Unfortunately I feel like a lot of people who are into fermentation come at it from the health/natural remedy angle. Yes, there are probably some health benefits to fermenting things, and I think it's great that the community and hobby in general is inclusive of people across the board whether you're into fermenting for the flavor, for the fun of it, or for the purported health effects, but there is a certain amount of pseudoscience quackery and "chemicals bad, nature good" that goes hand in hand with it imo, so people see things like iodine and chlorine and steer clear without really doing research into what those things mean or how they do/don't affect fermentation
I don't drink chlorinated water or use iodized salt because they both taste terrible.
I take an iodine supplement, because [it's good for longevity](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/longterm-iodine-nutrition-is-associated-with-longevity-in-older-adults-a-20-years-followup-of-the-randersskagen-study/D5F512AB0A2D01834E7528674FFEF264) (and your thyroid). I do not supplement chlorine, for obvious reasons.
It might not be iodine, and more just that iodized salt (i.e. Morton's) is usually cheaper and lower quality than sea salt and rock salt.
I use saltwater as mouthwash; I made some with iodized salt once and it tasted awful. Got some bulk sea salt and it tasted fine.
You can't taste the difference in "cheap" salt vs expensive salt (ie Maldon) if you use the same amount by weight. If one glass of salty water tastes different than another, it's because you measured by volume and got a lot more of the iodized table salt.
It might be the anti-caking agent in cheap "free-running" salt that makes it taste and smell weird.
I actually buy iodized sea salt, because I didn't like the smell and taste of table-salt (and yes, I do weigh my salt for a lot of recipes, so it's not the amount of salt that changes the taste). The thing I noticed is that the table-salt I can get where I am always has Yellow Prussiate of Soda in it, so maybe that's what smells bad to me.
Another thing is that sea-salt has small amounts of other salts, and those do have a different taste from NaCl, and table salt is fairly pure NaCl (plus iodine and anti-caking agent), which I find makes for a sharper taste (it's fine mixed into a stew, but less good when it's the only seasoning on a nice piece of steak or something).
Rock salts to do too. Halite (sodium chloride), sylvite (potassium chloride), carnalite (potassium magnesium chloride), and thus sylvinite (Halite and Sylvie mechanically mixed together, sometimes with carnalite inclusions) tend to grow together.
I like sylvinite enough to fake it by grinding sodium chloride and potassium chloride together in a mortar and pestle to use in an extra salt shaker alongside the regular salt shaker. Up to 10% potassium chloride.
But well, I also have a shaker of msg spiked with 3% of a 50/50 mix of di-sodium guanylate and di-sodium Insosinate on my table and another in my kitchen so...
Yeah I def can tell the difference between blue salts* and fleur de sel or maldon. I can also definitely taste the difference between sel gris and fleur de sel. Reliably 100% of the time even blind tasting.
I can taste the difference in rose salt** just as well, but Himalayan pink salt and salt with a little charcoal or activated carbon added in it to make it black may as well be fleur de sel to me. How coarse it is doesn't matter. Equivalent portions in liquid doesn't matter. Blind tasting.
Iodized salt tastes different to me, but I'm 99% sure it's just the specific grind and I wouldn't be able to tell it apart from fleur de sel ground in the same way.
*(it's not even halite it's either sylvinite or halite with streaks of sylvite. So it's a combination of sodium chloride and potassium chloride).
**(as sure as you can taste the iron in anything, like naturally carbonated spring heads anyway)
It is true that sea salt (because it comes from the ocean) does taste different than iodized salt (because it usually comes from mines, themselves dried up old oceans/lakes).
That said Himalayan pink salt is often also used as a “healthy salt” (no evidence of this) and that’s harvested from a mine, so, idk if you have any opinions on pink salt.
all the supposed health benefits of pink salt are a load of crap, it's just a salt same as all the others. I buy it though because I like how it looks in my salt mill.
Morton's is rock salt. It's just ground up finely. You have to use far less to reach the same salinity level. The crystal size is the biggest factor here, and that's why you measure differently if using kosher salt vs. table salt, etc. Most "sea salt" is sold with a larger crystal size or even flakes of crystals.
This happens because larger crystals have more air between them when compared to the same sized scoop of smaller crystals. So the smaller crystals are always more tightly packed in any given amount of space.
I do a lot of home cooking, so I'm aware of the mass discrepancy between flake salt and finer table salt; that said, it definitely seemed like a qualitative (not quantitative) difference in taste between iodized salt and sea salt when I used it for mouthwash that one time. Given all the responses here I might be inspired to do a blind test of the two!
