This year we are doing our 2^nd annual Unglut Your Gut Challenge.  It’s a month long, post-festive season good gut restoration.  Last year more than 300 households took up the challenge and this year, with the help of our friends at Pat’s Veg and Dr Chan’s feeling good ferments, we’re doing it again.

To take the challenge there’s three very important steps (you have to do these or you don’t get the fermented goodies)Step 1.  Place an order before midnight February 1st 

Step 2.  Order for 4 CONSECUTIVE WEEKS (Orders need to be $30 or more)

Step 3  Activate the challenge by entering the code BETTERGUT in the promo box with your FIRST order

Do this and we’ll deliver with your 4th order these two powerful probiotic products; a 250gm bottle of Pat’s Veg and a bottle of Dr Chan’s Tibicos.

So what’s with the challenge you ask?  Alright, with a month of end of year parties, school break ups, Christmas and New Year we’ve had a great time with our families and friends drinking and eating a lot more alcohol and tasty low fibre, refined sugar treats than normal.  Basically we’ve been kicking our human microbiome in the guts.Why is this bad – well we’re actually more bacterial-being than human-being or more accurately we’re a hybrid but not in a Prius sort of way.  We co-operate with our 10 trillion bacteria (that’s more human cells than we have) to do all kinds of things from food digestion, to running our immune system, even mood control.  More and more ills and diseases are being connected to out-of-balance microbiomes. From the obvious disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, gluten intolerance and diabetes, right through to seemingly unconnected things like asthma, allergies and Multiple Sclerosis.

So how do you get your microbiome back into shape?  The Gut Guardians, Dr Grace Lieu and Matt Pepin, advise people to eat repopulate your guts with a variety of probiotic foods like yoghurt, miso, sauerkraut, kim chi, kefir and kombucha and then keep them fed with lots of different vegetables, nuts and other high fibre unprocessed foods – more variety the better.  They also reckon hanging out with animals exposes you to a whole range of beneficial bacteria (apparently organic animal farmers are one of the few groups to have really healthy guts)  So pat your dog, chicken, cat, horse, pig, sheep or cow.   Exercising in clean natural environments will also get you in contact with good bacteria: get in your hands dirty gardening, bush walk, swim in clean, natural water bodies (i.e. not the Yarra after a storm), walk barefoot in the park (maybe not Edinburgh Gardens – ouch!) and avoid all those anti-bacterial products or you could put yourself back to square one.

Just a note: Remember Fair Food is an organic home delivery service so don’t take this as medical advice, it’s just grist for your microbiomic mill – if you want to get into this find a symapthetic gut professional.