Filling your Thanksgiving menu with fermented foods unlocks delicious flavor combinations and unleashes feel-good flora in your gut. Such a strategy may be especially helpful for those concerned that holiday meals could bring on uncomfortable or embarrassing digestive woes like gas and bloating. Fermenting—often associated with a traditional process that lengthens the shelf life of food—adds probiotics, or live microorganisms, to food that eventually finds its way into our bodies.

Probiotics assist us digestively with a number of other benefits, like improved immunity, gut microbial diversity, and nutrient absorption, to name a few. Yogurt’s familiarity makes adding fermented food to a family meal plan an easy option, according to Dr. David S.

Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. She’s proven that just about any dish can incorporate a cultured food. This improves the likelihood that more people can find fermented food pleasing to their palates.

In addition to bringing interesting and sometimes unexpected flavors to the table, Schwenk’s recipes also make for a great conversation starter. “When I make these foods in my dinners, it really makes my guests wonder and appreciate what’s going on in these foods,” she told The Epoch Times. “I explain to them what they do, and they like the taste of them.

” Using yogurt mixed with cinnamon, spices, and toasted pecans as a topping for roasted squash Sourdough bread, which can also b.