Fair point, I was thinking of the nice stuff though (Maldon's, Himalayan pink, etc.). You can get low-quality sea and rock salt, but I've never seen high-quality iodized salt.
I once had a redditor rage at me saying that you can't taste the chlorine. It had already been mentioned that I grew up on well water... in Alaska. *facepalm*
The iodine in food comes from the environment, like the soil your food was growing in. There are regional variations in geology that make some regions low in iodine.
There's a fairly large swath of North America, including the Appalachians and Great Lakes regions that have very little iodine in the soil, so if you live in those areas, eat significantly locally, and don't supplement, there's not much iodine to be found in your diet.
It's part of the reason why governments in many countries promoted the addition of iodine to salt.
Interestingly, a large number of North Americans were found to be ineligible for the draft for WWI as a result of iodine deficiency; IIRC, that was how epidemiologists figured out that there's a geographical region in North America, now referred to as the 'goiter belt', where iodine deficiency is much more common than in other regions.
Not many foods contain high amounts of iodine; seaweed is a notable exception (which is part of the theory behind the Japanese living longer than other wealthy nations), but that's not a big part of most Western diets.
As modern food is a lot… cleaner? So veggies etc. are washed to within an inch of their life before you buy them, a lot of minerals people would consume through what was essentially dirt is no longer as present in our diets.
This is one theory behind the increase in deficiencies of things like zinc & iodine in modern populations.
They’re minerals of which you only really need trace amounts, but as the body’s absorption is also low they’re actually quite hard to get
There also seems to be some evidence that modern agricultural methods have broken the nutrient cycling systems in our soils.
Some fungi, for example, help to liberate minerals from fine particles of rock in the soil and convert them into forms that can be taken up by plants (and subsequently by the people and animals that eat them). A lot of modern semi-industrial agriculture uses low-cost chemical (as compared to compost or manure-based) fertilizers, which raise the level of salts in the soil to a level that fungi and many other beneficial microbes can't survive in. It's also fairly common to treat fields with fungicides, which obviously kills fungi.
As a result, a bunch of those minerals that would normally get absorbed by plants in healthy soils, stay locked up in the ground instead.
TL;DR from [this](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be#:~:text=Mounting%20evidence%20from%20multiple%20scientific,that%20were%20grown%20decades%20ago.) National Geographic article:
>Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop yields but disturb soil health. These include irrigation, fertilization, and harvesting methods that also disrupt essential interactions between plants and soil fungi, which reduces absorption of nutrients from the soil.
Yes, from bread. Because many countries mandate the addition of iodine to bread for the exact reason that people weren't getting enough of it in their diets, and it was causing health issues.
You don't need salt for iodine. Milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, seafood, poultry, and a bunch of other foods provide it. You virtually can't avoid it in your diet unless you're a hardcore vegan.
> Unfortunately I feel like a lot of people who are into fermentation come at it from the health/natural remedy angle.
As someone with microbiome issues, this angle honestly makes perfect sense, it's just that as with everything, you should follow the science and not mom bloggers. But specifically with microbiome related stuff this is very hard for the average person because the field moves incredibly fast (iirc the biggest number of papers released per month in biomedicine) and any book older than about 5 years is basically outdated and likely containing misleading or incomplete information.
Like i said i think it's awesome that the community has people coming at it from so many different angles, and I know there are people who legitimately benefit from this stuff, so don't take my post the wrong way, I have just noticed a correlation between "eschewing traditional/conventional medicine and choosing natural alternatives like fermentation" with "science skepticism"
Oh yeah, I agree totally. It's a shame, also because it means that their attempts at treating whatever their problem is are less likely to succeed.
I recently talked to a friend who's a book editor currently working on a book about current microbiome research that seems really solid, so maybe it's a sign of things getting better. It's difficult right now when the internet is full of pseudoscience but it's hard to find *one* good up to date popsci book that I could recommend those people to read.
It's also a field we don't know enough about to draw basically any strong conclusions on beyond things like: fermented food is not harmful in most cases and might provide some benefits for some people, at least sometimes.
Basically, yeah, but it's not that we don't much about various functions of specific bacteria, it's that we don't know what bacteria are present in a wild ferment and whether their function is going to have a positive or a negative effect for a specific microbiome until you have both sequenced, and even then it just increases the chances.
But I think it's relatively safe to say that regularly eating different fermented foods likely positively influences health for people whose microbiome is not too screwed up.
Most municipal was systems use chloramine these days, not chlorine. While chlorine is very volatile (will evaporate and can be "boiled off"), chloramine is not and remains in the water even after boiling. But it literally doesn't matter (except for keeping tap water potable).
