Ask Allie!

Ask Allie is our food-related advice column, where you can ask all your fermenting, cooking, baking, and pantry-related questions to get digestible answers! No question about food is off limits!

Most of you will receive an emailed reply prior to your question hitting the blog, since I frequently think you need a more immediate answer. You should anticipate 1-2 weeks between submitting your question and its appearance on blog. Although emailed replies normally take between 1-3 days, it can take up to a week.

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First question today is a follow-up from John in one of the prior columns:

Thanks Allie, this is very valuable.....

Does this mean that companies like Vivomixx who claim to repopulate the gut within 10 days are wrong?

And do you have experience in repopulating through the use of stomach resistant capsules?

For this to do, I want to dry yogurt to put in the capsules but I am afraid to ruin the culture in the process. Any ideas to do this in a safe way? I have a dryer now that can handle temperatures as low as 30C I live in Ireland, and a lot of things are not so readily available here, so, I have to experiment myself.

— John

Yeah, claims like this are marketing schemes without scientific foundation. The overwhelming majority of probiotics simply aren’t scientifically documented as colonizing types, so what they’re probably really claiming is that w/in 10 days, their product will have laid the foundation for a healthy gut biome to occur naturally. Whether or not that’s possible in 10 days would be highly individualized, and I personally would want to see research to verify their claims (this is what I doubt they have, is the research to support the advertising). It’d be highly individualized (and therefore difficult at best to document) because each person’s body is different, and more importantly, so are the life choices they make that determine what’s going on with their gut biome. 

As an herbalist, when I recommend a client start probiotics, in the overwhelming majority of cases I’ve done so I believe their gut health is in terrible shape and needs serious rehab (I recommend this to a fairly small percentage of my clients; maybe a quarter, despite my belief that everyone can benefit from probiotics). With “needs rehab” as the underlying premise, going hog wild and trying to do everything quickly is not a great plan because the body isn’t primed to handle that. On account of that, I’m only going to say yes to milk kefir to the client if I am 100% positive they’ll be compliant with my recommendations and only consume 1 tablespoon/day for the first 2 weeks to make sure they don’t have an adverse reaction to it. People do have adverse reactions to overloading their systems with probiotics, and when that happens it’s called the Herxheimer Reaction. People can feel quite ill from this, and it’s not something I recommend actively seeking out basically ever. If you’re in the “I want capsules” state, I’m making the assumption (however erroneously) that “needs rehab” is your situation and that your physician has instructed you to work on it. Based on that assumption, going slow is important. Lots of assumptions going on here, as you can see. Please make sure you are doing this under consultation with your physician! 

What I instead tend to recommend, as you seem to be interested in, if the person favors dairy ferments, is yogurt, sour cream, or buttermilk over stout ones like milk kefir. These are transient probiotics, so they won’t colonize at all but rather will create/promote a sort of “nest” where beneficial microbes that do colonize will want to live in the gut. Keep in mind also that in a diet where you’re getting the proper amount of fibre, this is where the all-important prebiotics are coming into play, also priming the gut for beneficial action. Once I see that diet and introduction of milder probiotics has been successful in improving overall health in my clients, that is when I am willing to move over to milk kefir. To me, taking milk kefir before the body is really ready to handle it isn’t much different than taking an opiate when you needed an aspirin, in that it’s overkill. I’m talking about milk kefir specifically because you’re interested in colonizing probiotics, so this to me is a thing you should work toward gradually, starting with the transient yogurts or similar. Once systemic health is improved, then it’s time to consider colonizing probiotics.

In terms of taking capsules, yes you could do that. Your dehydrator goes low enough that it’s fine to dry in (30C really IS fine for thermophilic cultures, but it is NOT fine for mesophilic ones), but I personally just air dry mine (or do it in the fridge if it’s really humid), which takes just a couple or few days. You’d of course need to powder it before it goes in the capsules. May I ask why you’re leaning more toward capsules than integrating the culture into the whole foods portion of your diet? Either way, no this is not going to repopulate your gut, but rather will lay down the foundations for a healthful diet to do it on its own (with or without the addition of probiotics).

I have a few grains that looks pinkish. Are they going bad? I keep them in milk in the fridge and when I use them I add them to soy milk. I had them in the fridge for a while and just started using them again.

— Monique

Probably, as this sounds like mold. Can you send me a picture? Also, you saved backups in the freezer, yes?

Her follow-up:

I don't have a picture, but I will send you one. No, that was the only grains I had. I ordered more grains yesterday.

Thank you for your quick reply.

Most, but not all of the time, pink means toss. That’s mainly why I want to see it, to verify it isn’t one of those times when things are strange but fine. So let’s assume mold until you have time to snap a pic. When the new grains come, grow enough of them to put back 2 portions in the freezer. Like, split them off when there’s enough for one backup (this can be as small as an eighth or quarter teaspoon, if you’re in a hurry, but will initially be making much smaller batches of kefir if so) and get them in the freezer. I once lost some grains I loved to a dropped jar and didn’t have a backup, and I’m still passingly sad about them even though I now have a bunch of different kinds. I just put all my overgrowth in the same bag in the freezer, because if you need some then you can just break off a chunk or grab a cluster if they’re still distinct.

I’m preemptively really sorry this happened, Monique.

I read about using a cold start method for thermophilic yogurt made with UHP milk. Does this also work for mesophilic yogurt? That is with UHP milk can I skip the step of heating the milk to 180 degrees?

— Evelyn

The cold start method is for thermophilic yogurts only. You don’t have to do anything to the milk for a meso except pour it over the culture and mix the culture in. One of the big reasons I love them so much is because I can just grab the milk from the fridge, pour it, mix, come back tomorrow. So no matter what milk you use, no heating is needed for a mesophil (though heating it will result in a thicker yogurt).

Her follow-up:

Allie,

Thanks! I guess my confusion was the instruction "Optional, but highly recommended: Gently heat 4 cups of milk to 180 degrees Fahrenheit and cool to room temperature. (70-78 degrees Fahrenheit)” in https://positivelyprobiotic.com/mesophilic-quark-activation

I wasn’t sure if “highly recommended” was something I should be concerned about. I guess I should just see if it’s really too thin without this step then?

Yeah, it comes “highly recommended” because most people will be expecting a texture that’s similar to what you can buy in the grocery store, and for most mesos you do need to heat and cool the milk to get that. But you’re doing quark, so that really should be fine no matter which route you go.

Lastly, for those of you who observe,