to have unique flavours so they don't have.
00:26:06 Veronica Sinotte
Import lemons and other citrus fruits, for example, that do not grow in Denmark, but rather they can ferment some other fruits or vegetables or whatever they define to be interesting and give maybe some of these citrus or acidic notes to a dip.
00:26:22 Veronica Sinotte
That's really cool.
00:26:23 Tom Gilbert
That is very cool to ask you a very subjective question. So what to you is maybe the most interesting future research angle with fermentation. If you could do anything, what would?
00:26:35 Veronica Sinotte
You do. I find it incredibly interesting to just go back in time a little bit or go back to some of these.
00:26:42 Veronica Sinotte
Foods that we used to eat.
00:26:44 Veronica Sinotte
And think about why did we make them and where are the microbes coming from? Is it from this old starter culture?
00:26:53 Veronica Sinotte
And then as we have to think about actually making new foods in the future, so maybe our yoghurts won't always be made on cow milk, but they'll be made on plant based milk, pea milk, for example, is the latest thing in Denmark.
00:27:09 Veronica Sinotte
Could some of these microbes and traditions and not knowledge, when it's stewarded carefully, be helpful for rethinking our food system and some of these challenges?
00:27:19 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
I guess it can also help adding umami flavour and like if you wanted to people to eat more vegetarian.
00:27:26 Veronica Sinotte
Yeah. So what companies and researchers?
00:27:30 Veronica Sinotte
And in Denmark and in other countries around the world are are finding is that if we want to have a plant based Patty or a fungi based Patty instead of a beef Patty, a way to make it more delicious.
00:27:46 Veronica Sinotte
Or to represent some of these beef flavours and textures is actually to ferment.
00:27:52 Veronica Sinotte
So they use a fungal based fermentation in most cases where the mycelial grows over whatever the substrate is if it's.
00:28:01 Veronica Sinotte
Cheese or soybeans and then you can make this kind.
00:28:04 Veronica Sinotte
Juicy plant burger that has these umami flavours and things so it can be really important for taking a step forward and eating a plant-based diet in the green transition.
00:28:15 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
That's really cool.
00:28:16 Tom Gilbert
That's very cool.
00:28:17 Christina Lehmkuhl Noer
OK. Thank you so much, Veronica. Thank you so much for spending your time with us here today.