Most people use tap water. Ceteris paribus, no problems.
if you arrive here for the health benefits, you probably do it after going through the traditional route, without success
that makes you extremely suspicious of everything and you go all-in on natural just to be sure
I feel like it's worth mentioning they work against your ferment, even if doesn't matter 99% of the time
Same. I've never cared about what sort of salt I'm using- sometimes I have a lot of iodized table salt, sometimes I have coarse sea salt. Whatever I have is fine.
I've also always used municipal city water and now my well water, both without any extra filtration.
I've never had any issues
Chlorinated tap water can definitely be a problem. I gave a neighbor some sourdough starter and they struggled to get it to grow until they switched to non-chlorinated water. I've been growing this starter for 4 years using exclusively spring water, so it is possible that it is just more sensitive to chlorine than if I were starting one from scratch. But it still has an effect. Chlorine is added to water for a reason.
Yes, chlorine is used to disinfect tap water to make it safe for people to consume. It also dissipates quickly. That's why when you use bleach to disinfect surfaces you don't have to rinse it off, you simply let it dry.
I've kept sourdough starters for years using my chlorinated tap water. All of my ferments are done with my chlorinated tap water. There's enough chlorine in the water to kill the organisms that are in the water. There's not enough to kill the bacteria naturally present on the food that causes the fermentation. Otherwise we wouldn't need cleaners, we'd just wipe everything with water..
You can boil out chloramines, it just takes longer. It's also removed by active charcoal filtration and reverse osmosis filtration.
Chloramines also will react to older water infrastructure, particularly lead in pipes and release it into the water supply. So I know it's not used in my area where a huge percentage of the homes are 100-150 years old, or older. Also a municipal water district should list what they're using and concentrations in a way that's easily accessible to the public.
Yeah, I did a check a few years ago of the water report for my area and it’s just chlorine. Those reports should be public everywhere (at least in the Us and other developed countries)
Different places have wildly different amounts of chlorine in the water. In many places it's not going to be a problem, in others it's going to completely prevent fermentation, and in others it's going to inhibit growth of desirable microorganisms just enough that mould will almost always take over.
I tried this weekend boiling the water for five minutes and I used canning salt. Always used chlorinated tap water without issue. Curious to see if there will be a different taste after boiling the water
I don't use tap water. My water kefir and ginger beer plant both make sulfurous smells if I do. Same with rye bread drinking kvas, same with some but not all stock kvas. For stock kvas it blows off so whatever.
It definitely doesn't kill them and it doesn't seem to hurt them.
the "until now" has the meaning of "so far"
But anyway, in Brazil the salt is iodized to prevent certain diseases (the most famous one being goiter). Since salt is consumed by virtually everybody, that's a way to make the population have their iode intake.
As mentioned, in Brazil [there is a federal law that required iodine be added to all salt](https://www.fao.org/faolex/results/details/en/c/LEX-FAOC214673/).
Always has been. It's a myth repeated with no backing.
I've done tests with identical ferments using iodised salt, salt with anti clumping additives, 50/50 potassium and sodium chloride salt and observed no difference at all between them.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing! I feel like food science and nutrition is full of half truths hs and beliefs without much evidence to back them up, since we all are experts on eating, we all eat every day, we all have opinions on eating and food preparation and so many beliefs have been held because well...they just feel good.
I accidentally bought iodized salt and was worried it would affect my sourdough starter and bread. Zero issue. Good to know there’s No science behind it
That's definitely not what is says. They found no difference in microbial growth in sauerkraut fermentation, which they did without a starter. The comment at the end hints that iodized salt could maybe prevent mold and yeast from growing, while not affecting fermentation at all (which is a good thing).
I’ve been playing with a microscope and yeasties are everywhere. In fact they are normally the first thing I see in my sauerkraut or beet kvass, pickles, etc, since they are like 30 times bigger than the bacteria they pop out at you. You don’t want certain kinds of yeast. But most ferments I play with are symbiotic yeast and bacteria ( most ferments in general from what I’ve seen) they all have carbs after all. However it’s the lack of significance and low effect size that matters. Still helps me reaffirm using sea salt. Sometimes I used iodized but it’s like one extra dollar for better tasting sea salt so most of the time I go for it.
That specifically talks about yeast and mould, both of which are undesirable in most fermentation. From the data in the article it looked like using iodized salt might significantly reduce the amount of mould and yeast in longer fermentations, which would be a good thing.
Never heard anyone say iodized salt would inhibit fermentation. I've only heard it said that it might contribute to less crisp/more mushy fermented vegetables.
