Other diet fads championed by MAHA are questionable. But some science and thousands of years of human history are behind fermented foods

More people are focusing on their gut health, as fibermaxxing goes mainstream, colorectal cancer rises among young adults and personalized gut microbiome treatments become increasingly popular.

Now, a generation- and culture-spanning way of preserving food is in the spotlight: fermentation. The federal government’s latest dietary guidelines specifically encourage Americans to eat more fermented food.

The foods have been further popularized by followers of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement. And while other diet fads championed by MAHA have been questioned by health experts — like unproven claims about raw milk and seed oils — there’s some science behind the benefits of eating fermented foods.

Fermented foods go back thousands of years in human history, to the days when we needed to keep food from spoiling but didn’t have refrigerators. Many cultures have traditional fermented foods: yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, South Indian idli and dosa.

Dietitians and doctors say they’re a great addition to almost anyone’s diet, but they warn against new, mass-produced products.

Not all fermented foods are made equal

Fermentation is a process by which naturally occurring microbes including bacteria and yeast break down and preserve food.

The foods are a hot research topic, though many of their health benefits are already clear, experts say.

“We’ve been doing this for ages and we just found out more recently that it’s actually........

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