Love your liver

The liver is your largest internal organ and is a vital one with many functions including changing food into energy and cleaning alcohol and other poisons from the blood. Your liver also makes bile, a yellowish-green liquid that helps with digestion and produces 80% of the cholesterol in your body. As such it is necessary for survival and there is currently no way to compensate for absence of liver function. Your liver has so many vital functions if your body was a car then you could consider your liver to be the engine.

It may be a sign that your Liver needs support if you experience any of the following:

• Allergies - sinusitis, hay fever, asthma, dermatitis, hives, etc.
• Bad breath
• Bloating
• Cellulite
• Chronic fatigue
• Coated tongue
• Constipation
• Fatigue
• Fibromyalgia
• Haemmorhoids
• Hayfever
• Headaches
• Indigestion
• Irritable bowel
• Itchy skin
• Psoriasis
• Reflux
• Skin rashes & inflammations
• Sneezing
• Sugar cravings
• Excessive sweating

There are over 100 liver diseases but your liver has a remarkable ability to repair itself and create new healthy liver tissue. Damage from liver diseases such as hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, fatty liver disease, and alcohol-related liver disease can be repaired, but when the onslaught of poisons is too prolonged and too great, the liver will succumb. Liver disease is currently one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S.

Maintaining a healthy liver can be broadly broken down into two steps. Firstly there are things to avoid or carefully manage such as poisons that can affect the liver and secondly there are lifestyle and diet related measures which give your liver everything it needs to perform.

How to avoid damaging your liver

According to the American Liver Foundation there are 5 categories of substances to be careful of regarding liver health and function.

Alcohol

Alcohol is a poison, it can damage or destroy liver cells. Consuming too much alcohol can cause the liver to swell and lead to cirrhosis which is scarring of the liver tissue and cause poor liver function. Limiting the amount of alcohol you drink is the best way to avoid this.

Medications

Medications can have harmful side effects related to the liver, particularly when taken incorrectly in terms of dosage or mixing or taking the wrong type. As there are so many types of medication and medication interactions, learning more about any medicines you take and how they affect your liver is your best defence. Also mixing alcohol and medicines can harm your liver even if they are not taken at the same time.

Chemicals

Chemicals from cleaning and aerosol products, insecticides, paints, and additives in cigarettes must all be removed from your bloodstream by the Liver . It is best to limit your direct contact with these substances as they can injure liver cells.

Chemicals can enter your bloodstream via your skin and your lungs so it pays to wear protective clothing and a mask when you are exposed to them.

Viruses and Pathogens (Personal Hygiene )

Hepatitis A is a liver disease that can be spread when someone does not wash their hands after going to the bathroom and then touches something that you eat.

Excess Fats

Fatty liver disease can be caused through obesity, so here is yet another reason to limit your intake of sugars, empty calories and high GI foods.

Measure your stomach! Run a tape measure around your fully relaxed stomach. If this measurement is not less than 50% of your height it can indicate you are overweight. You can also use a Body Mass Index calculator like the one found on the Weight Watchers website, a BMI over 25 is considered to indicate being overweight and over 30 is generally considered very overweight.

Eat Healthy foods to support your liver

As mentioned earlier your liver has a remarkable ability to repair itself, but there are some lifestyle choices and nutrients which can support your liver and help it to repair damage caused by chemicals, alcohol, medication, viruses and excess fats.

As is often our message the best way to support an organ’s ability to repair itself is to create a healthy environment for it with regular exercise and a healthy diet which includes all the food groups: grains, fruits, vegetables, meat and beans, milk, and oils in balance.

There are some foods which are recognised as particularly useful in supporting the liver and promoting detoxification in your liver.

Garlic is a wonderful food with many health benefits and the sulphur compound called allicin which is produced when garlic is chopped, or chewed is the part which is particularly useful for your liver to help in detoxification. Articles like this one from Disabled World are worth reading to learn more about the many benefits of garlic.

Beets are used to help blood purification and clean up heavy metals

Cruciferous Vegetables such as broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage also help in detoxification of the liver and contain chemicals which can help neutralise some toxins.

Lemons when freshly squeezed in the morning can help cleanse the liver and promote bile production.

Bitter greens like rocket, chicory and endive all help the liver to promote bile production.

Fruits high in antioxidants such as prunes, raisins, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, plums, oranges, pink grapefruit, cantaloupe, apples and pears can help fight free radicals. Free radicals can build up as your liver goes through the normal process of detoxification and antioxidants are useful to help defend the liver and help clean up these harmful free radicals.

