The popularity of fermented products has grown in recent years. And finally science is catching up with age-old knowledge that foods should be medicine! Kombucha, apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut and pickled foods are even appearing on the shelves of the supermarkets...
Most ' standard modern diets' rarely contains these food anymore. We no longer choose foods that taste sour, tangy or bitter - we opt for sweet, sugary, fatty food with little or no fibre.
There's a molecule found inside these foods that is exciting scientists - short chain fatty acids.
SCFAs are molecules produced by bacteria when they ferment dietary components (primarily fibre: non-digestible carbohydrates) inside the colon. Some of these molecules stay close to home in the gut, but others travel far and wide throughout the body, taking part in complex interactions that produce various effects on health.
Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFA) are showing promise in recent studies: links to health conditions of our time including IBD (inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, food allergies, liver disease and cancers. Research is also showing that a diet high in fibres that produce short chain fatty acids. Currently, scientists think the gut microbiota plays a pivotal role in the how fibre benefits health—and it’s mostly thanks to their host of molecular these messengers, SCFAs.
McDowells Products
Many of McDowells products are created by using a fermentation process whereby dried and fresh herbs are combined with raw apple cider vinegar and allowed to ferment for another seven weeks before we press out the beautiful rich liquid, filled with all the wonderful properties of each precious herb. To this we add special herbal extracts that do not steep well in vinegar. The final product is bottled after this blending process. This effectively means that the product is alive as the mother vinegar is still active, retaining all the properties of short chain fatty acids associated with raw Apple Cider Vinegar and super charged with the medicinal properties of each herb.
McDowells Herbal Apple Cider Vinegar products are rich source of short chain fatty acids as well as enzymes which have been linked to these health benefits:
1. Improving mammalian energy metabolism via gut microbiota co-metabolism
2. Helps regulate Cholesterol metabolism which is linked to prostaglandin – essential for immune function and neurological function.
3. Helps to regulate blood sugar and can help aid weight loss
References:
Gijs den Besten et al 2013 September 2013 The Journal of Lipid Research, 54, 2325-2340, Kimberly A. Krautkramer et al April 7, 2017doi: 10.1074/jbc.R116.761577jbc.R116.761577.