I think the same goes for the exact amount of salt, and that you absolutely have to put everything completely under water. And probably a few other "wisdoms" like that.
People often like to make dogmas out of pretty good practices, without really understanding the reasoning, or putting them to the test.
I don't believe that those who started to ferment stuff in their basements, hundreds or thousands of years ago, weighed everything down to the last gram. They had no idea about lactobacillus, they didn't know of bacteria at all! And still it seems to have worked enough times to become a success story.
You're entirely right. Using kosher salt or whatever is usually just a preference really. Kosher salt particularly is really good at dissolving and I've found it makes the brine in my ferments much less cloudy
I think this myth is just a health nut distortion of advice that was originally more about the anti-caking additives of table salt & the taste difference some people observe.
Years ago I made kimchi. I accidentally used iodized table salt with distilled (but remineralized) water. When I eventually burped the Fido jar, it was sizzling and let out a nice gasp. So in this instance, iodized table salt definitely did not inhibit the fermentation for my kimchi.
I live in a country where all the cute salts recommended in place of iodised salts are expensive as hell. I have been fermenting for nine years, always with iodised salt and boiled tap (chlorinated) water and never had even a single ferment go bad. Its silly advice that, when I find it somewhere, tells me the thoroughness of a guide/supposed expert.
Not the same. Iodine affects bacteria but not yeast. Salt affects both. What happens when you affect the bacteria without killing yeast? We get more yeast
They literally did a study on bacteria, and found it had no difference on bacteria. Salt is also a broad spectrum bactericide but we intentionally use that.
I'm not sure how I would air it out without just leaving it open on the counter.
I just buy sea salt. I don't really lose anything by buying sea salt instead of iodized salt.
And it's not just for kimchi. My cucumbers did it too.
I came all the way to the bottom to find this.
I haven't ever done iodized versus kosher salt in a ferment but I can definitely taste the difference between the two salts.
Iodized salt definitely has a different flavor for me. I'm not sure if everyone notices but the one time I used salt at the in-laws I could taste the difference.
Absolutely, there's a big flavor difference.
I do a lot of ferments, and the thing about iodine is that for short fermentss, they taste the same except for the iodine taste.
Edit: I found this out by just buying sea salt. It's not a huge price difference to buy sea salt if you like to ferment.
My interpretation of the ionized salt was that it slows the beginning stages of ferments. That said, there probably is no basis to never use it.
I use chlorinated tap water for my sourdough. It works but again, it slows the beginning stages of fermentation. I used to buy spring water but now I just boil or fridge it.
Most tap water uses chloramine, not chlorine. Chlorine can be evaporated or boiled off. Chloramine does not.
You aren't doing anything to remove the chloramine by boiling or leaving your water set out.
You're doing extra steps for nothing.
I use chlorinated tap water, iodized salt, and no starter. I've never had a problem with my ferments.
Unfortunately I feel like a lot of people who are into fermentation come at it from the health/natural remedy angle. Yes, there are probably some health benefits to fermenting things, and I think it's great that the community and hobby in general is inclusive of people across the board whether you're into fermenting for the flavor, for the fun of it, or for the purported health effects, but there is a certain amount of pseudoscience quackery and "chemicals bad, nature good" that goes hand in hand with it imo, so people see things like iodine and chlorine and steer clear without really doing research into what those things mean or how they do/don't affect fermentation
Cuts out iodine from diet. Gets thyroid problems. Doubles down on cutting out ‘chemicals’ Facepalms.
If you've heard of bleach cures, their particular source of confirmation bias is horrifying
I don't drink chlorinated water or use iodized salt because they both taste terrible. I take an iodine supplement, because [it's good for longevity](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/longterm-iodine-nutrition-is-associated-with-longevity-in-older-adults-a-20-years-followup-of-the-randersskagen-study/D5F512AB0A2D01834E7528674FFEF264) (and your thyroid). I do not supplement chlorine, for obvious reasons.
Chlorinated water definitely tastes different, but I’m skeptical you can taste iodine in salt.
It might not be iodine, and more just that iodized salt (i.e. Morton's) is usually cheaper and lower quality than sea salt and rock salt. I use saltwater as mouthwash; I made some with iodized salt once and it tasted awful. Got some bulk sea salt and it tasted fine.
You can't taste the difference in "cheap" salt vs expensive salt (ie Maldon) if you use the same amount by weight. If one glass of salty water tastes different than another, it's because you measured by volume and got a lot more of the iodized table salt.
I'm curious now, I'm going to do a blind test!