Supplementing your diet with Healthy herbs that support your liver

You can further optimise your diet with dietary supplements which offer more concentrated food sourced compounds that have been specifically selected for their liver supporting properties.

Milk Thistle Seed: Contains some of the most potent liver protecting substances known. Prevents free radical damage by acting as an antioxidant, protecting the liver. Also stimulates the production of new liver cells and prevents formation of damaging leukotrienes. Protects the kidneys. Good for all liver disorders, such as jaundice and hepatitis. Also beneficial for psoriasis.

Dandelion Root: Has a significant cleansing effect on the liver by stimulating the production of bile, which ultimately results in increased transport of a variety of potentially noxious compounds to the stool. This makes it useful for people with sluggish liver function due to alcohol abuse or poor diet. Good for cirrhosis of the liver, fluid retention, hepatitis, jaundice and rheumatism. Cleanses the liver and bloodstream and increases the production of bile. Improves functioning of the liver, kidneys, pancreas, spleen and stomach. Used as a diuretic and digestive aid.

Mandrake Root: Is a strong glandular stimulant. It is used for treatment of chronic liver diseases, skin problems, bile flow, digestion and eliminating obstructions. Is often combined with supporting herbs to regulate liver and bowels, for uterine disorders and intermittent fevers.

Blessed Thistle: Heals the liver. Increases appetite and stomach secretions. Alleviates
inflammation, improves circulation and purifies the blood. Stimulates bile production in the liver.

Uva Ursi Leaf: Acts as a diuretic and helps disorders of the liver, spleen, pancreas, and small intestine.

You will find all of the above and 14 other herbs that were personally selected and synergistically blended by the herbal genius Jim Strauss, in his Liver capsules.

Top 5 tips for a healthy 2013

Welcome to 2013! We hope everyone had a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends. A few days into the new year and it is a great time to pause and reflect on the year gone by and to make plans for the year to come.

For those thinking of their health in the new year we have compiled our top 5 ideas to make 2013 a healthy and happy one. If you are still looking to fill your new years resolutions list here are some ideas to consider.

1 - Made to move

Humans are made for movement. While not very fast compared to the rest of the animal kingdom most humans can, with little specialist training, run relatively long distances. In a hot climate humans can beat a horse in a marathon and though a horse will often win they require breaks and vet check-ups along the way while a human does not. We are the champion long distance runners of the animal kingdom.

It is not surprising then that several studies have shown that avoiding a sedentary life can greatly decrease the risk of chronic illness such as heart disease and cancers.

So for a healthy year make sure this is an active one. If you have a job which is sedentary even small breaks involving movement every hour can make a difference and getting at least 3 hours of good exercise per week can greatly reduce health risks like diabetes and heart attacks.

2 - Abundant nutrition

Nutrition is fundamental to your health. It is also a complex topic as we have described in other articles. Vitamins and minerals interact with each other and are most easily digested when in certain combinations and ratios. The most easily prepared and readily accessible food for many people today is highly processed which results in reduced nutrient content. Soil depletion and modern farming practices also contribute to further loss of nutrients. So it is important to make an effort to optimise your nutritional intake.

Here are some key things to consider.

The freshness of your food matters: Fruit and vegetables are generally most nutrient-packed when they are ripe and fresh, so buying produce that is ripe, fresh and in season is the best way to ensure they are highly nutritious. Buying frozen vegetables can actually be best for out of season produce as frozen produce that was picked ripe maintains a high concentration of nutrients. Certain vitamins are less stable and more water soluble such as Folate, Thiamin and Vitamin C, so these can degrade fastest in frozen or out of season produce. Also steaming vegetables or eating them clean and raw rather than boiling them can minimize the loss of water soluble vitamins.

Choose bio-available supplements: Many people take vitamin or mineral supplements but most products are single vitamin or single mineral supplements which cannot address multiple deficiencies or hope to offer optimal absorption due to nutrient nutrient absorption dependencies. So researching your vitamin and mineral supplements and choosing multi vitamin/mineral formulas which are highly bio-available is recommended.

In summary while being nutritionally deficient can have serious health effects, your body can happily and safely handle more essential nutrients, so make an effort to include as much fresh produce in your diet as possible and supplement your diet with a highly bio-available multi vitamin/mineral formula such as Naturezone Micronutritionals rather than single vitamin or single mineral products.

