For thousands of years people around the world have found that fermenting certain foods in a controlled way increases digestibility of the raw food and adds health-giving effects.

Evidence of the use of controlled fermentation dates back to ancient China, South America, and ancient Egypt, and includes leavened breads, milk products and pickles.  “One of the earliest functional attributes of fermented foods was their ability to introduce a change in the microflora of the human digestive tract”, says Mark J Tallon, PhD, Founder of NutriSciences Ltd. “Because many fermented micro-organisms, such as probiotics, survive digestion, they can reach specific sites of benefit within the intestinal tract where they perform functions that may aid in host health,” adds Tallon.

Tallon recognizes the history of fermentation and that it has evolved into a natural, yet state-of the-art science that is an invaluable component of the human diet. Since the time Louis Pasteur proposed using microbial metabolism to produce fermented foods, “microbiologists have uncovered the interactions of bacteria and yeast as a means of producing many natural products,” says Tallon.

As important benefit of fermentation is that of increasing the effective nutritive value of foods by increasing the ability of the body to absorb vitamins and nutrients presented during digestion. Fermentation methods have evolved from traditional to modern techniques that allow for greater production of fermented products in a clean, controlled environment.

A modern contribution to the fermentation tradition is cascade fermentation, a methodology modeled on the human body’s natural digestion process. The cascade ensures that enzymes, as well as all other micronutrients with a large molecular weight, are broken down into smaller units. It is well known that only small molecules can be absorbed through the intestinal villi. A cascade-fermented supplement such as Regulat® – whose starting ingredients are whole foods (fruits, nuts and vegetables ) – holds a diversity of enzymes, di- and tri-pepides, etc. that are smaller and highly bio-available, even being able to be absorbed directly into the blood stream.

For more information please review The Health Benefits of Cascade Fermented Foods by Karl-Heinz Blank M.D, Ekkehard Scheller, Johannes Aaron Seidler, Thomas Ganswindt, and Axel Kohler M.D.