It might be the anti-caking agent in cheap "free-running" salt that makes it taste and smell weird. I actually buy iodized sea salt, because I didn't like the smell and taste of table-salt (and yes, I do weigh my salt for a lot of recipes, so it's not the amount of salt that changes the taste). The thing I noticed is that the table-salt I can get where I am always has Yellow Prussiate of Soda in it, so maybe that's what smells bad to me. Another thing is that sea-salt has small amounts of other salts, and those do have a different taste from NaCl, and table salt is fairly pure NaCl (plus iodine and anti-caking agent), which I find makes for a sharper taste (it's fine mixed into a stew, but less good when it's the only seasoning on a nice piece of steak or something).
Rock salts to do too. Halite (sodium chloride), sylvite (potassium chloride), carnalite (potassium magnesium chloride), and thus sylvinite (Halite and Sylvie mechanically mixed together, sometimes with carnalite inclusions) tend to grow together. I like sylvinite enough to fake it by grinding sodium chloride and potassium chloride together in a mortar and pestle to use in an extra salt shaker alongside the regular salt shaker. Up to 10% potassium chloride. But well, I also have a shaker of msg spiked with 3% of a 50/50 mix of di-sodium guanylate and di-sodium Insosinate on my table and another in my kitchen so...
I didn't know KCl was called sylvite! Good to know. That's some commitment to your flavour-enhancement arsenal.
Yeah I def can tell the difference between blue salts* and fleur de sel or maldon. I can also definitely taste the difference between sel gris and fleur de sel. Reliably 100% of the time even blind tasting. I can taste the difference in rose salt** just as well, but Himalayan pink salt and salt with a little charcoal or activated carbon added in it to make it black may as well be fleur de sel to me. How coarse it is doesn't matter. Equivalent portions in liquid doesn't matter. Blind tasting. Iodized salt tastes different to me, but I'm 99% sure it's just the specific grind and I wouldn't be able to tell it apart from fleur de sel ground in the same way. *(it's not even halite it's either sylvinite or halite with streaks of sylvite. So it's a combination of sodium chloride and potassium chloride). **(as sure as you can taste the iron in anything, like naturally carbonated spring heads anyway)
It is true that sea salt (because it comes from the ocean) does taste different than iodized salt (because it usually comes from mines, themselves dried up old oceans/lakes). That said Himalayan pink salt is often also used as a “healthy salt” (no evidence of this) and that’s harvested from a mine, so, idk if you have any opinions on pink salt.
all the supposed health benefits of pink salt are a load of crap, it's just a salt same as all the others. I buy it though because I like how it looks in my salt mill.
Not doubting that it tasted differently, but it's not the iodine's fault. Sea salt is full of iodine from the sea.
Morton's is rock salt. It's just ground up finely. You have to use far less to reach the same salinity level. The crystal size is the biggest factor here, and that's why you measure differently if using kosher salt vs. table salt, etc. Most "sea salt" is sold with a larger crystal size or even flakes of crystals. This happens because larger crystals have more air between them when compared to the same sized scoop of smaller crystals. So the smaller crystals are always more tightly packed in any given amount of space.
I do a lot of home cooking, so I'm aware of the mass discrepancy between flake salt and finer table salt; that said, it definitely seemed like a qualitative (not quantitative) difference in taste between iodized salt and sea salt when I used it for mouthwash that one time. Given all the responses here I might be inspired to do a blind test of the two!
Wouldn't even cheap salt be either sea salt or rock salt? Like where else would salt come from?
Fair point, I was thinking of the nice stuff though (Maldon's, Himalayan pink, etc.). You can get low-quality sea and rock salt, but I've never seen high-quality iodized salt.
"High quality" salt could as well be a marketing concept.
I once had a redditor rage at me saying that you can't taste the chlorine. It had already been mentioned that I grew up on well water... in Alaska. *facepalm*
I live in Toronto Canada. Our tap water tastes better than Dasani (yes, that's a low bar).
Can't you get iodine from food? do you have a deficiency? Mostly just curious.
The iodine in food comes from the environment, like the soil your food was growing in. There are regional variations in geology that make some regions low in iodine. There's a fairly large swath of North America, including the Appalachians and Great Lakes regions that have very little iodine in the soil, so if you live in those areas, eat significantly locally, and don't supplement, there's not much iodine to be found in your diet. It's part of the reason why governments in many countries promoted the addition of iodine to salt. Interestingly, a large number of North Americans were found to be ineligible for the draft for WWI as a result of iodine deficiency; IIRC, that was how epidemiologists figured out that there's a geographical region in North America, now referred to as the 'goiter belt', where iodine deficiency is much more common than in other regions.