3 - Consume less processed sugar and carbohydrates

Unlike ensuring abundant and optimal nutrition it is very easy to find a lot of sugars and processed carbohydrates in food all year around.

Carbohydrates are important and are turned into glucose in the blood to provide you with readily available energy. But because of the easy access to them and their year around availability we can easily consume too much. Elevated blood glucose levels are the primary stimulus for insulin production so excessive carbohydrate consumption is a likely contributor to problems like insulin resistance and diabetes.

It is all too easy in a typical day for every meal to be carbohydrate rich and to treat yourself to something sweet in between meals, but this is a recipe for continually high blood glucose and best avoided.

So look to replace some of your carbohydrate rich recipes with more lean meats, fish and vegetables and less potatoes, pasta, rice and sweet treats to avoid being part of the growing number of people who suffer from high blood glucose and the related problems like insulin resistance and diabetes.

4 - Watch the additives

Have you ever looked at the ingredients in daily use products like shampoos, conditioners, soaps, deodorants, creams, hair care products and make up? They often contain a large list of additives designed to preserve the product, make it thicker, more fragrant or colourful but which can also be toxic in higher dosages. These ingredients are in small dosages in each product and while your skin is a good barrier we are using more and more products that contain them. So try to use less of these types of products and replace the ones you do use with products that do not contain additives such as the Strauss range of hair care and skin care products.

5 - Take time to enjoy it

People intuitively know that there is such a thing as a healthy outlook and there is an interesting link between your body chemistry and your mood. While healthy living and optimal nutrition can balance your body chemistry and thereby your mood it is also true that simply focusing on things that bring you joy changes your body chemistry. So take time to dwell on the things that bring you joy in 2013 and have a great and healthy year!

Are vitamins and minerals safe in higher doses?

In last months article "The bioavailability revolution" we looked at some factors in choosing an effective nutritional supplement for multi-vitamin and minerals and at how many people are not meeting their Recommended Daily Allowance because of many factors such as the depletion of nutrients from our soils and modern farming and food processing techniques.

For those who choose to supplement their diet with a high quality multi-vitamin mineral formula, feedback we hear relatively often is, "I don't like taking too many capsules". In this article we will look at the relative risks of taking natural dietary supplements compared to other known risks. We’ll discuss the risks of taking too many vitamins and minerals compared to the risks of taking too few, in reference to established government safety levels.

To make it more relevant we will reference the ingredients and dosages in Naturezone Micronutritionals Self Defence and CNE, and we will also discuss data which relates to the safety of natural health products in general (including vitamins, minerals, and herbs) compared with the safety risks from various other causes.

Perhaps the best way to put natural health product supplement safety into perspective is to compare it with other known risks we can easily relate to.

In a country like New Zealand in the last 30 there is not a single known case of someone dying from taking a natural health product, but in order to compare it with other more well known risks we can imagine for a population like the United States for every 1 person who dies from taking a natural health product, 5 people die from being struck by lightning, about 100 people die from electrocution, 900 people die from eating food (either choking on it or having an adverse reaction to something like peanuts), more than 6,000 people die in car accidents, nearly 50,000 people die in motorcycle accidents, and nearly 100,000 people die from a reaction to a prescription drug.

In light of the fact that nearly 75% of the US population use some form of natural health products, you can see that supplements, in general, are extremely safe. Minerals and vitamins, in particular, are even safer. This though is hardly surprising because they are in all the foods we eat and are essential for life.

To give you another important vision of what nutrient safety really means, we’ve adapted this chart from the US Institute of Medicine to put safety in a broader context. This will give you a much better idea of how safety is determined by scientists and how supplements can play an important role in safeguarding your health by optimising nutrient intake.

We’ll walk you through the chart.

The risk of deficiency

The red curved line on the left represents the risks of inadequate nutrient intake. At any point along this red line, you are at considerable risk of serious illness caused by nutrient deficiency because your diet may not be meeting your body's basic requirements for health.

The safe zone

The green flat line represents “safe” nutrient intake. It makes sense that nutrients would have this safe zone, because they are essential for everyone’s bodies to function. For most nutrients, there is a long, flat green “meadow” of safety between what is known as the Recommended Daily Allowance (the RDA) and the safe upper level, which the Institute of Medicine calls the UL or Tolerable Upper Intake Level. You’ll notice that the safe upper level is still in the green. According to the Institute of Medicine, it is set at a level that is likely to pose “no risk of adverse health effects for almost all individuals”. The safe upper level is set very conservatively to ensure that in every possible situation (with the exception of certain rare medical conditions) a person could take this level for a lifetime without any danger whatsoever. Again, each nutrient in Naturezone Micronutritionals is below established safe upper levels. In setting safe upper levels for each nutrient, the US Institute of Medicine reviews all of the available medical literature looking for any reported adverse effects that have resulted from the intake of that nutrient.

