FABULOUS FERMENTS

Gut-health guru Tim Spector discusses the power of fermented foods with ELLA WALKER, and encourages us all to try making them at home

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WHEN it comes to food, usually we're told to cut the crisps, hold off on the biscuits, reduce the cake and watch our portion sizes. It feels much rarer to be told to load our plates up with more of something. But that’s exactly what epidemiologist and gut health expert Tim Spector is trying to get us to do, specifically with fermented foods.

“It's about eating more and putting more stuff on your plate,” says the 67-year-old, whose new book, Ferment, is a deep-dive on the super-good-for-you foods. “You like bangers and mash? Well, just add some sauerkraut to that and have a glass of kombucha with it. That will make it healthier.”

Co-founder of personalised nutrition website ZOE, Tim has been banging on about gut health for a decade, but for the past six years he’s gone all-in on tangy, sour, fermented foods like kefir, kombucha, krauts and kimchi. Foods that, when he wrote his first book, The Diet Myth, “no one had heard of”, and now, “you can find them on every aisle.” It’s proof that food culture can change fast.

Tim aims to have something fermented with every meal, and says adding them to your diet is “far more important than any supplement you can buy”, as they support the immune system, help stop infection, reduce the speed of ageing, and even boost mental health. They're also delicious.