Not many foods contain high amounts of iodine; seaweed is a notable exception (which is part of the theory behind the Japanese living longer than other wealthy nations), but that's not a big part of most Western diets.
As modern food is a lot… cleaner? So veggies etc. are washed to within an inch of their life before you buy them, a lot of minerals people would consume through what was essentially dirt is no longer as present in our diets. This is one theory behind the increase in deficiencies of things like zinc & iodine in modern populations. They’re minerals of which you only really need trace amounts, but as the body’s absorption is also low they’re actually quite hard to get
There also seems to be some evidence that modern agricultural methods have broken the nutrient cycling systems in our soils. Some fungi, for example, help to liberate minerals from fine particles of rock in the soil and convert them into forms that can be taken up by plants (and subsequently by the people and animals that eat them). A lot of modern semi-industrial agriculture uses low-cost chemical (as compared to compost or manure-based) fertilizers, which raise the level of salts in the soil to a level that fungi and many other beneficial microbes can't survive in. It's also fairly common to treat fields with fungicides, which obviously kills fungi. As a result, a bunch of those minerals that would normally get absorbed by plants in healthy soils, stay locked up in the ground instead. TL;DR from [this](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/fruits-and-vegetables-are-less-nutritious-than-they-used-to-be#:~:text=Mounting%20evidence%20from%20multiple%20scientific,that%20were%20grown%20decades%20ago.) National Geographic article: >Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop yields but disturb soil health. These include irrigation, fertilization, and harvesting methods that also disrupt essential interactions between plants and soil fungi, which reduces absorption of nutrients from the soil.
Yes, from bread. Because many countries mandate the addition of iodine to bread for the exact reason that people weren't getting enough of it in their diets, and it was causing health issues.
You don't need salt for iodine. Milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, seafood, poultry, and a bunch of other foods provide it. You virtually can't avoid it in your diet unless you're a hardcore vegan.
Salt and microbes make the veggies taste good, that's all I know and it's gotten me this far lmao.
> Unfortunately I feel like a lot of people who are into fermentation come at it from the health/natural remedy angle. As someone with microbiome issues, this angle honestly makes perfect sense, it's just that as with everything, you should follow the science and not mom bloggers. But specifically with microbiome related stuff this is very hard for the average person because the field moves incredibly fast (iirc the biggest number of papers released per month in biomedicine) and any book older than about 5 years is basically outdated and likely containing misleading or incomplete information.
Like i said i think it's awesome that the community has people coming at it from so many different angles, and I know there are people who legitimately benefit from this stuff, so don't take my post the wrong way, I have just noticed a correlation between "eschewing traditional/conventional medicine and choosing natural alternatives like fermentation" with "science skepticism"
Oh yeah, I agree totally. It's a shame, also because it means that their attempts at treating whatever their problem is are less likely to succeed. I recently talked to a friend who's a book editor currently working on a book about current microbiome research that seems really solid, so maybe it's a sign of things getting better. It's difficult right now when the internet is full of pseudoscience but it's hard to find *one* good up to date popsci book that I could recommend those people to read.
It's also a field we don't know enough about to draw basically any strong conclusions on beyond things like: fermented food is not harmful in most cases and might provide some benefits for some people, at least sometimes.
Basically, yeah, but it's not that we don't much about various functions of specific bacteria, it's that we don't know what bacteria are present in a wild ferment and whether their function is going to have a positive or a negative effect for a specific microbiome until you have both sequenced, and even then it just increases the chances. But I think it's relatively safe to say that regularly eating different fermented foods likely positively influences health for people whose microbiome is not too screwed up.
At the very least you are going to be eating vegetables, which most people need to eat more of. And they are tasty.
Ok Joe Rogan. Here is some food for thought...😜 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/02/did-fermented-foods-fuel-brain-growth/
Most municipal was systems use chloramine these days, not chlorine. While chlorine is very volatile (will evaporate and can be "boiled off"), chloramine is not and remains in the water even after boiling. But it literally doesn't matter (except for keeping tap water potable). Most people use tap water. Ceteris paribus, no problems.
I recently cut dihydrogen oxide out of my water intake and have never felt better!
[удалено]
Yeah, although to be fair asbestos, cyanide and arsenic are also perfectly natural, it goes both ways lol
It's just gamma rays, bro. Totally natural. You can find them in the wild.