The risk of excessive intake

Between the safe upper level and the red line, there is often a large zone of continued safe intake, where no adverse effects have ever been observed by scientists. Some vitamins are so safe that the US Institute of Medicine has not set any safe upper level for them. For these vitamins, there would be no red curve on the right (which represents danger of excessive intake).

Other nutrients do have a limit where there is danger of excessive intake and here’s an example of a nutrient that children could get too much of which shows how high these levels are compared to what is found in a supplement like Self Defence and CNE. On the labels for Self Defence and CNE there’s an FDA-required iron warning that appears on every iron-containing supplement, regardless of the level of iron. We’ll give you a little more information about this so you understand what iron levels would be fatal for a child. In cases documented by US Poison Control Centers, children who have died from taking iron supplements have taken more than 60 mg of iron per kilogram of body weight, which is more than a 1-year-old child would get from an entire bottle of Naturezone Micronutritionals CNE, eaten all at once!  So the risk to a child from iron overdose in taking CNE or Self Defence is extremely remote. For healthy adults, who have much more body weight, there is no risk

In summary, you can see that the safest level of each nutrient is your own personal optimal intake level—somewhere above the RDA and below established safe upper levels. Naturezone Micronutritionals are designed to deliver optimal nutrient levels when you take it at recommended levels with a healthy diet.

What this means for a supplement like Self Defence or CNE

Now that we’ve reviewed the safety and benefits of the levels of vitamins, minerals, and other value-added ingredients in Naturezone Micronutritionals,  let’s talk briefly about the recommended daily dose. For your optimal health, we recommended that you take 4 capsules of Self Defence or 6 capsules of CNE per day. This may seem like a lot, compared to other multi-vitamin supplements. However, in formulating Naturezone Micronutritionals our primary goal was to deliver results, not just to make the ingredients fit into one or two capsules. Our recommended levels are based on extensive research conducted on our vitamin-mineral formulations over more than a decade. We’re confident that if you take these recommended safe levels designed to optimise your health, you will quickly find that there is no comparison. The health benefits you will see will be worth it.


In conclusion, there is plenty of good evidence that taking a supplement like Naturezone Micronutritionals as directed on the label is very safe. Perhaps the most important reason is that it can help you get an optimal level of each essential nutrient for your personal needs. This eliminates the very real risks of nutrient deficiency, which can cause serious, chronic health consequences. So it’s clearly much safer to take a supplement like Naturezone Micronutritionals Self Defence or CNE at the recommended dosage rather than than not to take it or take a smaller dosage.

Healthy and tasty juice recipes

Juicing provides a quick and easy way to assimilate vital nutrients without burning energy to do so. Making living juice a daily part of your diet can provide increased energy, a glowing complexion, strengthened immune system, stronger bones and improved immunity. Living juices can promote the flushing of toxins from your body, are good for your weight, heart, circulation and overall well-being.

We have recently introduced the OSCAR DA 1000 Juicer to Naturezone Health which is an outstanding juice extractor producing great tasting "Living Juice" due to a single gear, patented design auger extraction process.

Normal speed juicers and blenders can destroy the enzymes in the juice by subjecting them to heat, metal cutting blades and high speed centrifugal rotation. Rotating at a low 80 RPM the OSCAR Juicer produces no heat and ensures a living juice without any loss of enzymes or nutrients. Those living enzymes provide a fresh and vital juice which retains appearance, flavour and nutrients for many hours when stored in the refrigerator. Juice from conventional juicers deteriorates very quickly.

To inspire anyone looking to make some new tasty juices here are some of our favourite recipes you can try.

Apple Zinger

A terrific breakfast enlivener that perks up the whole system and really wakes up your taste buds.
2-3 whole apples
1 whole lemon peeled
1 cm cube of fresh ginger

Cabbage and Pineapple Zinger

This is a surprisingly yummy juice which children (and adults) will love as a substitute for sugary soft drinks. It has a surprisingly sweet flavour but without the white sugar. Cabbage aids digestion and is usually a vegetable that most people don’t enjoy. Europeans have long known the benefits of fermented cabbage (sauerkraut) for digestion. Try this and you will be pleasantly surprised.

