by Andy Gricevich, Newsletter Writer
Resolution season returns. Every January many of us do a lot of reflection and set intentions to do things differently. In our culture these promises generally center on self-care, especially on what we put directly into our bodies. Often we emphasize abstinence. We drink less caffeine or alcohol. We cut calories, carbs, sugar or fat. Alternatively, we resolve to feed ourselves more of what we need to maximize our physical and emotional fitness. It’s striking how many of our resolutions have to do with which fluids we do or don’t drink. With the ever-expanding and ever-changing kaleidoscope of dietary trends, fads, and nutritional perspectives comes an explosion of beverages marketed as health-promoting alternatives to whatever we may have been drinking. Here’s a thimbleful of the ocean of currently available possibilities—most of which can be found at your Co-op.
LIVE CULTURES
The fermentation revival, while decades old now, hasn’t stopped growing, and expanding popular awareness of the value of living microbial cultures in our food and drink. It’s clearer than ever that the health of our gut affects our overall well-being in countless ways, from our immune responses to our emotional resilience. Gut health depends on a thriving population of beneficial bacteria, and it’s commonly claimed that foods and drinks rich in microbes with similar biology help support that population. Research has shown that most of the bacteria and yeasts we consume actually don’t survive in our gut—but that they benefit us in a variety of less direct ways, thanks to their high vitamin and antioxidant content, the ways they make nutrients more accessible to our bodies, and their ability to carry genetic information, tweaking the ways our bodies respond to their environments. That’s in addition to centuries of anecdotal evidence for their role in immune support and their role in most traditional, healthy diets. Drinks containing live bacterial cultures have been treated as health tonics for a long time, and many of the older recipes have been making a strong comeback.
Kombucha spearheaded this revival. Originating in China around 220 B.C. and eventually making its way to Russia, kombucha is a sweetened tea fermented by a very complex and diverse symbiotic community of bacteria and yeasts (or SCOBY). Typically fizzy (thanks to a secondary fermentation in the bottle), kombucha can be sweeter or more sour and vinegar-ey. It’s often infused with fruit and/or medicinal herbs to modulate its flavor and diversify its benefits. Many people joyfully credit kombucha with a role in their enhanced well-being. The potential downside, depending on your dietary choices, is that it typically contains a fairly large amount of sugar (about a third to one half that of a can of soda). Sugar is necessary for the kombucha fermentation process; the longer the fermentation (and thus the sourer the end result), the more sugar has been consumed by the SCOBY and transformed into alcohol, acids and carbon dioxide. Kombucha is easy to make at home, and there are also plenty of options to purchase it ready-made, including local producers Nessala and Rude Brew.
Tepache is a fizzy drink based on fermented pineapple cores and rinds. It originated in Mexico around 4,000 years ago. De la Calle adds a variety of other fruit juices and botanicals to their tepache to produce a line of refreshing, low-sugar, probiotic-rich beverages. Kvass comes from Russia, and is most famously made by fermenting red beets. Angelica’s Garden, a stalwart local fermentation business, also offers a bracing lime version. Companies like Farmhouse Culture produce other vegetable-based fermented beverages, more or less drawing on the tradition of drinking the brine left over from making foods like sauerkraut.
When it comes to dairy, kefir reigns supreme among fermented beverages. Traditional, homemade kefir can’t be put on grocery store shelves; its fermentation is active enough to produce enough carbon dioxide to explode bottles. Commercial kefir, while considerably lower in microbial diversity (around ten strains of bacteria and yeasts, versus approximately 40 in homemade), is still extraordinarily rich in live, active cultures. The microbes, as in other fermented foods, feed on sugars–in this case, lactose–and consume enough of it that even some lactose-intolerant folks can drink kefir. Enthusiasts report better digestion and a mild energy boost, and love it as a base for smoothies.
Then there’s live-culture (unpasteurized) vinegar. Many people swear by a daily shot of Bragg’s, the most famous producer of live apple cider vinegar, or ACV. Bragg’s also produces a line of ACV-based bottled drinks (including water, maple syrup and fruit and herbal components) for those who find straight vinegar a bit too much. Research suggests that vinegar lowers blood sugar, and may help support the immune system. Its acidity also encourages salivation, which makes for more thorough digestion.
In combination with fruit juice, herbs, and sweeteners like honey and maple syrup, vinegar is also the basis for shrubs, like those made by women-owned Wisconsin companies Mad Maiden and Siren Shrub. Originating in 17th-century England and popular during the early years of the United States, shrubs have made a strong comeback in recent years, due to their bracing balance of sweet and sour flavors, their appeal as a way to preserve nutritious plant materials, and their versatility in both boozy and non-alcoholic drinks. Mad Maiden produces their own vinegar; Siren also offers a line of sparkling shrub drinks. Both local producers source their ingredients from regional growers, and are deeply invested in the Wisconsin foodshed.
PREBIOTICS
Recently, apple cider vinegar has been touted by some for its claimed prebiotic benefits. Our gut bacteria have favorite foods, and they especially love certain kinds of dietary fiber. When we consume these prebiotics, we’re setting up the basic conditions for a healthy gut population. As their importance becomes a matter of wider public knowledge, we’re starting to see prebiotics show up as supplements–and as fun sparkling sodas that derive their fiber from a range of plant sources.