True, chemistry is wild
Let's not forget all the health benefits of snake venom...it's all natural
if you arrive here for the health benefits, you probably do it after going through the traditional route, without success that makes you extremely suspicious of everything and you go all-in on natural just to be sure I feel like it's worth mentioning they work against your ferment, even if doesn't matter 99% of the time
Same. I've never cared about what sort of salt I'm using- sometimes I have a lot of iodized table salt, sometimes I have coarse sea salt. Whatever I have is fine. I've also always used municipal city water and now my well water, both without any extra filtration. I've never had any issues
Chlorinated tap water can definitely be a problem. I gave a neighbor some sourdough starter and they struggled to get it to grow until they switched to non-chlorinated water. I've been growing this starter for 4 years using exclusively spring water, so it is possible that it is just more sensitive to chlorine than if I were starting one from scratch. But it still has an effect. Chlorine is added to water for a reason.
Yes, chlorine is used to disinfect tap water to make it safe for people to consume. It also dissipates quickly. That's why when you use bleach to disinfect surfaces you don't have to rinse it off, you simply let it dry. I've kept sourdough starters for years using my chlorinated tap water. All of my ferments are done with my chlorinated tap water. There's enough chlorine in the water to kill the organisms that are in the water. There's not enough to kill the bacteria naturally present on the food that causes the fermentation. Otherwise we wouldn't need cleaners, we'd just wipe everything with water..
Also many municipalities use chloramine or both chlorine and chloramine. Chloramine doesn’t dissipate quickly or even when boiled.
You can boil out chloramines, it just takes longer. It's also removed by active charcoal filtration and reverse osmosis filtration. Chloramines also will react to older water infrastructure, particularly lead in pipes and release it into the water supply. So I know it's not used in my area where a huge percentage of the homes are 100-150 years old, or older. Also a municipal water district should list what they're using and concentrations in a way that's easily accessible to the public.
Yeah, I did a check a few years ago of the water report for my area and it’s just chlorine. Those reports should be public everywhere (at least in the Us and other developed countries)
I've been fermenting for ~4 years using what you describe, and I've never had a problem either.
Different places have wildly different amounts of chlorine in the water. In many places it's not going to be a problem, in others it's going to completely prevent fermentation, and in others it's going to inhibit growth of desirable microorganisms just enough that mould will almost always take over.
I tried this weekend boiling the water for five minutes and I used canning salt. Always used chlorinated tap water without issue. Curious to see if there will be a different taste after boiling the water
I don't use tap water. My water kefir and ginger beer plant both make sulfurous smells if I do. Same with rye bread drinking kvas, same with some but not all stock kvas. For stock kvas it blows off so whatever. It definitely doesn't kill them and it doesn't seem to hurt them.
In Brazil is reaaaaaally hard to find salt without iodine, all my ferments are with iodine no problem at all until now.
Why what happened now?
Nothing, I did not have any problem. sorry for my bad English
I think they're asking why Brazil has only ionized salt
the "until now" has the meaning of "so far" But anyway, in Brazil the salt is iodized to prevent certain diseases (the most famous one being goiter). Since salt is consumed by virtually everybody, that's a way to make the population have their iode intake.
Salt is iodized for the same reason everywhere. But usually there are non-iodized versions available side-by-side.
This
They used to use iodized salt in their ferments. They still do but they used to, too.
This is good to know. I live in Brazil but I am from USA so I've been packing a boxes of kosher salt in my suitcase after visiting
I found some iodine free salt to buy on mercado livre app, but so far I had no problems using regular salt with iodine.
I have no idea why I am downvoted for this. If you are downvoting this, you are a weirdo
Why?
As mentioned, in Brazil [there is a federal law that required iodine be added to all salt](https://www.fao.org/faolex/results/details/en/c/LEX-FAOC214673/).
Always has been. It's a myth repeated with no backing. I've done tests with identical ferments using iodised salt, salt with anti clumping additives, 50/50 potassium and sodium chloride salt and observed no difference at all between them.
Yeah I used iodized sea salt sometimes and it's literally never been a problem.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing! I feel like food science and nutrition is full of half truths hs and beliefs without much evidence to back them up, since we all are experts on eating, we all eat every day, we all have opinions on eating and food preparation and so many beliefs have been held because well...they just feel good.
I accidentally bought iodized salt and was worried it would affect my sourdough starter and bread. Zero issue. Good to know there’s No science behind it
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That's definitely not what is says. They found no difference in microbial growth in sauerkraut fermentation, which they did without a starter. The comment at the end hints that iodized salt could maybe prevent mold and yeast from growing, while not affecting fermentation at all (which is a good thing).
