Every holiday season poses a challenge for type-A personalities like mine—it’s the essential struggle both to enjoy the uncanny good fortune of being around family, and to maintain (at least somewhat) the healthy habits that have ensured your sanity since the beginning of these tumultuous college years. My icy morning jog was indispensable in preparing me to savor midwestern portions of mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, but I still felt stuffed for hours after leaving the dinner table.
I spent Thanksgiving this year with distant relatives whom I’m only just now getting to know. One of them (I’ve determined that we’re second cousins) had deposited an opaque apple-juice-looking beverage called “kefir water” in the refrigerator for “all of you who eat too much turkey.” Although I passed on the turkey this year while riding the vegetarian inertia, I still felt like I had overeaten. I served myself a glass of this hippie liquid and felt transformed: less lethargic, more refreshed, healthier—in short, I no longer felt like I had just ingested all of Thanksgiving.
As it turns out, my second cousin had whipped up this elixir herself. The process entails dissolving sugar in warm water, adding kefir grains—this is the live bacteria culture that drives the fermentation process—and letting the mixture sit at room temperature for 24-48 hours before straining out the grains. When done fermenting, the bacteria have multiplied enormously and catalyzed much of the sugar, which lends the drink its slightly tart, creamy taste. At the end, you can mix in fruit juice or vanilla extract for flavoring so that the drink tastes like homemade soda. You can find a step-by-step recipe for kefir water here, and you can buy the starter kefir grains here.
If you read the label on any yogurt or specialized juice drink today, you’ll find them claiming their product’s wondrous power to enhance your health thanks to their “live active cultures.” Most of us are dimly aware that yogurt has something really good about it besides calcium. But if you’re like me and can’t tolerate dairy in strong doses, kefir water permits you the benefits of probiotics without the dairy component. A short and sweet recap can be helpful for those who don’t follow nutrition like they do ND football. Any probiotic-rich food or drink can:
- Strengthen the immune system
- Fend off anxiety and depression
- Heal bad breath, bloating, fatigue
- Improve digestive function
More and more research seems to be supporting the latter point—the happier the gut, the healthier you are. If this entails drinking a homemade beverage that tastes like cream soda, I am gladly ready.
Winter break challenge for our HCND readers: try making a batch of kefir water and see how it turns out. Or just drink some store-bought kefir and see how you feel. You’ll impress your family members in the kitchen with your resourcefulness, and you’ll be able to enjoy Christmas cookies without the tummy aches afterward.