⅓ green cabbage
¼ large pineapple
Juice of one lemon

Apples, Celery and Fennel

2-3 whole apples
2 sticks of celery
1 bulb of fennel

Apples, Pears and Berries

Berries are intensely flavoured vitamin bombs that are high in potassium and contain a remarkable range of other trace elements.
2 whole apples
1 pear
12 berries (or as many as you like, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries)

Carrot and Apple

This is the most basic juice cocktail,use it as the springboard for experimentation.Start by combining equal parts of the two juices and experiment until you find the proportions that suit you.

4 carrots
1 whole apple

Citrus Zinger

1 orange
1 grapefruit
1/2 lemon or lime
1/2 lime
1 cm cube of fresh ginger

Double Whammy

4 to 5 carrots
A handful of dandeloin leaves
2 whole pears

Fab Five Fruit Juice

This is a great fruit punch,the recipie can be varied with different fruits substituted according to seasonal availability.
1/2 apple
1/2 pear
1 tangerine
12 red grapes
1 peach

The ultimate quinoa breakfast

Breakfast is a very important meal and it can have a big impact on your body chemistry and blood sugar levels for the day ahead.

This Quinoa based morning cereal (pronounced keen-wah) is the perfect way to start your day.

Quinoa is an ancient super grain, revered as the ‘mother of all grains’. It is a balanced amino-acid source of high quality protein. Perfect for all diets including vegetarians/vegans. It is naturally gluten free, wheat free, with a very low Glycemic Index of 35. It has a unique pleasant flavour. Together with the mix of nuts, seeds and fruit this is the perfect way to start your day. The nuts and seeds can be mixed beforehand and kept in a container so that it is quick and easy in the morning. Feedback shows that most people don’t need to snack between breakfast and lunch when they start their day with this tasty, nutritious and healthy breakfast.






Per person:

(Use organic ingredients wherever possible)

1 heaped Tablespoons Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) flakes.
Recommend Ceres Organics Quinoa Flakes.

Add approx. 1/2 cup cold water.

For a milkier taste, but just as yummy without, add also 1 tablespoon
organic full cream unsweetened yoghurt.

Add all, or a selection of, the following:

1 heaped teaspoon ground flax seed
1 teaspoon Pumpkin seeds
1 teaspoon Sunflower seeds
1 teaspoon whole raw almonds (chopped up if preferred)
1 teaspoon whole cashews
1 teaspoon walnuts (chopped up if preferred)
1 teaspoon raisins
3 Brazil nuts (chopped up if preferred)
3 Pecan nuts (chopped up if preferred)

We also empty 1 -2 capsules of our Greenbac Probiotic into the mixture

Add up to 3 varieties of fruit, berries or melon, e.g.

3 – 4 teaspoons of Blueberries
1 Gold kiwifruit - diced
1/8th Rock melon - diced
1/8th Prince Melon - diced
½ Papaya – diced (avoid if irradiated)
½ Mango – diced (avoid if irradiated)
3 Feijoa - diced
1 Nectarine - diced
1 Pear – diced
1 Apple (grated or diced)


As you are preparing the ingredients the water will be absorbed and may require adjustment to get the consistency that you prefer.

The bioavailability revolution

This month we are taking a quick look at how nutritional research is providing new and better ways to deliver essential vitamins and minerals to the body.

Many of us know that the human body, when given the right environment, foods and nutrients has an amazing ability to repair itself and return to a normal and healthy state. Some of the great advances in natural health products in recent years have been in improving how we deliver essential nutrients and minerals in an effective way so we can really make use of them. This is known as making the ingredients more Bioavailable. However this can be more difficult than you might think.

The ideal situation is to get as many of our essential nutrients as possible from our food, as food offers the best bioavailability. Unfortunately this has become more difficult over the last 100 years or so due to many factors such as the depletion of nutrients from our soils and modern farming and food processing techniques, as the following graph shows:

The following graph shows dietary deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals in the US population.

What to look for in a nutritional supplement

Here are some key things to be aware of when choosing from the bewildering array of Mineral and Vitamin supplements on the market today.