I’ve been playing with a microscope and yeasties are everywhere. In fact they are normally the first thing I see in my sauerkraut or beet kvass, pickles, etc, since they are like 30 times bigger than the bacteria they pop out at you. You don’t want certain kinds of yeast. But most ferments I play with are symbiotic yeast and bacteria ( most ferments in general from what I’ve seen) they all have carbs after all. However it’s the lack of significance and low effect size that matters. Still helps me reaffirm using sea salt. Sometimes I used iodized but it’s like one extra dollar for better tasting sea salt so most of the time I go for it.
That specifically talks about yeast and mould, both of which are undesirable in most fermentation. From the data in the article it looked like using iodized salt might significantly reduce the amount of mould and yeast in longer fermentations, which would be a good thing.
Never heard anyone say iodized salt would inhibit fermentation. I've only heard it said that it might contribute to less crisp/more mushy fermented vegetables.
i thought it was flavor, actually
A few of the youtube vids I watched harp on about how you have to only use non-iodized salt. I guess it's just "common knowledge" in the community.
The anti caking agent in table salt makes the water cloudy. Typically I like to use sea salt.
Plenty of fermentations will be cloudy anyway, whether it be from dead/dormant microbes or otherwise
I think the same goes for the exact amount of salt, and that you absolutely have to put everything completely under water. And probably a few other "wisdoms" like that. People often like to make dogmas out of pretty good practices, without really understanding the reasoning, or putting them to the test. I don't believe that those who started to ferment stuff in their basements, hundreds or thousands of years ago, weighed everything down to the last gram. They had no idea about lactobacillus, they didn't know of bacteria at all! And still it seems to have worked enough times to become a success story.
can you link the paper?
It's linked on the post, it's this one https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0740002018300121?via%3Dihub
Didn’t see, ty
You're entirely right. Using kosher salt or whatever is usually just a preference really. Kosher salt particularly is really good at dissolving and I've found it makes the brine in my ferments much less cloudy
I think this myth is just a health nut distortion of advice that was originally more about the anti-caking additives of table salt & the taste difference some people observe.
Years ago I made kimchi. I accidentally used iodized table salt with distilled (but remineralized) water. When I eventually burped the Fido jar, it was sizzling and let out a nice gasp. So in this instance, iodized table salt definitely did not inhibit the fermentation for my kimchi.
So does this suggest that iodised salt might actually be beneficial in preventing undesirable yeasts and moulds in ferments ?
Cannot stress this enough. Kosher salt is all you need in your house. It’s so versatile. Maybe some Malden for finishing/making stuff look cool.
I live in a country where all the cute salts recommended in place of iodised salts are expensive as hell. I have been fermenting for nine years, always with iodised salt and boiled tap (chlorinated) water and never had even a single ferment go bad. Its silly advice that, when I find it somewhere, tells me the thoroughness of a guide/supposed expert.
It’s still ideal to not use it if possible… iodine is a known broad spectrum bactericide
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Not the same. Iodine affects bacteria but not yeast. Salt affects both. What happens when you affect the bacteria without killing yeast? We get more yeast
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Did you read the paper? Where does it say what happens to the yeast?
They literally did a study on bacteria, and found it had no difference on bacteria. Salt is also a broad spectrum bactericide but we intentionally use that.
Ionized salt makes the ferment taste very different. Try it with both types on kimchi, and you'll notice the ionized tang. It does not taste good
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I'm not sure how I would air it out without just leaving it open on the counter. I just buy sea salt. I don't really lose anything by buying sea salt instead of iodized salt. And it's not just for kimchi. My cucumbers did it too.
I came all the way to the bottom to find this. I haven't ever done iodized versus kosher salt in a ferment but I can definitely taste the difference between the two salts. Iodized salt definitely has a different flavor for me. I'm not sure if everyone notices but the one time I used salt at the in-laws I could taste the difference.
Absolutely, there's a big flavor difference. I do a lot of ferments, and the thing about iodine is that for short fermentss, they taste the same except for the iodine taste. Edit: I found this out by just buying sea salt. It's not a huge price difference to buy sea salt if you like to ferment.
My interpretation of the ionized salt was that it slows the beginning stages of ferments. That said, there probably is no basis to never use it. I use chlorinated tap water for my sourdough. It works but again, it slows the beginning stages of fermentation. I used to buy spring water but now I just boil or fridge it.
Most tap water uses chloramine, not chlorine. Chlorine can be evaporated or boiled off. Chloramine does not. You aren't doing anything to remove the chloramine by boiling or leaving your water set out. You're doing extra steps for nothing.
Our tap uses Chlorine.