The Poppi brand uses ACV as its source; it has some prebiotic content due to residual amounts of pectin, the type of fiber found in apples that’s also used to give jellies and jams a firm set. Compared to an actual apple, the amount of pectin in ACV is pretty minimal; the fiber content of Poppi isn’t significant enough to make it onto the label. Olipop, on the other hand, uses cassava, chicory root, marshmallow root and sunchoke for their high content of inulin—a particularly important prebiotic. Their drinks contain a significant percentage of the recommended daily allowance of fiber, and inulin is known to slow down the metabolization of sugar. That’s a good thing, since both brands add sugar for sweetness (some Olipop varieties use stevia as an alternative), and sweeteners in general are thought to have some adverse effects on gut health. That said—and without forgetting that whole plant foods remain the best sources of prebiotic fiber—both brands contain a fraction of the sugar found in conventional sodas, and none of the arcane chemicals, while being tasty enough to satisfy the hankering for a can of sweet, fizzy refreshment.
JUICE
Juice is nothing new. Using it as a main strategy to get more fruits and veggies into our diet, though, is a fairly new phenomenon. Recent years have seen a huge boom in the number of companies offering cold-pressed, fresh fruit and vegetable juices, making it easier than ever to go on the juice fasts and cleanses that are so popular every January.
Drinking juice can provide huge doses of beneficial phytonutrients (antioxidant chemicals found in plants), well in excess of what you’re likely to get in a single meal. The downside of juicing is that it leaves behind the skin and flesh of the plant, essentially removing all its fiber. Without fiber to slow down the metabolic processes of digestion, juice (especially fruit juice) can lead to quick spikes in blood sugar, which isn’t healthy in the long term. It’s the interaction between fibers, fats, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals that makes whole plant foods as nutritious as they are.
In the short term, juice cleanses and fasts are demonstrably beneficial. Juice can also be a wonderfully beneficial and delicious part of one’s diet–as long as it’s not meant as a replacement for whole fruits and vegetables. In any case, a glass of sunshine and chlorophyll in the coldest month can certainly lift spirits and enliven the palate.
BOTANICALS AND HEALTHFUL INFUSIONS
All kinds of herbal beverages are available these days to help support mood regulation, immune functioning and more. Sparkling Botanicals is a new line of drinks produced by Milwaukee’s Rishi Tea Company, a widely-loved distributor of fine teas and herbs. Their effervescent, unsweetened offerings (some containing true, cavitated tea and some not) include a range of health-promoting ingredients like elderberry, schisandra berry, dandelion and ginger. Beverages featuring yerba mate (a tea-like plant from South America) and matcha (a special form of Japanese green tea) continue to be popular for their stimulant effects (gentler than coffee) and their phytochemical components. GTs, one of the most prominent national kombucha companies, produces Alive Mushroom Elixir, an effervescent concoction based on an infusion of chaga, reishi and turkey tail, three of the most highly regarded medicinal mushrooms. Mixed with true tea (giving it a significant caffeine content), maple syrup, stevia and erythritol (plant-derived sugar substitutes), as well as additional flavorings, it makes for an earthy, roostsy, delicious beverage.
Numerous companies now offer canned drinks meant to help promote calm and alleviate anxiety. Mad Tasty infuses sparkling water with hemp extract, CBD and assorted fruit flavors. Hop Wtr manufactures calming beverages that include (of course) hops–which can help soothe the nervous system–as well as L-Theanine (a compound found in tea and some mushrooms, thought to improve mental functioning) and ashwagandha, an herb taken to support the adrenal system. Hoplark offers a sparkling hop tea infused with calming chamomile. This versatile and flavorful vine, easy to grow sustainably, is coming back into its own as more than just a flavoring for IPAs. All this comes in an era of burgeoning creativity in the crafting of non-alcoholic beers (many of which also include mellowing herbal additives) and remarkably successful dealcoholized wines and liquor.
For immune support, several traditional concoctions remain beloved and useful, and one can easily find recipes for using many of them in mixed drinks. Hot toddy, classically a mixture of hot water, honey, lemon and whiskey, can be easily made at home with or without the booze. The base mix on the shelves at your Co-op (made in-house) boasts the addition of a lot of ginger, making it even better to help knock out a cold. Versions of toddy are also made with fire cider. A longstanding traditional preparation in herbal medicine, fire cider has a variety of recipes. Most involve garlic, horseradish, ginger, hot peppers and other immune-supportive food plants, steeped for a good long time in ACV and mixed with raw honey. Many producers offer a version of fire cider, including Milwaukee’s Tippecanoe Herbs and Madison’s What Got Gathered.
Elderberry syrup typically combines native black elderberry juice with raw honey, often with the addition of some ACV for balanced flavor and better preservation. Elderberry has been studied for its immune-supportive effects, particularly its ability to suppress reproduction of the flu virus. Most folks simply take a tablespoon or two per day as a supplement, but it’s also showing up frequently in cocktails and mocktails, and elderberry juice is an ingredient in many of the kombuchas, sparkling teas and botanical sodas appearing on the shelves these days.
For warming up in cold weather and boosting immunity, golden milk is an old Ayurvedic recipe from India with many small variations. All contain hot milk (or “alternative milks”), turmeric and black pepper. Usually there’s ginger, honey, and coconut oil included as well. Turmeric, with its high content of curcumin, is widely praised for antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer and other properties; black pepper renders it more available to our bodies. You can make it at home, or find ready-made mixes in powdered form.
DRINK HEALTHY
Whether we’re drawn to the asceticism of a radical cleansing, mental and bodily support in a season of chill darkness, flu and colds, or an established habit without the hangover, there are more options than ever when it comes to healthy (or at least healthier) drinks. Producers are drawing on traditional methods and knowledge, nutritional discoveries, and culinary creativity to radically expand the range of liquid possibilities. Whatever the motivation–a few long, scant weeks worth of “Dry January,” a major dietary overhaul, or simply a hankering for a novel sip–there’s likely a fluid for your flow.