• Solubility: Did you know that 54% of the leading Mineral and Vitamin supplements on the market today do not even dissolve in your stomach?
• Balance: Our bodies are incredibly complex and a deficiency in one nutrient has been shown to interfere with the absorption and/or metabolism of other nutrients. A chain reaction can result in multiple deficiencies, so taking just one mineral or vitamin is not likely to bring things back to normal. Nutritional supplements are often used to compensate for lifestyles which result in a deficiency of one or two vitamins or minerals, but what is now being recognised is how much different nutrients depend on each other in order for the body to fully utilise them.
• Completeness: 61% of vitamin and mineral supplements on the market today are single ingredient products which cannot possibly overcome multiple Vitamin / Mineral deficiencies, and 75% of the Multi Mineral – Vitamin formulations have less than 30 ingredients.
• Bioavailability: Whereas the nutrients in your food have been prepared for you by nature’s own chelation and micronisation processes, the best Multi Mineral Vitamin companies need to devote a lot of their resources to studying and imitating Natures ways of delivering nutrients to improve the bioavailability of their products. Chelation involves wrapping minerals in organic molecules and binding them to proteins which the body finds easier to recognise and digest than the mineral on its own. Micronisation is the art of making the mineral particles small enough for the body to capture.

In the end many of the improvements in the bioavailability of natural health products are developed using nature a guide. Eating a healthy variety of food, including un-processed and organic food is your best primary source of essential nutrients. However, due to the lower nutritional density of today’s foods, supplementing your diet with a premium Multi Mineral Vitamin formula that delivers completeness, balance and bioavailability is both an effective and convenient way to ensure that your body is receiving an adequate or even an abundant supply of essential nutrients, and may also help to resolve any known or unknown nutritional deficiencies.

Digestion and nutrition

We often hear people say "you are what you eat". But maybe more accurately you could say "you are what you digest". A compromised digestive system will not be able to absorb nutrients efficiently. Bloating, Constipation, loose bowels, stomach pain, heartburn and excessive wind can all be signs of probiotic deficiency related digestive problems. We have offered a range of probiotics over the years, with each new formulation offering more benefits than the last, the latest and best one being Greenbac Probiotic.

Sauerkraut is the original probiotic superfood

Sauerkraut is a popular traditional German recipe which has gained a marvellous reputation for promoting intestinal health thanks to its probiotic properties.

You don’t need to eat a lot - a few tablespoons a day is sufficient, making it a great side dish or something to add to your salads.

You can find Sauerkraut in the supermarkets but it is the traditional version made from only Cabbage and salt that has developed a reputation for supporting intestinal health. If you have difficulty sourcing this or just want to make your own unpasteurised batch (unpasteurised is better) it is quite easy.

Ingredients:

10 lbs (4.5 kg) shredded cabbage (preferably organic)

6 tablespoons canning or pickling salt

Directions:

Prepare half of the cabbage at a time. Discard outer leaves and any insect damaged areas.

Rinse heads under cold running water and drain. Cut heads in four wedges. Discard cores, shred or slice to a thickness of a 50 cent piece.

Put 5 lbs (2.2 kg) of cabbage in a suitable fermentation container, and add 3 tablespoons of salt. Mix thoroughly, using clean hands. Pack firmly until salt draws juices from cabbage.

Repeat shredding, salting, and packing until all cabbage is in the container. Be sure the container is deep enough so that its rim is at least 4 or 5 inches (10 – 12 cm) above the cabbage. If juice does not cover cabbage, add boiled and cooled brine (1 ½ tablespoons of salt per quart (1 quart = 1.14 Litres) of water.

Fermentation:

Place a plate that fits snugly inside the fermentation vessel so that it covers the cabbage, and is below the waterline. Place weights on the plate. Weights can be two to three sealed 1 litre jars filled with water or a well cleaned rock. The plate is used to keep the cabbage about 5 cm under the brine during fermentation.

Cover the fermentation vessel with a clean, heavy bath towel to help prevent contamination from insects and mould.

Fermentation time varies according to temperature:

At temperatures below 12 degrees C the product may not ferment.

At temperatures from 12 degrees to 18 degrees C allow 5 – 6 weeks.

At temperatures from 21 degrees to 24 degrees C allow 3 – 4 weeks. This is the ideal temperature range.

The product may spoil at temperatures higher than 26 degrees C.


Check the kraut 2 or 3 times a week and remove any scum if it forms.

Once the kraut has fully fermented in the container, you can pack it into glass bottles, pack tightly so that the juice covers the cabbage, a thin layer of olive oil at the top of the glass bottle will help prevent the product from spoilage. It will keep for several months when sealed and kept in a cool, dark place (e.g. in the refrigerator).